In the voluntary market, conservation takes many forms. We thinkabout keeping our current accounts, protecting them by sellingmultiple lines of business in each, and even reclaiming accountsthat have gone dormant. But one of the least appreciated forms isconversion: the percentage of employee-customers who come off oflist bill who successfully keep their coverage by moving to anotherpayment mechanism.

Five percent (with 10 percent being unusually good) is a commonconversion rate among voluntary carriers. Yet one carrier hasreached a peak of 28 percent and routinely reached 25 percent.Carriers already conserve many of the worst risks on theirbooks—those are the 5 percent most likely to initiate porting,converting, or simply keeping their individual voluntary product ona direct bill or ACH, or credit card payment basis.

Raising the conversion rate improves the converted pool and someanalyses have shown the pool normalizing as soon as 15 percent.While strong conversion rates are good for the carrier, they'reimportant for you, too. Imagine a 500-life account with 50 percentparticipation across all employee groups and 20 percent annualturnover. One hundred employees leave each year, 50 of whom areowners of voluntary coverage.