Why employers should offer options for individual life insurance

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Since the 1940s, employer-provided life insurance has been a staple of company benefits packages. These are typically group policies packaged by licensed benefits brokers who specialize in creating benefits packages for employees, and the policies usually provide guaranteed coverage and payouts for the insured’s beneficiary.

While group insurance policies are easy to put together and available to all employees at an organization, they have some major downsides. For a start, most group policies tend to be one-size-fits-all with limited customization, which may not suit employees with specialized needs.

Another issue is the meager payouts, often between $10,000 and $50,000, amounts that typically wouldn’t even cover one year’s salary for the family of a departed insuree. Perhaps the worst issue with group policies, from an employee’s perspective, is that coverage doesn’t transfer when an employee switches employers.