The benefits business is beginning to heat up for the fall season, and there is a mad rush to sell business for the biggest date of the benefits year: Jan. 1. Based on discussions with dozens of brokers over the past couple of months, there is growing interest in voluntary benefits.
To help prepare, one of the best methods of building good results is being prepared to use stories of successful voluntary benefit programs as a means of educating the employer on the value of careful product selection, enrollment planning and employer cooperation. To illustrate, here is the story of a recent case we insured.
Our employer is an auto dealer in the New York City area with nine locations and 725 employees. After discussion with the employer, the broker recommended a suite of voluntary products. A voluntary term life program was installed to supplement the employer's basic group life plan. The employees were all covered under the state-sponsored short term disability plan (New York and New Jersey have these plans, with differing plan designs).
The broker and employer agreed that these state disability programs were inadequate for many of the employees and a voluntary STD plan was designed to complement the state plans. Finally, a voluntary long term disability income protection product was added.
A program with three products, including the state variation in STD design, to be enrolled in nine locations takes a great deal of planning. Our sales representative, the broker, the employer, and our enrollment planning team coordinator held several conference calls. Decisions were made that the employer would furnish census data to pre-populate enrollment information. There were to be mandatory group meetings to be conducted by a member of our enrollment team.
HR wrote and distributed an announcement of the program to all employees. Our enrollment team made pre-enrollment calls to HR reps at each location, discussing logistics, best times for meetings, etc. They also coordinated the schedule by using a web mapping service to determine best routes and expected travel times.
The full schedule was communicated to all locations. It was agreed that as the meetings progressed, our enroller would report on progress (so if any issues arose, they could be addressed at other locations). Finally, a series of follow-up Web conferences was set up to accommodate employees who were not able to attend the meetings. Notice the theme of the underlined items: constant communications among the stakeholders.
The results were very good. Participation by employees was more than 70 percent on the VTL and STD products, and more than 55 percent on the LTD product. More than $200,000 of annualized premium was enrolled in a week by one of our enrollers. The employer was pleased with the participation. The broker was pleased with the new premium results.
Our story serves as an example of how case experience can be used to reinforce the messages we want employers to understand on the practical level. Case stories can show that the best practices we recommend are not just good ideas. They represent the path to real-world success. Think about cases you've written that illustrate success, and create your own stories in preparation for the fall season. Finally, obtain endorsement letters from the customers whose stories you tell. This will magnify the effect by providing third-party confirmation to prospects.
