Resource Center

Understanding all the different rules and regulations surrounding benefits is never an easy task. One key area everyone needs to comprehend is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) as there’s a huge connection between effective leave management and an organization’s bottom line. Essential to controlling the cost of absence, increasing productivity and ultimately building a stronger workforce – brokers, HR managers and employees alike must understand the terms of this legislation.

Download this handbook now to use as a tool with employer clients to guide them through the ins-and-outs of FMLA and what is needed for compliance. The handbook covers:

• Eligibility and qualifications
• What is a right and what is an obligation
• How to maintain benefits during leave
• Common pitfalls to avoid
• And much more…

Don’t let easy-to-make mistakes regarding FMLA become a problem for your employer clients or employees. Use this handbook to guide them toward the best policies and procedures.

Healthcare coverage comes with many challenges. This can range from the limitations of HSAs and other health accounts, to unwelcome changes like an alteration of a plan by the carrier or budget cuts. These frustrating situations can make it difficult for your clients to retain employees and often sends them searching for better ways to control out-of-pocket costs. Your job is to provide a safety net that can rescue your clients from these troubled waters.

Download this eBook now to get a better understanding of how expense reimbursed health insurance can ensure your clients and their employees are adequately covered. You will learn more about:

• Supplemental insurance protection options
• Flexibility to offer certain benefits only to specific employees
• Ways to minimize disruption and impact of benefits changes

Don’t let your clients and their employees continue to stay exposed in an ever-changing market. Offer them a safety net that will give them the peace of mind they deserve!

The number of self-funded insurance plans continues to grow across the country as employers look for ways to reduce costs. Combining self-funding with medical stop-loss captives can help companies gain more control over their benefits and reduce spend. Being able to explain these options can also help set you apart from your competition by letting clients know you’re looking out for them.

Download this white paper now to learn more about this solution and how to present it to your clients. You will also discover:

• What makes an ideal stop-loss client
• How this option can be successful from three case studies
• Why stop-loss captives should matter to you and your book of business/company

Find out how you can better serve clients and deepen relationships, all while growing revenue for your organization!

It seems like simple math: financial incentives that help your employees stop smoking save everyone money in the long run. However, from healthcare-related illnesses to lost productivity, the staggering costs of smoking are significantly higher than the typical financial incentive to quit and trading one sum for the other isn’t always as straightforward as it looks on paper. You must consider many factors when implementing quit-smoking incentives to ensure your approach sets up your employees - and your company - for success.

Download this white paper to learn how to craft a better strategy by understanding where stop-smoking programs usually go wrong. Pitfalls to avoid include:

• Fostering resentment
• Making program completion requirements a simple checklist
• A failure to understand employee preferences
• Offering an incentive without a cessation program to back it up

A program to help your employees to quit smoking can be beneficial to their health and your bottom line, but only if you understand the best way to make it work through a better, personalized experience. Discover an easy way to start a win-win program now!

More than ever, your clients lean on you to help stabilize skyrocketing health costs. While self-funding is an efficient way to provide benefits, it can be a volatile option for mid-sized employers. Stop-loss captives, one of the fastest growing segments of the benefits market, can give clients an effective way to control costs without too much unpredictability.

Download this white paper now to get a better understanding of the opportunities created by medical stop-loss captive solutions, including:

• How medical stop-loss captives work & the basic mechanics of these types of groups,
• The advantages for mid-sized clients,
• How to better control costs & spread risk with a three-tier financing structure,
• And much more…

Don’t wait until clients start to crumble under the weight of health costs, offer them a creative solution now that shows your value and eases their burden. 

Voluntary insurance is full of jargon, acronyms, and scare tactics, but there are better ways to talk about these products. Taking a positive, proactive, straight-forward and educational approach can make a huge difference in the attitude of potential and current clients.

Download this infographic for more on 10 phrases you should remove from your group insurance vocabulary and advice on what you can say instead.

Tips include:

• Removing acronyms & industry terms
• Choosing the right words
• Focusing on the positive instead of the negative
• And more…

Hospitalization is more probable than your clients’ employees may think: About seven people out of 100 – equating to millions – are hospitalized each year. Understanding the true impact a hospital stay can have on finances, mental health and productivity can only help you position the value of voluntary benefits, like hospital indemnity (HI) insurance. This option can provide peace of mind in a stressful time and help clients attract and retain employees.

Download this white paper now to learn how to talk to your clients about HI insurance. You’ll understand key benefits you should emphasize and how this coverage aids employees in situations with:

• Lost wages
• Caregiving expenses
• Travel

Discover how to help clients by ensuring their employees maintain their lifestyle throughout an unexpected hospitalization. It can be an incalculable benefit that protects employees when they need it most and helps your clients’ organization compete for and keep the best employees. 

The employee benefits cost-cutting strategies companies have used for the past decade are now leaving many employees unsatisfied. With today’s tight-talent market, your clients’ employees have the upper hand, because top talent knows they can find other opportunities with better benefits. You need a way to find the benefits sweet spot so your clients attract and retain key employees, while protecting their bottom line.

Download this infographic now to learn how to hit the target when it comes to managing costs without reducing health coverage. You will get insights on:

• What it looks like when companies miss the mark
• What the sweet spot could look like for your clients
• Better ways to achieve your clients’ benefits goals

Help clients understand ways to improve health benefits for their best employees without breaking the bank. If you help prevent their best people from slipping away, they won’t slip away from you!

The supplemental health insurance market has a lot more to offer than your clients may realize. It’s easy to become confused by the misconceptions surrounding supplemental health insurance options. With this infographic, you can help show them the truth of how these solutions can be important for both their employees and their bottom line.

Download this infographic now to help debunk myths clients may be believing, including:

1. Supplemental health insurance isn’t necessary
2. All supplemental insurance plans are voluntary
3. Medical reimbursement plans are too expensive
4. Executive medical reimbursement plans are dead

Don’t let your clients’ fear of what they don’t understand keep them from offering employees the best coverage possible! Use this tool to correct misconceptions and set them on a better path.

As you prepare for enrollment season, it’s a vital to ensure you can be a difference-maker for your clients regarding which voluntary benefits may help their organization and employees. In today’s industry landscape, you cannot regard them simply as an afterthought – they are no longer “supplemental,” but essential. Using the right conversation-starters to help clients think about voluntary benefit options helps both your relationships and your sales goal.

Read this article now for tips that will set you up for success – giving you better ways to bring up voluntary benefits to clients. You’ll learn more about these three steps:

• Conducting reviews with clients
• How to respond to emerging trends
• Ways to keep your eye on the big picture

Voluntary benefits can unlock huge amount of potential for both you and your clients. Discover better ways to start the conversation with clients now.  

To effectively reach your employees and health plan members, you must invest in a range of strategies to engage them in healthy behaviors. Offering just nutrition and fitness programs isn’t enough – you must focus on all aspects of wellbeing to drive overall work performance and increase participant engagement.

Using online communities for health can be a powerful strategy for improving total wellbeing, including social health. A recent study found 60 percent of employers are expanding their wellbeing platforms to include social connectedness opportunities. For those employees who choose to connect and engage with others in online social networks, the personalized info shared can be a powerful driver of healthy behavior and improved health.

Download this report to learn:

• Essential factors to make online communities thrive
• How online social networks can be powerful drivers for better health
• Why participants in online communities are twice as likely to quit as smokers who don’t participate

The supplemental health insurance landscape is vast and continues to grow each day with the development of new types of plans. In order to best help your clients and their employees, you must be able to explain the similarities and differences between the different options. By equipping yourself with the right vocabulary and knowledge, you can point clients toward the best supplemental health solutions for them.

Download this eBook now for an overview of how supplemental health insurance works and the terminology you need to understand. After reading you’ll be equipped to discuss:

• The different types of supplemental health insurance and what each can provide
• The key differences between types of plans
• Reasons for adding supplemental insurance to a benefits offering
• And more…

Gap plans, also called supplemental voluntary insurance, include hospital indemnity, cancer and critical illness. However, these types of plans only provide narrow, event-driven coverage. This leaves your clients’ employees open to high costs from everyday health expenses and other uncovered expenses. Another option, expense reimbursed insurance, can provide more valuable coverage.

Access this infographic now for more insights into a true gap-filling solution. With broader coverage and more flexibility, these plans can provide coverage for both everyday and unexpected expenses to select classes of employees that are hard to recruit and retain. You will see:

• A coverage comparison for both voluntary and expense reimbursed insurance
• Key benefits of expense reimbursed insured plans

Help clients find a better way to offer enhanced coverage to employees.

The rise of technology like smartphones have your employees looking to the devices in their hands for digital health solutions. Given this trend, it’s no surprise digital cessation programs have greater reach – and potential impact – than traditional cessation programs. Research shows digital tools can be as effective as telephone and in-person counseling to help smokers quit.

Download this report for an in-depth look at how digital features can transform your tobacco cessation efforts. You’ll learn:

• How employees are changing the way they use mobile phones
• Why the digital shift powers effective cessation programs
• Which 3 digital features can transform engagement in tobacco cessation

It is easy to be drawn to an insurance carrier with the promise of large commissions, but you need to know what’s beyond the money. Even if you’re not interested in a new carrier right now, use this checklist to ensure you are with the partner that best aligns with you and your goals.

Download this checklist for five questions you need to ask before making a decision on an insurance carrier. This checklist includes key topics, such as:

• Customer Service
• Location
• Compensation
• Intent
• Culture

There are thousands of companies vying for your dedication, choose the one that provides you with keys to your future growth and success.

Your wellness efforts need to work as hard as your employees. On the checklist: lower healthcare costs, more productivity, improved employee health (at every level), and less absenteeism.

An engaging, results-driven, meaningful tobacco cessation program checks every one of those boxes and targets some of your most at-risk employees.

Download this report, "Personalize Employee Benefits Where It Matters Most," from the EX Program, a personalized solution developed in collaboration with Mayo Clinic. You’ll learn:

• How specialized tobacco cessation programs differ from general wellness programs
• Why the “triangle of addiction” keeps your employees ducking out for smoke breaks
• Why nearly half of employees don’t participate in employee health programs
• How much you spend in extra healthcare costs — and lose in productivity — per year for smokers (spoiler: it’s much more than you think)

Tobacco use is down in the U.S., but remains a major problem. Give your employees the resources they want and need to quit – for good.

Your clients all know the struggle to find qualified, top-tier job candidates in the open market. Recruitment and retention comes down to more than just salary. It must involve a stellar benefits package. Ensuring your clients have the benefits they need to entice the best executive-level employees to come and stay is critical to your role as a broker.

Download this white paper to find out how executive medical reimbursement plans can help meet your clients’ goals, even in a post-ACA world. 

The white paper will cover:

• The ACA and Excepted Benefits
• Key requirements
• Similar supplemental coverage
• Safe harbor criteria
• And more…

Discover how your clients can use these robust benefits to attract and retain strategic leaders.

The two biggest issues your clients often face are controlling the costs of benefits and attracting and retaining top talent. Addressing one may come at the expense of the other. For your clients, this issue may even be a larger worry than generating revenue. It is up to you to find alternative solutions to help clients solve these problems.

Download this infographic to get key facts about:

• The ripple effects of cost-cutting strategies
• Long-term consequences for recruitment and retention
• New ideas for how to help clients

Your clients can combat the burden of increasing health benefit costs because you can offer them alternative solutions!

Social media is increasingly becoming an important tool that can be used to grow your book of business. But effectively using social media as a broker can be tricky – you have to decide what parts of your life you feel comfortable sharing with clients and what may or may not be acceptable. However, when used correctly, social media can be a powerful way to build relationships and make clients and prospects see you as a part of their team.

Download this playbook now to dive in 10 best practices on how to best use social media to sell more insurance. These include using social media to:

• Promote what you do and your expertise
• Build trust
• Stay connected
• Deal with negative feedback
• And more…

Don’t get passed by as your competitors make use of social media and learn how to avoid traps that can make you go viral in the worst way.

Every broker knows that gaining the trust of new prospects is critical to their success, especially in the rapidly evolving employee benefits landscape. That means, in addition to everything else you must master, you must also be a pro at networking. However, networking is no longer about standing around with a name tag - you need to understand modern best practices in an entirely new ballgame.

Download this white paper for tips on how to improve your networking, including four specific questions you should ask yourself as you develop your skills. Asking these questions will help you:

• Identify and use the best tactics for today’s landscape
• Understand who your ideal client is
• Develop better follow-up strategies
• And much more…

Don’t rely on the old way of doing things - discover how better networking can help drive your business into the future!

The day of a typical broker is not usually easy. With many responsibilities to juggle, including combating rising healthcare costs and navigating the complexities of compliance regulations, it can feel overstuffed. That doesn’t even include the time spent researching market trends, staying up-to-date with clients’ changing needs, and working to bring in new accounts. But there is a way to address this struggle.

Watch this video now to understand how a supplemental healthcare insurance plan can be used to:

• Differentiate yourself from competitors
• Solve clients’ coverage issues
• Open decision-makers’ doors

As primary health plan costs continue to skyrocket, your clients continue to look for ways to save money. This often means shifting the financial burden to their employees, increasing their out-of-pocket costs. However, this means recruitment and retention takes a hit, inflating costs in talent management. As a trusted consultant, you need to offer solutions that will help balance the rising costs in both areas.

Download this infographic to learn how you can deliver a perfect balance for your clients. You will discover how common gap solutions fall short and how you can offer supplemental insurance for your clients’ top tier talent that:

• Includes reimbursement for eligible healthcare expenses
• Boosts recruitment and retention, and
• Provides additional support services

Act now to help your clients offer an affordable and better benefits package to find and keep the employees they need.

Even though medical advancements continue improve the prognosis and treatment for critical illnesses such as a stroke, cancer, or a heart attack, the bills often follow around individuals as they recover. Offering an additional solution to traditional health insurance may help your clients’ employees address these ballooning costs.

Download this fact sheet which will help you explain the advantages of critical illness insurance, including a lump-sum benefit upon diagnosis. Use the tool to explain how this type of policy can provide freedom:

• To choose providers and treatment options
• From constant worry about bills
• To take the necessary time for recovery

When critical illness strikes, individuals want to focus on recovery, not stressing about financial hardship. Help your clients and their employees understand how you can make that a reality!

As employee out-of-pocket health costs continue to surge upward, your clients need a way to take some of the burden off their employees and offer real help.

Download this infographic that will help you explain to clients the necessity of offering their employees voluntary benefits and how you can help get them the right coverage to bridge the gap.  Reasons to offer voluntary options as part of packages include:

• 60% of employees weigh these options when selecting an employer
• Boosting workplace morale
• Low to No costs for the employer
• And more…

Use this info to simplify the process for your clients so they can quickly and easily understand why voluntary benefits are essential, not just another option.