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Consumer driven health plans continue to grow in popularity despite a waning impact on cost control, according to preliminary results in a recent United Benefits Advisors survey.

Women who are in the middle of a transition — whether it be a divorce, the death of a spouse, or the inheritance of a large sum of money — often need specialized financial advice, but many of them may not know where to go, says Kimberly Howard, founder and owner of KJH Financial Services in Needham, Mass.

A failure to process claims in a timely manner and a failure to use compliant policy forms top the list of complaints filed in the P&C and life/health insurance markets, according to Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. Other continuous challenges cited were a failure to properly embed regulatory requirements into claims, underwriting and distribution processes.

The Obama administration last week issued regulations intended to improve employees’ understanding of their health plan options, as called for by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

In a follow-up post, Steve Kloyda talks further about the art of prospecting. Do you agree with his thoughts? Your success in sales starts and ends with prospecting Skeptics say that prospecting is dead. It’s not. And it never will be. The decision to prospect is yours alone. Yes, the old way of selling has changed, but prospecting continues to be the foundation of all successful businesses and salespeople. So what is prospecting? …

Although concerned about challenges in the business environment, brokers and consultants are confident they will find a variety of ways to prosper, according to MetLife’s Broker and Consultant Study released last week.

For many advisers, adapting to market changes is very difficult. The reality is that it’s always been necessary, but now it is absolutely essential. In fact you need to embrace change and also be a catalyst for change. At my company, we started examining our value proposition several years ago. We recognized that we needed to bring greater value to our client relationships and that we needed to be more strategic in our thinking. We…

Here’s a recent list of personnel accomplishments in the industry.

One of the primary features of the Affordable Care Act is the establishment of state-based health insurance exchanges.

Middle-income baby boomers, those earning between $30,000 and $74,000, are vastly underserved in terms of preparing for retirement, according to a new Insured Retirement Institute report, “Middle-Income Boomers and Retirement: Tapping the Significant and Underserved Middle-Income Market.”