Canada Life Group Insurance says the figures highlight the need to increase takeup of rehab services, given over 2m employees have access to them.
The figures, published by Group Risk Development, show income protection policies paid out annualised benefits of £338m.
Group life policies paid out benefits valued at £869m, while group critical Illness policies paid out £57m.
Analysis of the total payments made by the Group Risk industry shows that a total of £1.26bn was paid out during 2014, helping a total of 24,570 UK families.
For the first time, GRiD has captured details of the cases where the insurer supported a return to work with some sort of active intervention – such as fast track access to counselling or physiotherapy – with 1,529 people able to go back to work during 2014 before they had been off sick long enough to make a claim.
The main cause of claim across all three products was cancer, with the highest for Group Critical Illness (68%), followed by Group Life (46%) and Group Income Protection (24%). For Group Life, this was followed by heart disease (16%), by heart attack for Group Critical Illness (10%) and by mental illness for Group Income Protection (23%).
Grid spokesperson Katharine Moxham says: “These figures bring a truly unique insight into the collective contribution the Group Risk industry makes to supporting British families. The fact that 1,529 people were helped back to work also clearly demonstrates the value that insurers add beyond the pure payment of claims.
“Employers are not obliged to provide any of these benefits, but by doing so they make a major contribution towards protecting employees and their families against the financial consequences of death or prolonged disability. Through this, they also ultimately benefit wider society by reducing the welfare burden.”
Canada Life Group Insurance marketing director Paul Avis says: “While it is good that we have quantified the non-financial benefits of rehab services, a figure of 1,529 is way too low when you consider there are 2.08 million people covered. Somewhere there is a blockage, and we implore all advisers to use the free vocational rehabilitation services as this is the future of income protection Anyone can pay a cheque, but these products offer a really good raft of services beyond the financial – they are there to be used and abused by the employers who purchase this insurance.
