Practice management

In these days of increasing reliance on electronic communication and high-tech Internet applications, in-person meetings have never been more important for Darrell Phillips. By holding regular face-to-face meetings with the 4,000 employees at his 41 501(c)(3) and governmental hospital plan clients across the state of Kansas, Phillips' mission is three-fold: 1) Build trust with the employer; 2) Serve the purpose of the programs by helping employees take advantage of their benefits; and 3) Let employees know they have access to a resource who truly cares about them.

Recently, I was asked to present in a sales seminar for one of our clients. The topic was something near and dear to me: "Changing from a product-based sales approach to a solutions-based approach."

Longer life expectancies and the individual responsibility for retirement savings are combining to challenge conventional thinking and to re-shape the relationships between employers and their older employees. Check out five significant practical benefits for plan sponsors.

With investors falling in and out of love with Wall Street at a rapid pace, some financial advisers are finding themselves playing a new role — that of marriage counselor. As financial markets remain in turmoil, couples are getting more anxious as they watch their nest eggs wither.

The Employee Benefit Adviser App is a must-have resource for benefit brokers, advisers and consultants who help employers build and manage their group benefits programs, be they health, retirement, voluntary or non-insurance. Choose from our helpful apps and download them today!

Hiring by small businesses slowed in August and employers reduced hours, an independent survey shows on Sunday, suggesting the recent stock market turmoil may have dampened job creation. Read how there are now fears surrounding the month's stock market rout that could ultimately make businesses hesitant to hire new workers.

In part one of a two-part blog series Robert Winslow, principal of Elm Street Partners, blogs about some of the opportunity that the new health care legislation has brought upon. Do you agree with Winslow that there is an opportunity in all the changes? While it’s been nearly a year and a half since passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I’m frankly amazed at how many people still seem caught in…

LIMRA released its “U.S. Individual Life Insurance Sales” report, which indicates total individual life insurance new annualized premium increased 4% in the first half of 2011.

Creating a culture of health in the workplace isn’t easy, but the results that can be obtained — both a personal benefit to the individual and a cost and productivity benefit to the organization — are making value-based health care an appealing initiative for employers across the country. VBHC is a holistic, consumer-centered approach that focuses not on the dollars being spent but on how the dollars being spent work to improve employees’ health. Recent focus…

The "eagerly-awaited" guidelines regarding the uniform summary of benefits and coverage (SBC) required by Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have finally been released. Comments are being invited until Oct. 21, 2011, with implementation anticipated by March 23, 2012, the two-year anniversary of PPACA's passage. This is not just the first step in the direction of increasing uniformity in the structure and communication of benefit plans. …

Since 2008, Mass Metal in Lawrence, Kan., has helped individuals buy, hold and sell gold and silver through its online service, SilverSaver. Now the company is offering SilverSaver as a voluntary benefit program.

Insurers have yet another cloud option available to them, as Informatica announced several new insurance clients using their services. Although not a new offering (the company launched cloud services in 2006), it’s relatively new coming from an insurance industry known as technologically risk averse. According to a recent Gartner Group study, annual spending on cloud-related transactions may grow to almost $150 billion worldwide by 2014.

For workers' compensation insurers, costs are going up as the market shrinks, according to a recent report released by the National Academy of Social Insurance, observing they are fighting to pay more for smaller slices of the pie.

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.

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…

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.”