Voluntary disruption, Part 2: Products

Product provides another area where brokers can embrace disruption. Photo: Getty

Last month, I discussed how the most influential disrupter to the enhanced benefits industry must be the willingness of the broker community at large to adjust, adapt, and embrace our ever-changing market. How brokers must position themselves as either an innovator who drives change or an adopter who follows those innovators and helps to steer the change. The bottom line was that whether you choose to outsource your enhanced benefits strategy to one specific carrier, bring it all in-house, or partner with a carrier agnostic firm, the key to success is to be proactive with whatever approach you choose. 

As you begin to have proactive conversations with your clients to ensure they have a proper enhanced benefits offering that complements your recommended overall health care strategy, it’s important that you understand all of the products and services that are available within the marketplace. The message to your clients must be that you’re looking to eliminate benefit redundancy, and any wasteful employee overspend that may have occurred during an initial “product-dump” that led to an inevitable “commission grab” by whomever first installed enhanced products and services with little regard to the total health care plan.