Encourage customers to share their needs

We encourage our customers to tell us about their mental health condition(s) especially if they need extra support in communicating with us. We can always assist in supporting or providing help in accessing all our services.

Requesting Extra Support:

If you tell us, or we identify that you need extra support to access our services due to a mental health condition, we will work with you (your family, carer, or support person as applicable) to find a suitable, sensitive, and compassionate option.

Flexible Support:

If a customer tells us that they require extra support from someone else or if we identify that they require extra support – such as a lawyer, consumer representative, interpreter, family member, carer, or friend – we will recognise this and allow it in all reasonable ways. We will make sure our processes are flexible enough to recognise the authority of a support person where and when possible.

Staff Training and Policies:

We have internal policies and role-appropriate training to assist our staff identify and understand if a customer is or may be vulnerable, consider unique needs and decide how we may be able to help them engage with us and to what extent.

We will engage our customers with empathy, transparency, compassion, and respect, not least to avoid exacerbating any mental condition they may have.

Claims time:

We will treat our policy owners with empathy, compassion, and respect throughout the claims process.

We will not discourage them from making a claim and if they tell us that they are having trouble providing the information we need, we will work with them to take steps to find a solution.

We have specific processes to support customers who are making income-related claims including working with doctors, other healthcare providers and employers to support our customers recovery, rehabilitation and return to work.