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Also in this issue:

• Cover
• Voluntary strategy and the largets U.S. brokers
• The distributor of the future
• Don’t ruin your client’s HSA
• 2006 – A very good year for voluntary sales
• 2007 voluntary sales growth leaders
• Eastbridge has a new, improved website!
• Predictions by Eastbridge Consulting Group echoed in recent ERISA Industry Committee proposal
• Too many choices or too little advice—the dawning of the Age of Confusion
• Takeovers in the voluntary market
• Critical Illness—what’s taking so long?
• Can technology drive the bus?

• Too many group companies don’t “get” enrollment

Past Issues

• 2007
• 2006

Summer 2007 / No. 72

The distributor of the future

By Bonnie Brazzell

Our recently released 2006 U.S. Worksite Sales Study showed that the Benefit Broker segment continues to increase its share of new voluntary sales. According to the report, 46 percent of all voluntary/worksite sales in 2006 came from benefit brokers. The segment also had double-digit (10 percent) sales growth compared to 2005. The growth rate in 2005 was about 20 percent. But how long will this continue?

We expect to see continued growth in this segment as Benefit Brokers get more and more comfortable with voluntary. In fact, we recently did some projections about the market share we might expect from the various segments over the next five years. By 2012, we expect the Benefit Broker segment to account for nearly 60 percent of total sales.

Sales by Distibutor Segment

As can be seen from the graph, we expect market share for all other segments to decrease. However, all but the Occasional Producer segment will still have year-over-year increases.

This most likely reflects the fact that Benefit Brokers are important and fast growing players in the voluntary arena. They regularly offer voluntary as an add-on to employer-funded coverages, and we expect this to accelerate. We are already seeing this segment move voluntary to larger accounts and experiment with different voluntary products, enrollment methods, and platforms.