A “PROV L&A DIS OP” charge on your bank statement or credit card bill is a disability insurance premium collected by Provident Life and Accident Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Unum Group. “PROV L&A” is Provident Life and Accident, “DIS” is disability, and “OP” typically signals an ongoing or optional premium payment. If you’re seeing it and don’t remember signing up, the policy almost always traces back to an individual disability policy, a voluntary benefit elected at work, or an employer auto-enrollment you didn’t opt out of.
Provident Life and Accident still operates as an active Unum subsidiary and underwrites Unum’s Individual Disability Insurance products.1Unum. Employer Disability Insurance So the charge is real insurance premium, not a scam descriptor. Whether you want to keep paying it is a different question.
Why This Charge Is Showing Up
There are three common ways a “PROV L&A DIS OP” premium ends up hitting your account.
The first is a straightforward individual disability policy. You bought coverage, either directly or through an employer’s voluntary benefits menu, and enrolled in automatic payments. Unum confirms that policyholders who receive premium statements can pay online and that eligible customers can set up automatic payments.2Unum. Employee Support Because individual disability policies are portable and individually owned, the premium is often drafted straight from your bank account or card rather than routed through payroll.
The second is workplace-linked coverage that follows you. Many employers offer group or supplemental disability plans during open enrollment. Some are paid by paycheck deduction; others, especially individually owned supplemental policies, get billed directly to your bank or card. If you left that employer but kept the policy (or never actively canceled it), the automatic payments keep running.3Unum. Disability Insurance for Employees
The third is auto-enrollment. In December 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor issued guidance clarifying that employers may automatically enroll employees in disability insurance on an opt-out basis, much like many retirement plans.4Unum Group. Government Supports Auto-Enroll for Disability Insurance If you missed the opt-out window, you may be paying for coverage you never consciously chose.
How to Cancel the Policy and Stop the Charges
If you want to keep the coverage, no action is needed. To stop it, do these three things in order.
Call Unum. The disability support line is 866-779-1054, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET. General customer support is at 866-679-3054, and the online portal is services.unum.com.5Unum. Contact Us If the policy was arranged through your employer, your HR or benefits administrator may need to process a cancellation on their side too.
Follow up in writing. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends sending a letter or email revoking your authorization for automatic withdrawals, on top of the phone call. Keep a copy and note the date.6CFPB. How Do I Stop Automatic Payments From My Bank Account
Tell your bank. Notify your bank or credit union that you’ve revoked authorization for Unum or Provident to debit your account, and request a stop-payment order. Under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, you can place a stop-payment order at least three business days before the next scheduled transfer.7Iowa Legal Aid. Automatic Payments From Your Bank Account: Know Your Rights Many banks charge a fee for this service, and some electronic stop-payment orders expire after six months.
One tradeoff to weigh before you cancel. Ending the policy means the coverage is gone permanently. You can’t file future claims against it, and premiums already paid are forfeited. If you ever want disability insurance again, you’d have to apply for a new policy, which usually means a new medical exam and higher premiums based on your current age and health. If you pay annually and cancel partway through a paid period, ask about a prorated refund when you call.
How to Dispute a Charge You Never Authorized
If you truly never signed up for any Unum or Provident policy and can’t find any record of enrollment, treat this as an unauthorized charge and use the legal protections that fit the payment method.
For a credit card charge, the Fair Credit Billing Act caps your liability for unauthorized charges at $50. Write to your card issuer at the billing inquiry address (not the payment address) within 60 days of the first statement showing the charge. The issuer must acknowledge your dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90 days, and you can withhold payment on the disputed amount during the investigation without being reported delinquent.8FTC. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
For a bank account debit, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act applies. You can dispute the charge with your bank and may be entitled to a refund. You also have the right to ask the company for a copy of your authorization. If they can’t produce one, the transfer was unauthorized, and federal law allows you to sue for damages and attorney fees if the company processed transfers without valid authorization or refuses to provide proof of it.7Iowa Legal Aid. Automatic Payments From Your Bank Account: Know Your Rights
Context on Unum’s Regulatory Record
If you’re deciding whether to keep the policy rather than just stop the charge, Unum’s history with regulators is worth a look. It centers on claims handling, not billing.
In November 2004, insurance regulators from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and American Samoa settled with UnumProvident over its handling of long-term disability claims. An examination led by Maine, Massachusetts, and Tennessee identified areas of concern in how the company processed and denied claims. The company agreed to reassess roughly 215,000 individual and group long-term disability claims denied or closed between January 2000 and 2004, with an additional window reaching back to 1997. It paid a $15 million fine, estimated total pre-tax costs at $127 million, and accepted governance reforms including a board-level compliance committee and revised standards for independent medical evaluations.9Unum Group. UnumProvident Announces Settlement of Multistate Market Conduct Examination10State of Maine Bureau of Insurance. Unum Regulatory Settlement Agreement
In June 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a settlement with Unum Life Insurance Company of America over its administration of group life insurance claims under ERISA. Federal investigators found that Unum had accepted premiums from participants without verifying insurability, then denied death benefit claims later by citing a lack of “evidence of insurability.” Under the settlement, Unum was prohibited from denying ERISA-governed group life insurance claims on insurability grounds if the participant had paid premiums for 90 days or more, and agreed to reprocess affected claims going back to 2016 and 2018 depending on the category.11U.S. Department of Labor. US Department of Labor Reaches Agreement With Unum Life Insurance