WHY YOU SHOULD BE SELLING DENTAL AND VISION
BY JOHN WIESLER
Between COVID-19 and the Great Resignation, prospective hires and current employees are carefully examining benefits packages, which weigh heavily in their decisions to join or stay with an organization. For small businesses vying for talent in a tight market, that means offering many of the same benefits as their larger competitors. By bundling non-medical plans as part of a benefits package, your clients can round out their benefits portfolios to differentiate themselves from the competition.
According to a report from the Society for Human Resource Management, offering a range of benefits that top talent considers important can increase recruiting effectiveness by as much as 11%. Dental and vision insurance are two of the voluntary benefits that employees tend to see as both affordable and important, leading to strong enrollment.
For brokers, such plans add as much as 10-15% in commissions per client and increases the share of wallet, while strengthening client retention efforts and giving employers another way to attract and retain top talent.
TOP REASONS FOR EMPLOYERS TO OFFER NON-MEDICAL BENEFITS
Non-medical offerings are essential for employers for a few different reasons beyond the ability to attract new employees and to retain current ones:
Reduce lost work hours: Employees’ poor health cost American businesses $575 billion and 1.5 billion days of lost productivity, according to Ameritas. Providing dental and vision benefits can help employees control costs and supplement the gaps in core medical plans.
Early detection of health
issues: Regular dental and vision exams provide opportunities to spot early warning signs of costly medical issues, such as diabetes and hypertension. In addition to controlling long-term costs for these and other diseases, identifying and treating these medical issues early can also mean a worker is less likely to take extended time off for more invasive treatments and recovery.
Improved self-care: Insurer Cigna reported that employees who bundled dental with medical were more engaged in the management of their health. That means they were more likely to have regularly scheduled screenings and exams, and make more lifestyle changes to improve their own health. More than 70% of working adults with dental insurance see the dentist at least once a year, compared to only 40% of those without dental insurance. Similarly, employees with family dental coverage are more likely to seek regular exams for their children, lowering the likelihood they will need to take time off for a child’s dental emergency.
Lower costs for other health plans: Many insurance carriers will provide discounts to employers offering different lines of coverage, helping employers offer a better and more comprehensive range of benefits while keeping costs under control.
BE A TRUSTED ADVISOR
Despite all of the benefits that dental and vision plans offer for employers, brokers can be hesitant to upsell due to the cumbersome nature of quoting and evaluating non-medical plans. But brokers who don’t evolve their benefits portfolios with non-medical may find themselves struggling to keep the competition at bay. Employers want and need to offer well-rounded benefits packages and will seek out broker partners who can help them create and deploy the right offerings easily and securely.
Adopt a completely digital process: Using a technology-based quote tool for vision and dental insurance greatly reduces one of the most time-consuming tasks in the business. An automated tool capable of generating comparable quotes enables a broker to save valuable time and makes it easy for employers to compare apples to apples when evaluating options. By automating repetitive, data-heavy tasks, cloud-based solutions offer significant operational efficiencies
while simultaneously freeing up staff to concentrate on the actual business contacting prospects, engaging current customers to ensure their needs are being met and otherwise enhancing customer relationships.
Ensure data security: Regardless of what you can offer customers and prospects, the time-savings and other benefits provided by technology are all for naught if quotes, coverages, client and employee information can’t be kept secure.
This is another challenge for independent brokers, who are unlikely to have security experts on staff to keep the business ahead of the growing number and variety of security issues affecting all businesses, particularly those that handle consumers’ personally identifiable information. Use a technology platform that offers complete 360 data encryption across multiple networks at rest and in transition.
By using the right technologies to efficiently offer dental and vision benefits, brokers can add to their bottom lines and improve customer retention, while enabling employers to offer the well-rounded benefits packages necessary to compete in the Great Resignation.
JOHN WIESLER joined BenefitMall in 2020 as the head of General Agency Sales bringing with him more than 30 years of experience in sales and sales leadership roles. As the head of general agency sales, Wiesler is responsible for the sales strategy and growth of BenefitMall’s General Agency business.