Group long-term care insurance presents the most expansive marketing opportunity for employee benefit brokers in 2008. The recent white paper "Disappointing Long Term Care Insurance Market Penetration" highlights the reasons why so many of us missed the LTCI mark.
The list of factors influencing the lack of successful market penetration needs one additional factor to complete the puzzle. For the last decade, the cost of health insurance and medical care has dominated the attention of all of us – benefit advisors, HR managers and CFO's alike – at renewal time.
A $400 per month HMO premium for one employee tips the scales when measured against the $100 per month combined cost for dental, life and disability insurance. It's readily understandable that the four in a 4 to 1 ratio gets most of our attention. Regrettably, it all too often gets all the attention.
Recommended For You
There's a new anniversary "party" we get invited to when our clients' benefit programs renew. With the cost of a company's medical program now representing one of the top three most expensive corporate line items, the CFO thinks "our benefits have become too expensive." He's probably not thinking our medical insurance is costing too much, but "the benefits (all inclusive) cost too much." The end result is a natural resistance to opening discussions of adding benefits at the anniversary party.
How do we diminish all or some of a 10 percent medical rate increase again this year? The net effect result is that increasing co-pays, diminished prescription benefits and higher employee cost-sharing have become the topic of conversation at each year's renewal. This type of global perspective makes the problem more understandable. The bottom line is that too often, the anniversary party results in an employee benefit sameness.
Benefit surveys show us that "sameness" has become the norm. Each year rolls into the next as we successfully get through another renewal. What's our measure of success? To "dodge a bullet" for one more year? If this exercise accomplishes nothing more than to get you to ask yourself "what would I offer my client this year to expand their benefit program?", then my mission is accomplished.
Create a representative list of your corporate clients with varying size employee populations. Pick companies with 25, 50, 100 and 250 employees that have been your client for at least five years. What did their benefit programs look like five years ago versus at last year's renewal? If new benefits have been added, congratulations! You're in the minority.
If the insurers you do business with are not developing innovative products or approaches, that doesn't mean we can afford to forget our own creativity. I recently read an article where HR managers had been queried as to why they were replacing their brokers. The most common responses were that additional services were being offered or they were now simply getting more attention elsewhere.
Their current soon-to-be replaced broker had taken them for granted. No one likes being ignored or taken for granted! It is a fact of life that we usually work extra hard to gain a new client. Active involvement and communication is a natural part of the client solicitation process. Creating and developing new relationships is one of the most enjoyable parts of the employee benefit business.
Allan Checkoway recently published
ElderCare Survival … Long-Term Care in the 21st Century; Long Term Care Insurance Marketing Presentations for Insurance & Financial Advisors.
For more information, visit www.eldercaresurvival.com. Read more from Allan about how to penetrate the LTCI market in next week's Benefits Selling Weekly.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
