Harvard is offering a special one-time enrollment period for Long Term Disability Insurance between Monday, April 24 and Friday, May 5. Whatever your age or your health status, you may want to seriously consider taking advantage of this opportunity, if you are not already enrolled in Long Term Disability (LTD) Insurance through Harvard. If you are unable to work due to accident, injury, or illness, LTD Insurance will pay you a monthly income and continue your health insurance coverage for an extended period of time. Although hopefully you will never need to use this benefit, if you become ill or disabled, this LTD assistance could be critical for you.

This open enrollment period is unique in that typically, only new employees are able to enroll in Long Term Disability (LTD) Insurance without having to show medical evidence of insurability (ie: without having to show proof that they are in good health). After those first few months, if a Harvard employee wants to enroll in LTD Insurance, that employee would normally need to demonstrate a certain level of good health to be eligible for coverage. However, because Harvard is changing insurance providers (moving from a company called The Standard to Liberty Mutual), the University is opening a one-time LTD open enrollment period for all unenrolled staff, no matter how long they have worked at the University, and the evidence of insurability requirement is waived during this limited window (April 24 – May 5). This special open enrollment period is only for Long Term Disability Insurance enrollment, and not for any other benefit.

If you do not already have LTD insurance through Harvard, you should have been mailed LTD open enrollment materials to your home. If you are already enrolled in LTD insurance, you do not need to take any action. Your coverage will remain the same – your plan will just be managed by Liberty Mutual instead of the Standard. Any active LTD claims still be managed by The Standard, but any new claims will be managed by Liberty Mutual. If you are unsure of whether you are already enrolled in the Harvard LTD insurance plan, you can verify this by going to PeopleSoft and looking under Self Service > My Benefits. You will see all your enrollments, including LTD, under “Benefits Summary.”

You can learn more about the open enrollment period and the coverage on the following webpage on the Harvard HR site. If you are thinking about enrolling, make sure you read over any relevant plan documents before enrolling so that you know what your coverage entails: http://hr.harvard.edu/event/special-enrollment-opportunity-faculty-and-staff-not-enrolled-ltd.

Please contact the Harvard Benefits Office if you have any questions about any of the above:

Harvard Benefits Office
114 Mt. Auburn Street, 4th floor
Cambridge, MA 02138

Email: benefits@harvard.edu
Benefits call center: 617-496-4001;
Hours for call center: M, T, Th, F, 9 am-5 pm.; W, 10 am-5 pm
Walk-in hours: M-Th, 11 am-3 pm, closed Friday