Insurers, agents and brokers started the 11thannual Disability Insurance AwarenessMonth campaign today without much ceremony.

Organizers at Life Happens and the Council for Disability Awareness are doingtheir best to warn employers and consumers about the need forworkers to insure their income while the insurance industry rides apolicy rollercoaster.

The life and health insurers write that most U.S. disability insurance plans face the effects ofprolonged low interest rates on their investment earnings andconfusion in Washington about how major medical coverage will workin 2018.

The U.S. Department of Labor's efforts to impose a fiduciarystandard on sellers of indexed annuities has distracted the manyinsurers and producers that offer disability insurance alongsidelife insurance and annuities.

U.S. disability insurance sales and profits appearto be holding up reasonably well. Unum Group, for example,recently reported that its first-quarter group disability saleswere just a little lower than in the first quarter of 2016, andthat operating income was holding steady, at a time when insurersare reporting swings in the performance of products such as annuitycontracts and individual major medical policies.

Even though disability units are doing pretty well, all of theother turmoil appears to be eating the time and resources insurersmight have invested in the DIAM campaign 10 years ago.

Some of the insurers that organized major DIAM campaigns in theearly 2000s are focusing this year mainly on promoting otherorganizations' DIAM materials, or their DIAM materials from a fewyears ago.

The American Council of Life Insurers has tried to amplify theDIAM campaign's message with a press release encouraging Americansto assess their disability insurance needs.

"Serious disabilities occur more often than people realize," theACLI warns. "According to the Social Security Administration, oneout of four 20-year-olds in the U.S. will become disabled andunable to work before they reach retirement age."

The list of insurers supporting the campaignincludes Anthem Inc., Cigna Corp., MetLifeInc. and Sun Life Financial U.S. as well asUnum.

Unum posted the Council for Disability Awareness disability riskcalculator on its WorkWell website, along with a new article byChris Winston, a Unum communications article. Winston encouragesvisitors to use the calculator to calculate their "PDQs," or"personal disability quotient."

Some agents and brokers are supporting the effort, by producingtheir own campaign materials or by using materials from the Councilfor Disability Awareness or Life Happens.

Market Financial Group is an example of a firm that is posting atwo-minute Disability 101 video from Life Happens on its YouTubechannel. The video gives viewers basic information about how oftendisability occurs, why most cases of disability are not covered byworkers' compensation insurance, and how private disabilityinsurance works.