Who is UnumProvident

UnumProvident is the leading provider of group disability insurance in the United States and has continually been accused of failing to pay claims. UnumProvident and its subsidiaries Colonial Life, Provident Life, and Paul Revere have all systematically denied claims for which policyholders should have been covered.

The number of denied claims by UnumProvident has become well publicized and was the subject of a dateline piece on October 13, 2002.

Many policyholders have heard the same excuses as to why UnumProvident has denied their claims. Excuses have ranged from failing to receive documentation on time, failing to medical reports, ailment is not a covered disability and more.

The majority of victims are professionals including: doctors, lawyers, accountants, corporate executives as well as general employees. People who thought they were well protected in the event of disability are forced to unnecessarily file for bankruptcy and lose their homes, all while their health is deteriorating.

Many corporate and government employees have also, unfairly, been denied claims by UnumProvident and their subsidiaries. If you have been denied a claim by UnumProvident, Submit your claim now.

Why are there so many lawsuits against them?
While it's true that there have been thousands of lawsuits filed against UnumProvident in recent years, the actual percentage of claims that end up in litigation is small: barely a tenth of a percent. That's at least partly the result of the sheer size of the company and the huge volume of claims they process. Even a tenth of a percent translates to several thousand lawsuits. There undoubtedly have been justified lawsuits against UnumProvident, but a simple tally of the number of cases in litigation doesn't tell us anything useful about the company's performance or its over-all customer satisfaction, which, according to them, is very high.

UnumProvident's critics say the numbers, even if UnumProvident is reporting them accurately, aren't an accurate reflection of customer satisfaction. The number of lawsuits might be small, they contend, but it doesn't include all the unfairly denied claimants who either didn't realize they were being wronged, or else lacked the will or the finances to mount a lawsuit.

Why are there any lawsuits against them?
The real question is: why, when the rights and obligations of both the company and the consumer are spelled out so clearly in the policy, should any insurance company be subject to litigation?

To a company that specializes in disability insurance, managing claims prudently comes down to paying claimants who qualify for benefits, and not paying claimants who don't. Sounds simple, and in many cases it is.

But there are also problem cases in which misunderstandings develop, or in which the nature of the disability might be more obvious to the claimant than it is to the company. The company asks for more documentation; the claimant can't or won't provide it, or else the company doesn't find it convincing; the company closes the claim; and finally, the claimant becomes a plaintiff. At any stage in this process, there can be errors on either or both sides, and there can be mutual distrust that impedes effective communication. These situations are few and far between, and the ones that can't be resolved without litigation are even fewer. But it does happen.

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