Disability Carriers Launch “Defend Your Income”

Effort Focuses on Educating Working Americans on Need to Protect Their Income

PORTLAND, M.E.—In an effort to make the often- overlooked subject of disability income planning more visible, the Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) and its member companies announced the launch of the Defend Your Income movement. This educational program seeks to unite consumers, advisors, employers and insurers in the fight to protect the incomes of working Americans from the financial risks caused by illness or injury. According to the Social Security Administration, more than a quarter of today’s entrants into the workforce will suffer an income-interrupting disability at some point during their working careers. However, recent CDA research shows that the majority of working Americans and many of their advisors significantly underestimate their odds of disability. Worse yet, about two-thirds of America’s workforce is not covered by private long term disability insurance.

“It’s difficult to convey the risks associated with disability,” said Barry Lundquist, president of CDA.“People just avoid talking about the subject. When it comes to thinking about their health, people are optimistic by nature. But that kind of thinking has left the majority of Americans unprepared to protect their most valuable financial asset – their income. That’s why we’re taking such a new and different approach to engage working consumers and their trusted financial advisors and employers in learning about their risks and empowering them to take action.” The hub of the Defend Your Income program is a highly engaging web experience. Set in a martial arts dojo, this site invites visitors to actively learn how to defend their income. They can “meet their attackers” and learn about the top threats to their income. They can even fight off those attackers during an interactive game. Through a series of quizzes, they can also earn their “black belt” in income Defense. And they can calculate their own Earnable Income Quotient (EIQ) to see what’s at stake — their lifetime income-earning potential. “We need to change the conversation about income protection planning,” said John Roberts, President and CEO of Assurant Employee Benefits, and Chairman of CDA’s board. “This campaign presents the topic in a way that is dynamic, easy to understand and even inserts a little bit of fun into the learning process. When incomes are secure, everyone wins – employers, society, and of course the wage earners themselves.”