| Wednesday, April 1 |
| 2:45 PM - 3:45 PM |
Health Benefits: Weird Works Best!
Traditional health care is just, well, boring! One-size-fits-all health care worked well before the boomer retirement wave began and before individuals became empowered.
Today, brokers must learn how to leverage a retail revolution and become more involved in helping customers choose their coverage options. They must know the niche health benefit options available to help clients pick and choose what works best for their budgets and employees.This session will help you prepare for rapid changes in the health care industry by discussing trends wrought by the consumer and the new president and their effect on available benefit options.
Speaker: Sam Fleet, Imre Communications
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Selling Disability -- Push vs. Pull
Current distribution models, while effective in the penetrated markets, MUST be re-engineered to reach the untapped markets. The industry's nearly exclusive reliance on a "Pull" strategy (working existing relationships to the exclusion of a more broad outreach) to increase market penetration has failed. A well-planned and well executed "Push" strategy (developing a comprehensive outreach model that includes existing relationships as well as a highly concentrated effort directed to the First Time Buyer), requires focus and commitment - and WILL YIELD RESULTS!
In this session, experts outline how to develop a well-planned and well-executed "push" strategy that addresses:
- The untapped first-time buyer market
- Existing distribution channels
- Product design
- Compensation strategies
- Marketing strategies
Speakers: Greg Dulac and Ron Farr, Disability RMS
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10 Characteristics of Successful Worksite Wellness Programs
This session will describe, in detail, a best practice approach organizations can use to implement successful wellness programs. Learn how comprehensive a wellness program should be and about how to maximize employee participation, involve dependents, teach wise consumerism and address low and high-risk employees. Additional topics will include online versus offline interventions, psychosocial issues, legal implications, and research that documents the economic benefits of wellness programs.
Speaker: Dr. Don R. Powell, American Institute for Preventative Medicine
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5 HR Mega Trends You Need to Know
In this session, you'll learn about the five mega trends that are shaping the new world of work and presenting unique challenges for organizational leadership:
- Productivity is King: The More with Less Economy
- Economic Uncertainty: Who Can You Trust?
- The New Independence: From Entitlement to Ownership
- Consumer-Directed Health: American Idol?
- Retirement Insecurity: Pension Deficit Disorder.
You'll walk away from this session understanding how an organization can leverage these five mega trends to strengthen employee engagement, resilience and productivity.
Speaker: Jim O'Connell, Ceridian
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| Wednesday, April 1 |
| 4 PM - 5 PM |
Making Sense of the Mini-med Explosion
Do these benefits really help uninsured workers? How big is the market for brokers, and which employer groups stand to benefit most from these types of plans? In this session you'll learn how to deliver limited benefits effectively and the keys to successful plan design. Plus - you'll walk away with tips on ways to assess and communicate various limited benefit medical plans and get the inside scoop on top trends to watch for brokers getting into this market.
Speaker: Tim Adkisson, Symetra Financial
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Use Group to Sell Voluntary
Learn how to polish your group meeting skills - and never conduct a boring meeting again! In this session, Peggy Hayes will teach you how a captivating 20-minute group meeting can set the stage for a more successful voluntary enrollment.
Speaker: Peggy Hayes, American Fidelity Assurance Co.
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Identity Theft and Employer Liability - Are You at Risk?
Identity theft costs American businesses and consumers a reported $50 billion a year and
there are an estimated 10 million U.S. victims annually. A variety of attempts have been made to find solutions to this disturbing and costly problem, yet the rapid growth of identity theft continues, as does the failure to properly prevent the crime. The law says businesses are liable, and penalties are stiff. In this session, you will learn:
- The scope of the problem of data security and identity theft
- Who is being held responsible
- The five common types of identity theft
- The cost to businesses
- The federal laws
- Who's affected
- The penalties and the federal guidelines for mitigating risk and establishing compliance.
Speaker: Marilyn Patterson, Patterson Performance Solutions
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Health Care Survey
The experts from Oliver Wyman (formerly ChapterHouse) return to Benefits Selling Expo to help Benefits Selling editor Denis Storey unveil the latest results from their second annual joint health care survey. You'll be the first to know about key issues influencing the health benefits market, where brokers see the market heading, what concerns brokers most, which providers are helping, and more.
Speakers: Michael Main, Oliver Wyman & Denis Storey, Benefits Selling
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| Thursday, April 2 |
| 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM |
Limited Medical Plans: Fact vs. Fiction
There are a lot of limited benefit medical plans on the market today, and analyzing the various plans and how they work could fill an entire day. What's more valuable to the broker community is understanding what is actually working. So what does work? What doesn't? In this session, you'll get answers to these questions, as well as how to effectively sell limited medical -- and keep the business so you don't have to resell it next year.
Speaker: Brian Robertson, Fringe Benefit Group
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Selling the Employer Worksite
Thousands of HR departments request worksite every year yet somehow the programs never get off the ground or have less than desired results. This session will help brokers construct an ideal sales story, close the sale and maximize results.
Speaker: Jim Christenson, Emerson, Reid and Co.
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Cash-Balance Plans -- The New Retirement
While the 401(k) with or without profit sharing plan predominates in most corporate environments, rumors of the demise of the pension plan may be unfounded. In the traditional pension plan, the goal is to define a benefit to retirees -- not to seek the highest possible returns in one year followed by the negative returns the next year. In this session, learn how to supplant the traditional pension-defined benefit plan with something (comparatively) new: the cash balance plan.
Speaker: Colin Smith, The Retirement Co.
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What's Next for Consumer-Driven Products?
Stay ahead of the game with an update on the current state of the consumer-driven health care industry, including product innovations, growth, and the political environment. In this session, Craig Keohan will introduce and analyze the results of First Horizon Msaver's new approach to working with the broker community: a Producer Advisory Board. The board was created to bring together top players in the industry to share best practices and discuss new ideas.
Speaker: E. Craig Keohan, First Horizon Msaver
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| Thursday, April 2 |
| 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM |
Are Your Clients Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
TV Guide and Readers Digest, two of the most popular magazines in the world, are written at the 9th-grade reading level. Top-selling U.S. authors, including John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton and Stephen King, write at the 7th-grade level.
If we can learn one thing from these examples, it's the importance of communicating in a language the audience can understand.
In the health insurance industry, this can be critically important. Health literacy begins with the agent. It's your job to make sure clients understand their coverage and know how to access care - not an easy task since insurance is an abstract concept with its own unique language. In this session, you'll learn how to "dumb it down" and make health insurance easy for everyone to understand.
Speaker: Eric Johnson, Agent Allies
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Busting Myths and Building Profits
Find out how to overcome the myths about selling voluntary products:
- Myth #1: They are confusing. Fact: Know a few simple basics and stay on the offense.
- Myth #2: They are not profitable. Fact: Voluntary is a great door opener to ancillary products and long-term profits! They help you build and maintain deeper, longer relationships with your clients.
- Myth #3: They are hard to sell. Fact: Some of the simplest products to understand and sell are voluntary, and will continue to increase in popularity with larger organizations in the coming years.
- Myth #4: They require a lot of maintenance. Fact: Finding a trustworthy carrier or partner is key. You need the right combination of benefits, administration, and sales and customer support so you can concentrate on successfully growing your business.
Speaker: Todd Cowan, HealthPlan Services
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Building Partnerships through Strategic Planning
The benefits marketplace has become increasingly competitive with brokers continually seeking new ways to strengthen their client relationships. In this session, Jack will be joined by Jim Davidson of EOI Service Company and Tinker Kelly of Voluntary Employee Benefits Advisors and session attendees will learn how to create a Benefits Strategic Plan in partnership with their clients. By proactively managing employee benefit goals and budgetary requirements through the benefits strategic plan, brokers elevate their interaction with clients, becoming a trusted strategic advisor.
Speaker: Jack Kwicien, Daymark Advisors
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Let's Talk -- The Need for Benefits Communication
High-deductible health plans, HSAs, FSAs, limited benefit medical plans, medical gap products and other voluntary insurance have made employee benefits more complex than ever. At the same time budget cuts, remote employees and fractured demographics are making it increasingly difficult for employers to effectively communicate benefits. This session will pull together research from leading human resource organizations as well as proprietary company research that clearly illustrates not only the strong desire for employee benefits communication but also how few employers are meeting this need. It will also cover options brokers can consider to help their clients solve this problem.
Speaker: Tom Gilligan, Colonial Life
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| Friday, April 3 |
| 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM |
Improving Individual Medical Sales Via Customer Segmentation
As the employer-sponsored market for businesses of fewer than 50 employees continues to struggle, there has been a surge in activity in the individual medical market. One of the most efficient ways to grow individual medical sales is through effective customer segmentation. Segmentation allows an agent to anticipate the needs of his or her clients. By limiting the options at presentation to plans that fit a customer's life stage, agents can eliminate client paralysis while still providing a range of choices. This session will focus on designing and implementing a segmentation strategy for online sales, worksite-based sales and in-person sales.
Speaker: Dave Keller, IHC Health Solutions
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Four Steps to Cross-Selling Voluntary
Longtime industry veteran Nelson Griswold shares his successful four-step strategy to cross-selling voluntary products:
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Recognize the revenue potential of worksite voluntary
- Understand voluntary's value proposition
- Learn how to sell voluntary to the client
- Find a strategic enrollment partner to banish the fear of the "how" of voluntary
Speaker: Nelson Griswold, Cross-Sell Solutions, Inc.
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Develop a Relationship
The health care delivery system is ailing, and the cure requires employee engagement. Engagement requires development of a partnership with the employees, where each plays a significant role. This session will show you how careful planning, concise communication and education can solve this problem.
Speaker: Don Cooper, TriFlex Corp.
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Bringing Spanish Speakers on Board with Benefit Plans
Even when benefits material is well translated and presented, Spanish speakers are still reluctant to participate in insurance plans. This tendency frustrates all who have invested in a Spanish presentation. This discussion will address misconceptions Spanish speakers commonly hold about insurance and present practical and cost-effective strategies for conducting effective enrollment meetings and maximizing participation among Spanish speakers.
Speaker: Melissa Burkhart, Futuro Sólido USA
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