Berkshire Launches New Multi-Life Product Offering, Including Online Enrollment and Reduced Rates

Berkshire is proud to announce the launch of DI@WorkTM, a new Multi-Life disability income insurance offering for Guaranteed Standard Issue (GSI) business that features superior online enrollment capabilities, competitive pricing and unprecedented customer service and sales tools designed to make your sales process hassle-free from start to finish.

Innovative Online Enrollment
DI@Work promises to be “distinctively different,” and its new e-enrollment system delivers. The Web site makes enrollment easy and helps educate applicants, using tools such as an expense calculator to determine how much supplemental coverage they need. Employees are able to select from a series of product packages for which to apply, including “above the GSI,” to help them obtain a solution that’s best suited to their needs.

DI@Work also reduces the workload for producers and employers as it utilizes true “e-signature,” meaning no paper applications, and offers demographic-based tracking to ensure success. Berkshire’s Multi-Life team will oversee all aspects of your enrollment, which includes customizing an enrollment plan to fit each organization’s needs, managing employee communications, tailoring an enrollment site, and overseeing all administrative tasks.

Income ProVider Rate Decreases
To make this offering even more attractive, we’ve substantially lowered our rates for Income ProVider — our GSI product. We’re also incorporating a more liberal approach to the utilization of pre-existing condition limitations. The new rates are available in all states as of July 1, 2008, except for Massachusetts, New York and Florida. As these states are approved, you will be notified. Income ProVider is not currently available for sale in California. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like us to run a previous offer with these new rates to showcase the savings.

Sales Support
We’re also conducting monthly online training sessions, providing an introduction to our enhanced sales tools and a more personalized approach to managing worksite DI business. Join us on Wednesday, July 9, at 12 p.m. Eastern for our next WebEx, during which our unit will share an overview of best practices as well as offer a demonstration of the new online enrollment capabilities. Watch your e-mail for more details.

More Comprehensive, Aggressive Offers
To further strengthen our team, we’ve added Darlene Demorad, who brings years of experience with a key competitor to her role as manager of Worksite Risk Management. She provides great insight to the multi-life underwriting promise and has already added considerable value through more comprehensive and aggressive offers.

A New Special Limits Program – Up to $7,500 of monthly benefit for Medical and Dental Specialties

The Special Limits for Young Professionals program provides students, residents and first-year professionals the opportunity to obtain disability income insurance without proof of income, giving your agents a competitive entrée to a very lucrative market.

In a recent review of experience, market outlook and salary data, we have identified that typical first-year income within the broad first-year physician and dentist categories can vary considerably.

For that reason, we’re introducing a new Special Limits program that recognizes 13 new special limits for 22 specific first-year medical and dental professions, to protect the income they expect to earn in their specialties. These new classifications and limits are available immediately with new Berkshire ProVider Plus policy forms 1400 and 1500, where approved. They are not available with any other Berkshire or Guardian policy form.

New Occupational Categories and Higher Limits
This new program offers up to $7,500 of monthly benefit to qualifying first-year professionals—a significant increase over the previous limit of $5,000. See the following table for an overview of new categories and corresponding special limits within the medical and dental markets. Items highlighted indicate an increase in limits.

TeleMed Requirement and Policy Form Availability
The new classifications and limits are available with new ProVider Plus policy forms 1400 and 1500, where approved, and when TeleMed is utilized to gather all underwriting requirements. Existing program classifications and limits are available for policy forms 0100/1100/2100 or NC111/112 in California, or when TeleMed is not utilized. See the attached flyer in the “Marketing This New Program” section for complete details.

Guardian Disability Insurance - Video Training

Our agency has built an easy way for you to learn all about the material changes to Guardian's ProVider Plus disability insurance policy. Each of the video segments is just 2-3 minutes long so that you can pick and choose which area's of the product you want to learn more about.

There are some really exciting new features, rates, and riders to learn about. We encourage you to spend some time digging into all the material changes on our Video Tutorials.

Business Owner Advantage Program

Now, Your Business Owner Clients Can Qualify For More

We want to be your choice when protecting the incomes of business owners, and here's proof.

We're raising issue limits on our ProVider Plus* individual disability insurance policy by up to $2000 for business owners outside the medical/dental markets. The chart below is a sampling of the new issue limits.


It's the most generous DI benefit structure for business owners on the market, but more importantly, you're providing them with optimal coverage.

Check these features:
• True own occ definition of total disability embedded in the contract
• 15% loss of income threshold for residual benefits—with no loss of time or duties requirements
• A loss of income benefit for up to the first 12 months of residual disability
• 6 month waiver of premium after recovery
• Upon recovery, COLA increases become part of the base monthly benefit at no additional premium until age 65/67
• No fees for monthly premium payments automatically deducted from savings or
checking accounts.
So, show your business owner clients you have their best interests in mind by showing them ProVider Plus—
up to $2000 more benefit, and much more value for their hard-earned premium dollar.

*Disability insurance underwritten and issued by Berkshire Life Insurance Company of America, Pittsfield, MA, a wholly-owned stock subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY, or, in California, provided by Guardian. **Limits shown for Policy Forms 1400 and 1500; similar increases for Policy Forms 0100, 1100, 2100, NC111 and NC112. Product provisions and features may vary by state.
For Producer Use Only. Not For Use With the General Public.

New ProVider Plus Seminar Replay Available

In March our agency hosted four new ProVider Plus product seminars throughout the Mid-Atlantic region in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Northern Virginia and Harrisburg. We are very excited about the upcoming release of Guardian's flagship disability insurance policy scheduled for April 28th, 2008. We filmed many of the roll-out meetings, and have the seminar available for replay on our web site. We encourage you to watch the entire seminar on-line, or visit Guardian Disability Insurance Brokerage and log-in to access our video library where you can watch several short video clips outlining the details of this new product. We are actively creating more short video clips to the video training center, and will add them as they are ready for release.

If you have any questions about Guardian's next generation ProVider Plus disability insurance policy please give us a call toll free at 888-513-2300, and we will be happy to have one of our disability insurance specialists schedule an appointment to come review the new product with you.

ProVider Plus Release Date & Specimen Policy

The next generation ProVider Plus disability insurance policy is now going to be released on April 28th instead of March 31st. Berkshire just released the new specimen policy as well which is also available in our Brochure Library.

New ProVider Plus Producer Guide

Berkshire has a new ProVider Plus Producer Guide available for agents and brokers. This is a brand new brochure agents can use to really get to know the new ProVider Plus contract.