Nearly 50 percent of carrier respondents in a 2016 Eastbridge survey indicated that hospital indemnity (HI) will be a growth product for their companies in the next one to two years, more than double the number from the same survey in 2014.

Employers participating in a separate study ranked hospital indemnity second in terms of new sales product potential. This jump in expectations at both the carrier and employer levels suggest that many carriers may be preparing to bring more HI plans to market or at least focus on them more, and employers will be open to adding these products to their employee benefits offering.

Despite this trend, however, most brokers have yet to consider hospital indemnity as a "go-to" product. A recent broker survey conducted jointly by Eastbridge and BenefitsPRO found both voluntary and employee benefit brokers did not rank HI plans among their top five most commonly sold voluntary products, but did list four of the top five products the same. With both voluntary and benefit brokers selling such similar portfolios, exploring HI products with clients may give you some welcomed differentiation.