Financial wellness: It’s voluntary

Employers are taking a careful look at how to best select and incorporate the right products for their workers and  rethinking their approach to educating employees about products. (Image Shutterstock)

Financial wellness is a hot topic among employers these days, particularly as they look to create benefits packages so dazzling they blind employees to competitors’ offerings. To do so, however, employers aren’t reinventing the wheel but simply looking at their existing products in a new light. Voluntary benefits such as supplemental medical insurance, critical illness and hospital indemnity are now more mainstream and key to a benefits strategy that focuses on financial wellness.

“The interplay between voluntary and financial wellness has really become significant as we start to identify those areas where people could use more protection,“ says Adam Gelman, vice president of business and head of voluntary benefits for Prudential, speaking on a recent press call.