For more than seven years now, Benefits Selling’s led the way in covering the employee benefits market for brokers. We’ve worked tirelessly to provide the most news and sales-centric coverage of the business.

We still do, but times have changed.

Storms of economic uncertainty rage on. The economic recovery has stalled. Employers – those still hiring – look for every chance they can to cut costs, while carriers do the same. So broker commissions get squeezed on both sides. So we need to show you—the reader—there are other strategies, revenue streams and client opportunities.

The political climate has become even more crowded with regulators, rules and challenges. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act threatens to reshape the health care market, while some say it threatens it outright. So we need to help brokers navigate this new landscape.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also stands to play a prominent role, with its planned established of a federal insurance office—as part of Treasury—which will pile on another layer of oversight and politics to both the individual and group markets. Dodd-Frank also threatens to add another lay of red tape to the already compliance-laden retirement adviser space.

And honestly, we simply felts we had no choice but to stay on top of this space by taking our product to the next level. We’ve taken a huge step in that direction with the launch of BenefitsPro, a site that triples our market segments while expanding our editorial reach exponentially.

So what’s new?

Well, a lot of what you might notice is the aesthetic stuff—cleaner typefaces, fancy new pics.

But look a little closer (just not at the photos) and you’ll see we’ve tinkered under the hood, as well. Not only have we tweaked how much info we present on each page, but I think we’ve actually managed to ramp up the quality of the news, data and feature stories we bring to you each month in the magazine – not to mention the daily flow of information analysis we deliver through BenefitsPro.

In short, we need to adapt—to evolve—in a brave new world. And we need to bring our readers with us as we help them do the same. We need to go beyond benefits selling—into benefits surviving.

Instant Insights /

Time to scratch that seven-year itch

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