What happens during a field interview about my long-term disability claim?

In today’s issue we are going to discuss the process of what happens when a long term disability insurance company requests to do a field interview regarding your claim and they may just call it an interview or a meeting. But essentially what that means is that the long term disability insurance policy carrier calls you up and they say – we would like to come meet with you. Generally it’s at your home and we want to discuss your claim. What I want you to know is that, if they call you up and want to talk to you about your claim, it’s definitely not to check to see how you are doing and to try to make you feel better. Long term disability carriers are trained to all about to return to work. When they come to see you, they want to see what’s your condition now, to see if you are able to return to work. So, you have to be prepared to answer every single one of your questions that is consistent with the language in the policy. Because they are looking to see that you are going to give out answers that would allow you to basically get back to work or no longer meet the definition of disability.

In this session I want to talk to Steven and Caesar about their experiences with field interviews. I know, Steve, you had two today in our office. I know that both of you and myself fly all over the country attending these field interviews, we attend these field interviews on phone. Caesar you just got back from Alabama yesterday. For example today, Steven, you had this field interview, what was the atmosphere like with two different disability insurance companies in the field interview?

Well, they always seem to send more of the charismatic people to come try to do those interviews, make it seem more friendly, more open. But the tone is always there, you can always see what’s insides their minds a little bit and where they are going to go. You can always kind of have an idea on a claim, what the issues might be, what the insurance company may want to know more about and when they come they hone in and sometimes they’ll know things that you had no idea even existed. When they research, sometimes a client doesn’t tell you necessarily what is truthful and open. So they’ll start bringing up certain things looking basically, like you said, for a way to show you don’t meet their definition on a strict technicality maybe or that you’re able to go back to work or as to what his motives were. Did you have a secondary motive for wanting to file for your disability, which is one of the cases I had today.

I think that people need to realize that the individuals that are doing these field interviews are usually employed by the disability insurance company and they are specially trained to do nothing but these field interviews. So they come on a specific mission to obtain specific information. They generally generate a 6 to 12 page report as to what their finding are and they also have specific instructions as to whether it’s from the claim examiner who is handling the claim, a manager, a physician, a director or someone at the company to find out specific information.