Practice management

As if the twin threats posed by the advent of health care reform and the incursion into the benefits business by payroll administration vendors are not enough, producers should prepare for a third threat: the large HR consulting firms.

Budget negotiators tabled a rider to eliminate PPACA’s medical loss ratio restrictions as part of the deal cut Friday to avoid a government shutdown.

One year into the brave new world of health care reform, there’s good news and there’s bad news, says industry insider Eric Johnson.

Many insurance executives will agree that attracting and retaining young workers is a current challenge. After conducting focus groups and studies, LIMRA research attributes some of this problem to misperceptions about the industry.

This is a time of significant change for the employee benefits industry, but rather than respond with panic, consultant Alan Katz urges brokers and advisers to prepare for whatever lays ahead by learning from the habits of successful producers.

The fall offering of the Employee Benefits Producer Training Program, scheduled for Sept. 19-30, 2011, will be held at the American Airlines Training & Conference Center in Fort Worth, Texas. It was previously scheduled to be held in Brookfield, WI.

Financial advisers are losing an average of $20,000 in fees for not pricing their fee-based businesses competitively enough, according to a new survey from Toronto-based software firm PriceMetrix Inc.

It's finally spring and what seemed like a very long, hard winter has drawn to a close. And we have reached the first anniversary of PPACA and survived that as well. Both the weather and government intervention in our business can be difficult to deal with, but all us entrepreneurial types always figure out a way to successfully deal with adversity, right? When we get lemons, we make lemonade.

To partner or not to partner. That is the question ... and it can mean a variety of different things. If you are an individual proprietor, at some point you may decide to find a partner to share some of your workload with, as well as to bring new business to the table. In many ways, this is a great idea. When you add another mind to the mix, you will typically be given new ideas, have someone to bounce your own ideas off of, receive help with paperwork and phone calls, and have backup when you are sick or out of town. These are all very positive aspects of having a business partner.

In this month's installment in our sales training series - which follows February's and March's columns on buyer motivation ("If you want to sell, do this ..." pgs. 56 and 68, respectively), we'll look at the art of painting mental pictures for your buyer - an art that can result in an AOR.

There are numerous reasons to move the sale of ancillary products to the forefront of your sales strategy, not the least of which is a significant increase in your revenue.

Like so many successful advisers, Brian Ashe is quick to tell you that relationships are the largest driver of success in the insurance business. "People change companies," Ashe says. "They can be really terrific with numbers; they can be good managers of their offices; they can have the latest equipment. But if you are not a person who believes in and is dedicated to the establishment of relationships, it makes it significantly more difficult to be successful."

Unanswered questions and unknown repercussions abound as regulators continue to flesh out the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act framework. For employers, it is a frustrating time of uncertainty and confusion.

Cigna Corp is expanding its business that provides health coverage to those working abroad by offering a product directly to individuals.

When the National Association of Insurance Commissioners decided last Sunday to delay action on throwing their support behind a bill that would exclude broker commissions from health reform’s medical loss ratio calculations, the move was met with mixed reviews, but by no means signals an end to the effort, say insiders.

New research from MetLife spotlights a disconnect between the perceptions of voluntary benefits held by employers and employees.

In response to the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan on March 11, 2011, the Million Dollar Round Table and the Million Dollar Round Table Foundation have established the MDRT Japan Disaster Relief Fund. The MDRT Foundation has donated the first $50,000 to the fund, and MDRT will match donations up to another $100,000.

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.

A roundup of recent staff changes in the industry.

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.