Travelers Insurance Co - find people familiar with their LTD underwriting process in

[hwagner5]

What is the name of your state?Ohio
I an in litigation against The Travelers Insurance Co. on what I believe is a wrongful denial of an individual LTD claim. I seek former employees of Travelers or other third parties who can help me assess their underwriting practices in 1994.

 

[cbg]

I don't want to be discouraging but you may have some problems with that.

I was an employee of The Travelers in 1994. I did not work with their individual LTD plans - I worked with group plans - health, life, STD and LTD. Ten years after the fact I can't even remember what their underwriting procedures were in the department I worked for, let alone elsewhere in the company.

By sheerest chance I happened to see your post - if Freeadvice were still on the old software I would never have seen it at all. The odds that someone who not only worked for The Travelers, but worked for them in 1994, AND had any knowledge of their underwriting procedures AND can speak to how their individual LTD plans were handled, seeing this post are pretty slim.

Are you working with an attorney? Why isn't he handling this?

 

[hwagner5]

I greatly appreciate the time you took to answer my inquiry. I understand the challenge which is why I am resorting to these message boards as well. Thank you for your helop, though it might have been a bit discouraging.

Yes, I am working with an attorney and he is addressing parallel paths - we are a bit under time pressure and are sharing the burdens.

Is there any reference to people who may have worked there up until more recently and left the company for some reason who might be accessible - maybe we can talk to them if they know of anyone who can help us.

Thanks anyway

 

[cbg]

Sorry, but my division of Travelers was spun off to form a separate company in 1995. I quit that job in 1998. I haven't kept up with anyone at either company, and even if had, they're all in my state, which would be handled by different regional offices than those handling yours.

I can tell you that I never had any reason to believe that the underwriting practices were anything but aboveboard. I'm not making any claims one way or another; just stating that I never personally saw anything other than perfectly legitimate issues.

 

[ALawyer]

It seems to me that as part of the discovery process your lawyer should have asked for and received the underwiriting manuals in use in 1994. Then the lawyer should get an expert witness to see what they provide. And you or the lawyer may want to get someone who knows underwiting to explain what other companies normally do in such a circumstance. The expert need not have come from Travelers. Alternatively, he should examine the underwriters at Travelers.

 

[hwagner5]

Thanks again to both of you for the feedback. Yes, we are addressing the issue also from an expert witness standpoint and have obtained the underwriting manuals and also deposed various people at Travelers.

The issue appears clear to us: Travelers did not follow their own underwriting criteria insofar as they accepted what we believe is clearly substandard medical information to write the risk and also - either intentionally or by oversight - waiving underwriting limits for non-medical underwriting on a fairly "rich" LTD policy.

Or interest is in finding people who may know that Travelers was indeed "aggressively" pushing individual LTD policies in 1994 prior to deciding to get out of that business in the first quarter of 1995 (sort of a "make it or get out of the category" push) which may have facilitated a more "lenient" approach to underwriting.

We believe we have our facts and consider it a very strong case. Confirming our assumption would simply add additional amunition.