It's important information “when developing distribution and marketing strategies,” Eastbridge president Gil Lowerre said. He noted carriers need to be careful about assuming those states with the greatest sales “may be overly saturated and afford less opportunity for future voluntary sales.”

“To the contrary, some of these states actually have the greatest untapped potential for voluntary after comparing the sales reported by the carriers to the employed population of a given state—those individuals who have the ability to purchase voluntary insurance at the worksite,” Lowerre said.

The consulting firm calculates an “Eastbridge Sales Index” for each state that gives a truer representation of the sales penetration.

As an example, California and New York are in the highest sales category, but in much lower ESI categories, indicating there is “untapped potential in those states and not the saturation that some carriers may perceive,” explained Bonnie Brazzell, Eastbridge vice president.

“Conversely, Delaware, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee had the highest ESIs or strong sales coverage, yet two of these states were not included in the top 15 in terms of sales premium,” Brazzell said. “So even though these states had lower sales, their voluntary sales saturation is higher and future sales opportunity lower.”