Also in this issue:
Product Trends in the Voluntary Market
What Differentiates Us?
Voluntary Sales Grew In
2009
OneAmerica: 2009 Growth Company
Managing in the Dark
Coming Soon: An Update to Our MarketVision™ –Employee
Viewpoint
2020: an Update
Have Critical Illness Sales Finally started to Gain Ground on
Cancer Sales?
Conservation, Part I
More Employers Offer Voluntary Products
The New Enrollers
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Summer 2010, No. 84
Have Critical Illness
Sales Finally started to Gain Ground on Cancer Sales?
For years, people have been predicting that critical illness sales
will eventually replace cancer sales in the voluntary market.
These critical illness advocates believe that the product covers
so much more than cancer and that the total pay-out available
is potentially higher. Additionally, in almost every one of our
Product Trends surveys, carriers have predicted that
critical illness will be a growth product for the industry. Yet,
year after year, cancer sales outpace critical illness sales by
margins of four to one.
But things seem to have changed—at least a little bit.
Voluntary critical illness sales were up in 2009, but cancer sales
lagged. In the 2009 U.S. Worksite Sales Report, critical
illness sales results were up almost 88 percent between 2008 and
2009 as compared to cancer sales which went down almost 8 percent.
This is the second year in a row with significant gains in critical
illness. The increase in 2008 (over 2007) was 19 percent.
Cancer sales in 2009 still exceeded critical illness, but the
differential was down to two to one from the historical levels
of four or more to one. Cancer sales for 2009 were $436 million
and accounted for about 8 percent of total voluntary sales. Critical
illness sales were $225 million and the line increased its share
of total sales from just over 2 percent to slightly more than
4 percent.
We believe that as more and more Benefit Brokers increase the
amount of voluntary sales, we will see more of a move to critical
illness products. Cancer sales will probably never go completely
away as traditional producers will continue to sell the product,
but the sales rate for cancer is likely to decline while critical
illness improves.
Eastbridge recently updated and released the Critical Illness
Spotlight Report. For more information, click
here.
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