MetLife Lifts Curtain on New Disability Management Offering

April 3, 2003 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Employers interested in a new approach to dealing with disability absences might want to consider a new disability product from MetLife.

The new product provides greater flexibility for employers to manage disability absences, expands employee-focused benefits, and enhances employers’ return-to-work/stay-at-work strategies for their employees, according to the firm.

New features available in the contract include:

  • Options for combining or separating limited benefit durations for a number of absence conditions to accommodate a variety of employer objectives
  • The capability to combine term life insurance and disability insurance within the same certificate provided by MetLife
  • A Terminal Illness Benefit that provides 100% of pre-disability earnings to the employee, for up to 12 consecutive months, if diagnosed as terminally ill while disabled
  • An option to accelerate survivorship benefits if diagnosed as terminally ill while disabled
  • An Organ Donor Benefit, which, among other things, provides for an increase in short term disability benefits when the disability absence is the result of donating an organ
  • A Moving Expense Incentive which reimburses employees for moving expenses to a new residence if recommended as part of the rehabilitation program approved by MetLife.

MetLife says that underlying the new contract is a claim analysis system that directs more serious health conditions to medical and vocational specialists capable of greater clinical intervention.

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