Legal & General is today publishing analyses of its Group Income Protection (GIP) claim statistics. In the first of a series of publications, Legal & General’s statistics show that GIP claims for mental health are highest in the ‘finance and insurance’ sector and lowest in ‘mining and oil & gas extraction.’
• In a ground-breaking analysis of all of Legal & General’s GIP claims since 2000, the figures show that 31% of claims were for mental health issues.
• The proportion of mental health claims is increasing, having gone up by 6 percentage points since 2005, from 25% to 31%.
• 44% of notifications in the ‘Finance and Insurance’ sector were related to mental health, 13 percentage points higher than the average.
The publication of these statistics ties into the Health & Safety Executive’s Labour Force Survey which estimated that 10.8 million working days were lost in 2010/11 to mental health issues such as stress, depression and anxiety.
Furthermore, recent analysis by Legal & General using Department for Work and Pensions reports revealed that less than a fifth of employers are taking adequate steps to provide support for stressed employees in the workplace.
The DWP Survey, ‘Health and well-being at work: a survey of employers’ showed that only 17% of employers have any form of stress management advice and support in place.
Legal & General’s Group Income Protection, Workplace Recovery, has been particularly effective at providing specialist treatment to employees who are absent from work because of mental health and stress. Where appropriate they are offered between 8 and 20 sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) from CBT Services Limited, with 66% of employees being able to return to work within 12 months of diagnosis.
Commenting on the findings, Diane Buckley, Managing Director of Legal & General Group Income Protection, said:
“Our mental health claim figures, which have increased by 6 percentage points in the last six years, show how important it is for employers to help their staff with mental health issues- particularly in the finance and insurance industry where 44% of claims are because of them. Legal & General have developed an effective Group Income Protection package that offers tailored support to absentees’ to help them return to work sooner rather than later.
“Keeping our claims transparent will further aid our efforts to get individuals back into work. In the coming months we will publish analyses which examine notifications for arthritis; back problems; cardiovascular; chronic fatigue syndrome; digestive; musculoskeletal; nervous system; respiratory and cancer.”
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