Practice management

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.

Apple’s iPad tablets and iPhone smartphones are gaining ground against mobile devices based on Google’s Android operating system, Microsoft’s Windows mobile platforms and Symbian, used by Nokia — and the fastest adopters of iPads are financial services firms.

SourceMedia, the publisher of Employee Benefit Adviser, has acquired Insurance Broadcasting, a provider of online news and live events to employee benefits professionals.

Small company, big heart It's been a tradition at The Unity Group to give clients chocolates during the holidays. But in 2009 the Bellingham, Wash., firm made the decision to discontinue the expensive (and not exactly healthy) practice in favor of a donation to the local food bank. "With the economy down, we thought that was a great place to give back," says Kari Glennon, sales manager.

There was a time when providing good service at the local level and keeping in touch with employer groups was a marketing strategy in itself. In fact, it may even have been the only marketing strategy a benefits broker needed. But those days died with the changing economy, and the reality is that they aren't coming back.

It's now the middle of winter, and the collegiate and professional football seasons have drawn to a close. While the gridiron battlefield is now silent, another one is not - the battle of gridlock in Congress and the courts over health care reform is still going strong, and it's likely to continue for some time.