Perhaps you saw the Time magazine cover, featuring acherubic baby and the caption, “This baby could live to be 142years old—Dispatches from the frontier of longevity.” The articlesdescribe several of the advances being made in extending the humanlife span well beyond the three score and 10 cited in Psalm 90.

The article got me thinking about the potential impacts ofextended life spans on benefits. In today's world, we've begun toidentify life cycle needs of employees and their families. We inthe voluntary business have been doing this in enrollment meetingsfor many years.

Technology hasn't changed the messages, just refined them.Voluntary enrollment systems and exchange systems are being builtwith life cycle logic in them. In the end, people with youngfamilies tend to need lots of term life insurance; peopleapproaching retirement are in need of asset preservation productslike long-term care and critical illness, and so on. What will ourmessaging be, though, in the world of a life expectancy at birthnearly double today's?