{"id":69377,"date":"2024-01-09T15:41:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T05:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=69377"},"modified":"2025-03-14T12:02:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T01:02:22","slug":"permanency-challenges-driving-future-tpd-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2024\/01\/09\/permanency-challenges-driving-future-tpd-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Permanency’ Challenges Driving Future TPD Solutions?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There was strong reader interest in our story highlighting that the growing challenge of assessing whether TPD claims are permanent is one of the critical factors driving discussion around the future of the TPD product offer in Australia, including the prospect of instalment benefit payments…<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The growing challenge of assessing whether TPD claims are permanent is one of the critical factors driving discussion around the future of the TPD product offer in Australia.<\/p>\n

This fundamentally-important element was debated by a panel of industry peers at the Riskinfo TPD Round Table<\/a> event in December, at which several important points were considered.<\/p>\n

Permanency<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the key issues for insurers in 2024 and beyond revolves around how to assess ‘permanency’ at claim time, which has historically been mostly objective, such as when considering physical and musculo-skeletal conditions requiring x-rays, ultrasound and MRI technology. But the prevalence of subjectivity in TPD assessment is increasing in line with the ever-increasing volume of claims related to conditions such as chronic fatigue, depression and other mental health-related events and conditions.<\/p>\n

Subjective considerations when assessing such TPD claims include the extent of the resilience (or its lack) within the claimant, the seriousness of the reported episode(s) and the subjective medical diagnosis of the ongoing nature of the condition.<\/p>\n

Incremental TPD Benefits?<\/strong><\/p>\n

These issues are giving rise in turn to suggestions as to what product modifications might be possible in order to address the current challenge associated with the lack of objective criteria on which the claims manager is forced to base their assessment of the TPD claim before them.<\/p>\n

One suggestion involves the payment of incremental TPD benefits, rather than a single lump sum. While moving away from the lump sum structure, the TPD Round Table panel reflected this might be one piece in a complex solution puzzle that may be worthy of consideration. Such a move would deliver a proportional benefit to the claimant for what might be (subjectively) determined to be an episodic total disability event without it necessarily being permanent.<\/p>\n

This discussion connects with related issues such as the potentially changing role of the TPD proposition in Australia, especially since the late 1980s, when income protection insurance was introduced into the Australian market.<\/p>\n

To hear how this conversation unfolds, take the following link to the panel’s discussion on the issues surrounding the objective and subjective assessment of permanency when assessing TPD claims…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was strong reader interest in our story highlighting that the growing challenge of assessing whether TPD claims are permanent is one of the critical factors driving discussion around the future of the TPD product offer in Australia, including the prospect of instalment benefit payments… The growing challenge of assessing whether TPD claims are permanent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-products","category-story-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}