New ways carriers are courting brokers

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Within the voluntary benefits market, supplemental medical benefits are consistently desired among employers and employees, particularly those enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. Carriers are turning to advisers to help boost products that are designed to meet these needs.

Bill Bade, consulting actuary for management consulting company Milliman, will speak to advisers at EBA’s Workplace Benefits Renaissance in New Orleans March 1-3 on how to leverage carrier relationships to assist clients.

“The supplemental market is the one constant change, and change creates opportunities,” Bade says. “One of those opportunities is for agents, brokers and advisers to identify carriers as strategic partners, and looking at aligning their goals, as well as their client’s goals, with the products and services carriers provide.”

Also see: 20 companies with the best benefits.”

Bade says carriers are beginning to provide incentives to their distribution partners, such as innovative products or various forms of compensation, to encourage brokerages to form alliances. “My presentation will examine those new things in the industry that the agents, brokers and advisers can take advantage of,” Bade says.

If attendees leave with nothing else from Bade’s presentation, he says they will come away knowing some of the groundbreaking things carriers are doing in the marketplace, and can use those innovations as a way to grow their own revenue while providing better service to their clients.

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Practice management Advisor strategies Voluntary benefits Workplace Benefits Renaissance
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