Bruce Shutan

Most critical illness insurance policyholders are 55 or older; men buy higher coverage amounts than women; and claimants overwhelmingly seek benefits for cancer over all other conditions, suggests a new comprehensive study of more than 20,500 individual policies purchased last year.

The economy still may be stuck in neutral, but industry brokers, carriers and vendors are bullish about the future of voluntary benefits.

A March 17th hearing on the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act had more of a July 4th sensibility, with fireworks igniting before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.

It was only a matter of time before several leading U.S. life insurers with business dealings in Japan felt reverberations from the devastating 9.0 earthquake on March 11, followed by a major tsunami and nuclear reactor leaks. While industry observers are still assessing the long-term financial impact of these events on Aflac, MetLife and The Hartford, disaster may have been averted on their balance sheets.

North Carolinians are just sick about health insurance, doctors, medical billing and collection practices, health products and services — more so than questionable loans and lending practices, Do Not Call list violations and telemarketing schemes.

A sluggish economy hasn’t slowed the nation’s health care consumerism movement, according to a recent analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

On the heels of a politically charged debate and angry street protests in Wisconsin over stripping public employees of their collective-bargaining rights, producers who serve the public sector are now seeing similar efforts take shape across the nation.

Benefit professionals have tirelessly lobbied for an end to the so-called use-it-or-lose it rule governing pretax employee contributions to a flexible spending account, which is now the centerpiece of a bipartisan proposal in Congress.

Target-date funds became the leading default investment option for auto-enrolled retirement plans for a reason: The simplicity of an age-appropriate, asset allocation strategy that grew more conservative as plan participants edged closer to retirement age.

Could a U.S. Department of Labor plan to broaden the definition of a fiduciary for the purpose of giving investment advice undermine the level of service that producers offer their employer clients?

While some media outlets have focused on the unscrupulous acts of life insurers and agents marketing unsuitable products to military families, Mike Nordquist and his agency, Consolidated Financial Group, have worked diligently over the past 35 years to protect the financial interests of U.S. soldiers and their families.