Over half of UAE young professionals fear the financial impact of critical illness

If diagnosed with a critical illness, 55 percent said they can manage only three months without work while just 39 percent expected they could retain their jobs in case of a lengthy treatment or recovery phase, according to the Critical Illness Survey report which gathered responses from 502 employed UAE residents aged between 24 and 45.

To look at the reasons behind these worries, and their implications, Arabian Business sat down with Khatchik Kinoyan, chief underwriter at Zurich Insurance Group, who listed the limited number of sick days awarded to employees and the fear of being made redundant while in the recovery period as explanations.

What do you think is driving these results? 

These fears are not unwarranted as a serious illness could impact a person mentally, physically and financially and many of the respondents knew people who had these conditions in their social circle. These conditions may lead to unpaid leave or job loss, using up current savings and borrowing from friends and family. Cost implications are magnified since medical insurance is often limited to treatment costs and has annual limits and other conditions.

The need to pre-emptively prepare oneself for these situations has become more significant than ever.

One of the things that struck me was how more than half of the respondents believed they would only be able to manage financially for up to three months if faced with a serious illness. What do you think are the reasons behind such a fear?

One of the key factors that could be a cause of such concern could be the perceived insufficiency of sick-leave days that can be taken in a calendar year. Most companies in the region provide an average of 15 days of paid leave, which, if an employee is diagnosed with a critical illness, is not a sufficient amount of time for one’s recovery.

The survey confirms this shortfall as most respondents spoke of 10 days of paid sickness leaves. 55 percent of all respondents believe they would only be able to financially manage up to three months off work if they became seriously ill.

There is also the fear that should an employee take long-term leave to recover from their illness, companies may not retain their roles. For example, as a rule of thumb, it is estimated that for each month of cancer treatment, you would need two months of recovery time, so if you’re treated for three months with chemotherapy, then you will need six months to recover. In parallel, chronic diseases like kidney failure and subsequent dialysis over the years can leave patients considerably fatigued.

What is the role of insurance companies, the healthcare sector, and governments in easing/addressing such concerns?

A lot of these professionals are protecting and supporting economic activity, with the region increasingly attracting the brightest global talent and foreign investments thanks to reforms and initiatives the governments are spearheading. Expenses associated with illness can result in considerable additional stress in these difficult circumstances to an employee, sometimes resulting in being cut out from the workforce and thereby loss of talent.

As an industry, if you were to analyse how the insurance sector operates to support such talent, it is usually at two levels. The first is preventing an incident, the second is indemnification. Indemnification is when your insurer pays for a loss, so you don’t have financial damages.

Preventive care is preferable at all levels whether it is about the patient’s health, burden on the healthcare system or overall disease morbidity. At the prevention level, it is about encouraging healthy lifestyles and regular testing for these diseases, a key step in minimising the incidence of these diseases. This direction is also supported by the government. Insurance providers now cover regular tests for early detection and prevention.