Practice management

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.

Consider this: LinkedIn now boasts more than 70 million members. Unfortunately, many advisers still believe that LinkedIn is just a site for posting a resume and looking for a job. While this may be true, it is also a powerful networking tool that can have a significant impact your bottom line.

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.

Faced with the current challenges brought on by the financial crisis, company priorities have been forced to shift, and employees are left often with a lack of understanding and insufficient guidance on their benefits choices at work.

Usually, when unemployment drops, the number of working Americans increases. But this time around, that hasn’t been true, notes Mark Pawlak, at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

A National Association of Insurance Commissioners task force is seeking comments from brokers, agents and advisers on the impact of PPACA’s medical loss ratio rules. The comments will be the basis of a meeting of the task force scheduled for later this month.

Never have more partners than you can fit in an elevator. While that sounds like a joke, in fact it's good advice when you're starting a business. While it is important to have partners who bring skills to the table, the choices must be made carefully and with an eye toward keeping the group a manageable size.

Well, football season is over, and we are now headlong into March Madness. It's likely to be almost as frenetic as the ongoing gyrations surrounding PPACA in the political forum, the courts, and in the marketplace.

In past columns I've highlighted some of the reasons why women are so successful in the insurance industry. However, we still face certain challenges.

In last month's column we detailed the three psychological states that benefits buyers find themselves in, especially the one you want to lead a buyer to - "satisfied." If you missed my last column, you may want to pick up a copy of the February issue of EBA or read the digital edition on the EBA website, eba.benefitnews.com.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are already aware that at least one major carrier has announced that premiums for groups of 51 employees or more will no longer include commissions. The agent can specify the commission level desired and it will be billed by the carrier, but it will be a line item visible to the client.

Employers struggling to stay afloat in the flood of guidance on implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will find themselves looking both forward and backward this year. Their challenge: to gauge how the PPACA rules issued so far are affecting their plans while at the same time anticipating the changes that lie ahead in 2012, 2014, and even 2018.

Several members of Congress from both political parties expressed support last week for the role of the agent and broker post-health care reform. The legislators addressed a crowd of more than 700 at the National Association of Health Underwriters’ annual Capitol Conference in Washington, D.C. — including calls for the medical loss ratio provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to be altered.

Despite efforts to defund PPACA in the Republican-controlled House, and prospects of a Supreme Court test for the federal health reform law, employers are forging ahead as best they can with short-term compliance issues and long-term strategic decisions.

The economy and health reform may have prompted the youngest workers at U.S. companies to take a deeper interest in workplace benefits, according to online research conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Unum.

State health insurance exchanges mandated in the health care reform law — assuming they survive court challenges to the law — are getting federal funds to launch but must be self-sustaining afterward.