Employee benefits

Guardian Life will withdraw its medical insurance product line in all states, and will wind down its existing business over the next two years.

The reverberations from last year’s seismic legislative tilts will be keenly felt by insurers in the coming year. A new report by Boston-based Aite Group finds reaction to health care reform and financial services reform among five trends that will shape each sector respectively.

Of the 568 short-term disability, accident and critical-illness claimants with voluntary policies from Unum responding to an independent customer-satisfaction survey, 90% said they would recommend the carrier to their co-workers.

Dearborn National’s Worksite and Individual Solutions division hopes to reach new heights with Mountain Vista, a new term life plan aimed at working-class Americans with premiums projected to be level for 10, 20 or 30 years.

Helping employees understand the language of finance enables benefit advisers to better meet the needs of clients ...

The value of cyberspace during open enrollment is at least on equal footing with face time, suggest two recent unpublished surveys of employees and carriers that sell voluntary benefit plans.

Overall, electronic health records are expected to reduce medical errors, but Dean Sittig has devoted a lot of research to the ways that EHRs themselves can fail.

A unit of brokerage powerhouse Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. waded deeper into the worksite market with one of eight acquisitions made since November 2009 to build a national platform that serves the employee benefits needs of middle-market companies.

Mutual of Omaha recently brought more than a century of disability income insurance market know-how to a new product offering in this area.

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America’s new multi-coverage voluntary package features comprehensive benefits at a single rate that emphasizes affordability and enrollment simplicity.

Shopping for identity theft protection, a product that is gaining traction in the worksite market, is no easy feat. But a new Web site now makes it easy to compare half a dozen of the nascent industry’s leading service providers that are aggressively fighting this growing crime wave.

While the number of health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements increased in 2010, average individual account balances fell, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Dossia, a Cambridge, Mass.-based personal health records vendor targeting large employers, has named Michael Critelli as president and CEO, succeeding Colin Evans.

U.S. workers can expect median base salary increases of 2.8% in 2011, compared to 2.4% in 2010, while executives and skilled-trade workers can anticipate a 2.7% increase, according to the "Salary Budgets Survey" by the Hay Group.

Research analyzing health saving accounts managed by three large banks shows that accounts with employer contributions had an average contribution of $1,058 for calendar year 2009.

There are two proposed pieces of legislation sitting in Congress that would seem to be no-brainers for helping people save for retirement and helping advisers help their clients.

Small-business employment continued to show growth in December with hours worked up and wages flat, according to the latest update of the Intuit Inc.’s "Small Business Employment Index."

New research on workplace clinics observes that the clinics may have a limited impact on direct health costs, but their presence offers employers more control over how health care is delivered.

Business owners who employ between two and 500 workers recently told pollsters they have reshuffled business priorities where now business and income protection have taken center stage.

A combination of regulatory, political and economic factors are set to create an uncertain environment for U.S. health care insurers, Moody's Investors Service reports, leading to a continuation of the negative outlook for the industry.