The voluntary market is constantlychanging, but the degree of change the last five years has occurredfaster than ever before. It's not your father's market when itcomes to benefits. Employers are offering a wider variety ofbenefits and benefit types that were not typically offered in thepast. This article explores this trend and gives insights into thetypes of new, non-traditional benefits that you may want to have inyour bag of benefits.

Over the last five to eight years, employer attitudes towardsvoluntary benefits havechanged. Gone are the days when employers had limited payrolldeduction slots and only offered those benefits in which mostemployees were interested. Today's employers are open to offeringbenefits that some employees need and want, even if it's not themajority. With this comes several ancillary changes taking place.First, more voluntary products are beingoffered. Today, about one-third of employers offer six or morevoluntary products. Half offer between three and five.

Secondly, we are seeing sales of different types of products.Disability and life are still top sellers, but other products likeaccident, hospital indemnity, and critical illnesses are growingfaster than the leading products. In addition, more non-traditionalproducts are being offered. In a recent survey of brokers, 40percent or more indicated offering:

• Wellness programs

• Discount health programs

• Legal plans

• ID theft insurance

More brokers are also offering pet insurance, vacation plans,and computer/appliance/furniture purchase programs to theirclients.

Employers are also interested in these types of products. Whenasked about programs they do not currently offer, non-traditionalproducts hit the top of the potential index. The potential index isa measure created to compare the sales opportunity for variousproducts. The index factors together the percentage not offering aparticular benefit on any basis with the percentage interested inoffering the benefit on an employee-pay-all basis. Thus, productsthat are not offered by a high percentage of employers tend to rankrelatively higher than a product (like dental) that most employersoffer.

Non-traditional products are readily available in the markettoday and are a great way to catch the attention of employerclients. Brokers that choose not to offer a full range of voluntarybenefits—both traditional and non-traditional—are missingtremendous sales opportunities. What better way to differentiateyour company in an industry where competition for customerscontinues to increase. If you don't offer these attention-gettingproducts, the competition may be getting ready to get the attentionof your clients.

Number of voluntary products offered