FINANCIAL EDUCATION IN THE WORKPLACE    MetLife's growing program helps employees sort out financial choices Today's benefit plans are increasingly all about choice-giving employees the opportunity to tailor their plan to their individual needs. It starts with employees choosing contribution amounts and investments for their 401(k) plan. Your money; your choice. Voluntary benefit selections, ditto. The choices get more complex for those with consumer driven health plans and wellness programs. For two-income families, those choices may double. All this control is empowering for employees, but it's also overwhelming. Benefit plan choices inevitably bump up against life's other major financial choices-how to save for college costs, whether to refinance a mortgage, or how to help care for aging parents, for starters. General uncertainty in the economy doesn't make it any easier. Many people facing financial decisions are driven into a state of "finertia"-a term coined by best-selling financial author Greg Salsbury, Ph.D., to describe "paralysis brought on by trying to comprehend contradictory and confusing financial information." Salsbury, who has studied consumer financial behavior extensively, says that what today's employee benefit plans lack most is advice. The idea of providing "advice" to plan participants might make plan administrators uncomfortable. It moves a plan away from the self-choice philosophy that guides so many plans today. But since employees are faced with financial choice overload, maybe employers and their benefit plan providers could at least provide them with some useful financial education. Click here for the complete article …

EMBRACING THE FUTURE    Recognizing opportunities for introducing new benefits strategies and services What is an organization's total cost of risk? Crunch the numbers and they reveal much more than the price of property/casualty insurance premiums, says Steven S. Williams, president of the employee benefits and financial services divisions of Heffernan Insurance Brokers, headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. Employee benefits is a steadily increasing cost for most employers, he explains, and employers don't really understand their financial exposures until they can analyze medical claims, workers compensation benefits, the value of lost time and reduced productivity-all in relation to other business expenses. "For many years, property/casualty and health insurance coverage was always purchased separately-property/casualty insurance by the chief executive officer or chief financial officer and employee benefits by the human resources director. No one was looking at the entire picture and the range of costs," says Williams, who started with the agency as a property/casualty producer. About six years ago, this revelation led Williams to switch specialties to lead the agency's development of an employee benefits practice that has become the firm's fastest growing business niche and its greatest opportunity to cross-sell across specialties and geography. "As a broker, how can we get synergy?" he asks. "How can I educate our clients about the comprehensive nature of their risks and get both sides together in one room to work with us and understand all of the costs and all of the opportunities for efficiencies in managing their total cost of risk? "That's our challenge and our mission." Williams says his training in property/casualty insurance and his growing interest in employee benefits has helped him see the connections between property/casualty risks, business risks and health costs-and made him a credible leader in developing a sales staff that can present the agency's comprehensive strategies and cross-sell its range of commercial clients. Click here for the complete article …

DISABILITY INCOME: FILLING THE GAPS IN TRADITIONAL COVERAGE    Petersen International Underwriters delivers solutions for challenging risks Some people choose their careers, and for others it seems that a career has chosen them. That was the case with W. Harold Petersen, RHU, founder, chairman, and president of Petersen Inter-national Underwriters, Inc., a coverholder at Lloyd's that provides disability income, personal accident, medical, life, and contingency insurance to a wide range of individuals whose needs go beyond the coverage available from traditional carriers. In the 1930s, while Petersen was growing up on his family's dairy farm near Council Bluffs, Iowa, his father became disabled and for several years was unable to work. The family lost the farm, and the elder Petersen was forced to take a job as a janitor. The devastating consequences of his father's experience gave rise to Petersen's determination to share his story widely, and he has made it his life's work to help as many people as possible protect their incomes from the ravages of disability. "I had intended to become a journalist," Petersen says, "but the people at the newspapers where I interviewed were not too kind. They said I could work for them but not get paid for the first six months, and then if they liked me, they might offer me a job. I was not in a position to accept that kind of offer. My wife, who was employed at Mutual of Omaha, encouraged me to interview there," Petersen continues. "I had no knowledge of insurance, nor any sense that I actually wanted to be in the insurance business. But I joined the company, and it was there that I learned about disability insurance and began to think about how it would have helped my family. Click here for the complete article …

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