News You Can Use: Life insurance coverage eroding

The recession has nearly all employees and their families recasting how they separate "wants" and "needs." Apparently, more are taking life insurance out of the "need" category, and it's showing in sales of life coverage.

In a report in this month's EBN, Greystone Benefits’ Joe Vogt tells Senior Editor Robert Whiddon that workers aren’t reaching deeper into their pockets for voluntary life or other worksite offerings like they used to, even if they only cost a few dollars a month.

According to Vogt, “Where they would say, ‘Well, you know, $7 a week that’s not bad. I can afford $350 a year’ — they’re not doing that anymore.”

To read the full report, "Crumbling coverage," click here.

Employees deserve needs-based selling, too

During a recent online discussion of strategies for successful worksite enrollments, it became clear that a broker/adviser will frequently conduct a needs-based sale with the company's C-suite or other benefits decisionmakers but not with individual workers.

Once the venue shifts to the worksite and individual enrollments, the focus switches to product attributes. The consensus coming out of our online discussion was that individual employees need the needs-based pitch as well. Talking product intricacies when the worker doesn't understand the big picture benefits of a critical illness program or other type of voluntary benefit is a recipe for poor participation, according to our experts.

Check out the archive of our recent discussion and let us know your thoughts in the comments section. Do your employees get a detailed explanation of how the benefits offered at the worksite meet their needs? Or, is the presentation more focused on coverage limits and other product attributes?