Employee benefit brokers continue to embrace voluntary productsas a central part of their sales activities. But not all brokersare developing these new capabilities at the same rate andinteresting differences are emerging. In addition to segmentingbrokers by size, we’ve been asking them whether they tend to mixand match products from different carriers in accounts.Specifically, we ask them whether they prefer to use one carrier inorder to offer bundled discounts, prefer to use one carrier foradministrative ease, or whether they prefer to mix carriers inorder to bring best-of-breed products in each category.

In other words, does their value proposition lead with pricing,administrative ease or overall product quality? Arguably, theseapproaches could correspond to their perceptions of their keycustomer: employer, plan administrator or employee. We consider theemployee to be the first priority and the more sophisticatedvoluntary approach. One segment, the mid-size sophisticated broker,is pulling away from the pack.