A few days ago, as I was talking with one of the employeebenefit brokers we work with, she commented that the benefitsbusiness has changed radically in the past few years. Think aboutit, she observed: When I started in the business we didn’t havePPACA to deal with, we didn’t communicate via texting, cell phoneswere a luxury and there was a very limited choice of voluntaryproducts. She concluded, “My business is completely differenttoday.”

That got me thinking about my focus on the voluntary business over almost 30 years. Do I think thebusiness has changed completely over that time? Has the value ofpast experience been overshadowed by the issues and technologies ofthe present?

The more I considered this question, the more it seemed to methat the fundamentals of the voluntary business have changedsurprisingly little over the past 30 years. What are thesefundamentals? Consider employers. The idea that employers want toprovide expanded benefits at little or no added cost has beenaround since the 1980s. Those who began selling voluntary benefitsin this era of HR-IS services will be interested to know that bythe mid-1980s, Section 125 services were routinely packaged withproducts, as were benefit statements revealing the hidden paycheckrepresented by benefits.