Also in this issue:
Morphing Brokers: First Evidence
The Virtues Required to (re)Build Distribution
New Report on Voluntary Rep Compensation Now Available
It’s 4th Quarter – Do You Have the Enrollers You Need?
Account-Level Lapsation
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Fall 2010, No. 85
Obamacare and the Micro Market
The under 25-life market has been the subject of many articles by Eastbridge staff and the object of much attention by certain carriers over the last five years. Regular readers know that the micro-case Employee Benefit Broker (EBB) typically has a book of a few dozen such cases, offering predominantly medical insurance. Both these EBBs and the commercial lines property and casualty agents are among the few brokers who have survived in the micro arena. And both have been reluctant to embrace voluntary products, unwilling to risk disruptions to their clients who have their core lines of business. The medical/individual health companies have been eyeing this market during this period, especially during the last eighteen months. Many believe that the EBBs will have no choice but to jump on the voluntary bandwagon. And who better to give them a hand up. . .the company that supplies their main line products, of course.
But there is another, darker, possibility. What if the EBBs continue to resist the transition, forcing some out of business, but allowing others to grab up market share in a survival lunge? Or what if the micro-case EBB becomes an endangered species altogether? Is anyone able to serve this market en masse?
It’s fashionable to predict the demise of voluntary career field forces, but who is better equipped to penetrate and serve this market, either full or part-time? While many of these companies are focused on the ever-larger case market, the real gold might be at the other end of the marketplace. So is the answer career agents? Medical companies? Commercial lines P&C brokers? Let the games begin!
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