Consider for a moment Thomas Edison. While famous for filing nearly 1,100 patents in his lifetime, he was a tinkerer.

Edison said of innovation, "I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

He took an idea and worked it over and over again to make it better, then better. Then even better.  

That got us thinking – how could we apply this thinking to voluntary products? How might this positively impact brokers?

All about that base

In all likelihood, you grew your book of business by building on your core competencies. That's why selling voluntary benefits enhances most benefit broker's business models. Voluntary is different – yes – but it's a less radical direction than you might think.

First, as a natural extension of your portfolio, voluntary complements the business processes you already know and have in place with your group clients, while leveraging annual events like enrollment. Plus, it easily allows you to consolidate other post-enrollment activities, such as implementation and billing.

Second, service counts. Pre- or post-sales, service is the one thing that can make or break a client relationship. So when it comes to voluntary, you'll want a dedicated team for sales, implementation, billing, and claims management.

Third, by adding voluntary to your portfolio you're building on your core, not away from it.  That saves you money and time and overall – it's efficient. Plus, you and your staff don't have to learn a new process which takes time and focus away from your business.

Innovation in action

These concepts aren't just pie in the sky.

A broker recently shared a case where his client was frustrated with the administration and billing with their voluntary benefits:

• Different systems for enrollment, administration and billing
• Two cycles which made reconciling difficult (worksite products were billed separately and in arrears; traditional group products were billed ahead)
• The new hire process was problematic because the products didn't reside on one form or online system
• The client also had multi-state, bilingual, multi-class needs

He took a consultative approaching to helping them by finding a carrier who could streamline the process – making it easier for them plus offering more comprehensive voluntary benefit options to their employees.

All in all, it was a positive outcome for everyone involved. The client now gets one bill each month, billed ahead, with every line of coverage shown for each employee. Employees enroll in one location – on a website – for all products. And because the choices were streamlined, which simplified and clearly explained the benefit options, employees have a more understandable new hire packet.

These aren't revolutionary innovations, just tweaking the process to make day to day administration of voluntary products easier for everyone. And the easier we make it for our clients, the happier they are. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about.

Mike Semberg is an Employee Benefits Sales Rep in Mutual of Omaha's Cincinnati Group Office. He can be reached at [email protected].