The voluntary business is an important economic bellwether. It sounds plausible given that these are discretionary financial product purchases by large numbers of consumers.

As consumer sentiment changes, there is a direct impact on our economy. There also is, so we're told, a direct impact on participation rates, overall voluntary sales, etc. Given the fact most Americans have access to voluntary products, it may be true. But do voluntary brokers and company executives have the ability to use that information to predict the future? We wanted to test that concept.

Since 2005, Eastbridge has been asking voluntary brokers and voluntary company executives to share their attitudes and predictions. Twice each year, we survey a sample of these professionals about their recent sales and on their predictions (for the coming 12 months) in three categories: future sales growth, consumer attitudes toward voluntary and on overall profitability of their voluntary business. The resulting data are then combined into a measure that we label the Voluntary Confidence Index.