UNUM
While it may seem obvious, a key tenet of our back-to-basics approach was to reaffirm our focus on serving employers and their employees through employer-sponsored benefits. By focusing on the workplace we are not only helping employers manage their businesses, we are also helping individuals and their families better prepare for life-changing events. We believe employer-sponsored benefits represent the single most effective way to provide workers with access to the information and options they need to protect their lifestyle and provide financial security.
Working people and their families—particularly those at middle and lower incomes who are perhaps the most vulnerable in today's economy—are often overlooked by many providers of financial services and products. Yet in these uncertain times, the need for all employees to have access to low-cost benefits in the workplace has never been greater. For many people, employer-sponsored benefits are the primary defense against the potentially catastrophic fallout of death, illness, or injury.
We believe that employers care deeply about their employees yet need help to develop solutions to better manage the challenges they are facing in their businesses. More than ever before, employers want benefits that can help them attract and retain quality employees and manage an increasingly diverse workforce, while at the same time managing the cost pressures they feel in today's environment.
We provide these benefits through three distinct, but similarly focused businesses—Unum US, Colonial Life, and Unum UK—which are market leaders in making disability, life, accident, and critical illness products accessible in the workplace. Protecting working people when they need it most, we paid nearly $6 billion in benefits last year to individuals and families who were impacted by life-changing events. We're proud of our role in helping people protect their financial security.
In addition to a broad portfolio of products, with our stable, consistent presence in the market, an experienced workforce with extensive knowledge of the benefits landscape, and industry-leading customer service, we represent an attractive long-term partner for our clients. According to third-party surveys, last year we again outperformed our industry in key measures of customer and claimant satisfaction—something that has not gone unnoticed in the market.
Though we are proud of what we do today to support our customers, we can't be complacent as their needs are rapidly changing in this environment. As a specialist in the benefits market, we have the size and scale to make the investments needed to respond to these market challenges. This past year, unlike some in our industry, we continued to invest in the business despite the challenging economic and financial environment. We've made significant technology investments within Unum US, for instance, in our underwriting and claim management systems, while also expanding our Simply Unum platform and the next generation of products, and improving the training and development of our sales force. In the U.K., we re-launched our group life product and developed new products intended to further expand the group market in that country. And at Colonial Life, we developed a new enrollment system and platform and added to our product and service offering.
Our people remain our competitive advantage, and we have continued to invest in them by providing additional training and development opportunities and promoting an environment of performance through our incentive and recognition programs. We have also increased our focus on providing our management team with the resources needed to help lead this company into the future. We're pleased that these and other efforts have been recognized by our own employees in our work environment surveys and have earned the company such external accolades as "Best Employer for Healthy Lifestyles" and one of the "Best Places to Work in Insurance." When our people are as engaged in the business as they are, it gives me great confidence that we will continue to serve our customers well and, in doing so, build value for our shareholders.