Desjardins Insurance: COVID-19 | Special Edition

As an increasing number of people are being affected by the pandemic, Desjardins is prioritizing the health and financial well-being of everyone. If you or one of your clients are in a tough financial situation or have questions or concerns, please contact us. We’re going to keep being here for you.

That’s why we’ve begun offering a variety of relief measures that we hope can help our members and clients.

This newsletter has information about:

• Deferring premium payments
• Using companyExecutive health assessment for insurance applications

Many of you have reached out to us and our top priority is answering your questions as quickly and effectively as possible. Since many of our employees are working remotely,please submit your applications by email. That will free up our phone lines so we can answer questions from clients.

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Thank you for your partnership and cooperation.

DEFERRING PREMIUM PAYMENTS

We’re allowing clients to defer their premiumsinterest-free for up to 90 days if they:

• Have contracted COVID-19 
  • Can’t work due to a COVID‑19 diagnosis

• Have been negatively impacted by COVID‑19
  • Quarantined
  • Can’t go to work because of travel restrictions
  • Lost their job or have been temporarily laid off 
  • Other reasons closely related to COVID‑19

Eligible products 

All life insurance, critical illness and disability products in force as of March 16, 2020. Healthcare coverage premiums cannot be deferred.


Monthly automatic withdrawals
We can push back automated withdrawalsup to 90 days after the premium is due. You’ll get a copy of the letter we send your client to let them know when we’ll begin withdrawing payments again.


Billing by notice of premium
A 90‑day grace period for us to receive payments will be granted, starting from the day the premium is due.


Contract has negative fund or negative cash surrender value
If your client's contract has negative fund or negative cash surrender value, we’ll wait 90 days before applying contract's provisions.


2 ways to make requests

1. Send a request tocsin@dsf.ca.
   Your email should explain which of these situations applies to your client.
    
2. You can also tell your client to contact our Customer Contact Centre at 1‑800‑278‑0669. We’d be happy to help.

Considerations

The contract provisions will be applied after the 90‑day period. If there is no cash surrender value, usually, the policy will be terminated.

If an event resulting in a life insurance or critical illness claim occurs during the 90‑day period, any premiums due will be deducted from the benefit paid.

USING COMPANY EXECUTIVE HEALTH ASSESSMENT FOR INSURANCE APPLICATIONS

Good news! You can use company Executive health assessment for new insurance applications instead of the usual basic requirements on the illustration.

The Executive health assessment, which should include blood and urine tests, must have been carried out on the insurance candidate by a qualified person from a recognized firm (e.g., Medisys) within the previous 12 months.

All you need to do is send us a scanned copy of the Executive health assessment with the insurance application instead of any required paramedical documents that aren’t available now.