Building A Judicious Strategy For Financial Services, Employee Benefits
When property/casualty agency owners consider ways to broaden their income stream, they might lean toward selling financial services-life, disability and annuities-or they might decide to offer employee benefits. In either case, they are betting their most important asset, their P-C customer relationships, on a potential payoff in a field outside of their traditional expertise. It's a bet they don't want to lose.
So it makes sense to seek guidance from experienced providers of these ancillary products who are used to working with property/casualty brokers. We talked with executives of two such providers-first, a financial services marketing intermediary and, second, a leading voluntary employee benefits company-about how P-C agencies can effectively diversify into these areas.
United Benefit Advisors supports its partners' consultative role
Benefits brokers/consultants are offering employers and their workforces an increasing number of health insurance choices. That's one of the findings of the United Benefit Advisors (UBA) 2015 Health Plan Survey. It reports that 28.7% of employers offer two separate plans to their workforce, and 17.6% offer three or more. The three-or-more-plan firms have grown by 28% over the past five years.
"More and more, employers are offering expanded choices to employees, either through private exchange solutions or by simply adding high-, medium- and low-cost options," a trend UBA partners believe will continue, the survey report notes. The survey data is derived from 10,804 employers sponsoring 18,186 health plans nationwide, clients of UBA partner firms.
