Designing for the person reading on a bad day

Digital claiming should reduce effort for members who can use it without stranding those who cannot. Every claim journey in our app and portal shows a way to reach a named person, in French or English, from any screen. I judge those journeys by completed files and time to a decision, not by the share of claims submitted online. For short-term disability, a case manager now calls each online claimant within two business days. For health and dental, call-back requests go to the team that will handle the claim rather than to a general queue. I plan staffing with the vice-president of disability claims, because a fallback that is advertised but not resourced is worse than none. Automation still earns its place in reminders, status messages and document recognition, provided members can always see who is responsible for their file.

A French booklet produced by translating an approved English one tends to carry the English sentence structure, and occasionally a different meaning. Since 2023, new Lacmorin wordings are written by two drafters working at the same time from a single product definition, one in each language. Legal counsel reviews both versions together, and each is tested with members who read it as their first language. The method is slower and costs more in drafting and review. It removes the costly question of which version governs when they disagree, and it treats francophone members in Ottawa, Moncton and Sudbury as seriously as those in Quebec. I keep a shared glossary of about four hundred benefit terms so that physiotherapy, dependent child and pre-existing condition mean the same thing on every page, in both languages.

Underwriters are entitled to ask what they need; my work is to make each question answerable by someone without medical training. I split compound questions into single subjects, give each a time window, add an example where members hesitated in testing and remove words such as "ever" unless the underwriter can explain why the whole of a life matters. The chief underwriter keeps authority over what is asked and how answers are assessed, and our reinsurers review any change that affects the risk they accept. The measure I watch is the share of applications held for clarification, alongside the approval rate, so a clearer questionnaire cannot quietly become a looser one. When a claim later raises a misrepresentation question, I ask to see the original wording the member answered before anyone discusses intent.

Many people who use disability benefits have a disability, and some acquired it in the month they first log in to claim. I treat accessibility as a product requirement rather than a pre-launch review. Our design standard is version 2.1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at the AA level, a later version than Ontario's accessibility law requires for websites, and every major release is tested with screen-reader users, people with low vision and members with limited dexterity. Forms save progress automatically, so a member with fatigue can stop and return. Every letter is available in large print and as an accessible electronic document on request. Three colleagues in my team hold accessibility responsibilities full time. They can stop a release, and they have done so twice when a claim form could not be completed by keyboard alone.

Lacmorin is supervised by OSFI as a federally incorporated insurer, while each province oversees how we treat the people we cover, and Quebec's regulator and language rules add expectations of their own. I describe these duties in practice rather than citing clauses I have not checked with counsel. Our product governance asks, before launch, who the plan is for, what a member could misunderstand and how we would know. After launch we review complaints, declined claims and abandoned applications each quarter by province and language, because an average can hide a problem confined to one group. Group benefits also complicate fairness: the sponsor buys the plan, but the member bears the consequences of its design. I make sure our adviser and sponsor material explains what a cheaper option will mean for an employee who becomes ill.