Fall 2006 / No. 69
The 2020 TPA
Five years
ago, we wrote a series of reports on the future of the benefits
industry under the title 2020, A Clearer Vision of the
Future. Those predictions received a lot of attention,
a lot of applause, and a few boos. We predicted the coming
dominance of the employee benefit broker in the voluntary arena
and other changes that are coming to pass. But consider our
predictions about TPAs.
We predicted
that by 2020, intermediaries (combining aspects of the 2001
TPA), the broker/dealer, and the HRIS firm would dominate the
market, replacing many of the services offered by insurers
and pushing them towards retreating into only their product
development and risk management specialties. We foresaw these
new intermediaries offering:
- Full
voluntary administration and billing
- Employer
and employee level service
- Broker
services including training, proposal preparation, licensing & contracting
- Commission
statements and disbursements, etc.
- Web
and call center enrollments
- Distribution
aggregation and solicitation
- Marketing
and sales support
Five years
later, there are TPAs that offer all of these services. Maybe
our biggest mistake was in predicting it would take until 2020!
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