The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) has always been an excellent resource for statistics on disability. Since this organization began in 2005, its prime commitment has been to inform and educate the American public about the widespread and growing frequency of disability—and its financial impact. CDA is a nonprofit organization with 18 member insurance companies that together represent more than 75 percent of the individual and group commercial disability insurance market.
If you have ever attended an International DI Society meeting, you’ve probably had a chance to hear the organization’s president, Barry Lundquist, passionately detailing the widespread risk of disability in the United States and discussing the dedication of this organization to getting the DI message out to consumers.
CDA has recently announced the launch of the “Defend Your Income” movement. This innovative 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. The campaign presents the topic in a way that is dynamic and easy to understand, and even inserts a little bit of fun into the learning process.
“It’s difficult to convey the risks associated with disability,” says Lundquist. “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 incomes. 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. They can also calculate their own earnable income quotient to see what’s at stake—their lifetime income-earning potential.
The CDA website (www.disabilitycanhappen.org) offers an abundance of helpful tools and information for wage earners, employers, human resource professionals and families, as well as financial and insurance advisors.
Before you go to that website, be sure to read this month’s issue. The “DI Forum,” beginning on page 44, includes a discussion with four DI veterans who have some dynamic sales ideas as well as informative product suggestions. Don’t miss it—and for sure don’t miss the Focus section, in which you should find several practice enhancement techniques to put into action! [SAC]
