BPI, Allstate Benefits and You—The Professional Solution

By Dominic Siciliano

What about the cost of worksite benefits?  I know how much employees are paying for the core benefits alone.  How do we reconcile selling them even more?  These are questions I struggled with as I ventured into this side of our business.  I discovered the answer in our very first Allstate sale. 

It’s a 70 person group.  The group owner is passionate about her employees and is proud to offer medical, dental, disability and life.  But she had to make a tough decision this renewal and raise her deductible to $4000 a single.  You all have heard this hundreds of times.  The owner just didn’t want to force an increase of the employee contribution but she couldn’t absorb the increase.  But she was worried about that exposure for the employees.  She knew an event would ruin them financially—that very few of them had $4000 of dispensable income.  

So the agent went looking for a solution.  With Allstate he found she could offer her employees a chance to buy protection from much of this exposure on a voluntary basis.  They offered group critical illness and accident.  These are guaranteed issue group products with blended rates.  The agency ran the meetings and enrollment in a day.  The employees, although not thrilled with the increase in medical deductible, were happy to have at least an option of protection and many enrolled.  The group decision maker was pleased that she wasn’t leaving them totally in the lurch.  And the agent increased his commission and his value in one of his best client relationships.

I’m not trying to sugar coat anything though.  No one thinks that this is a great situation for employees.  But the reality is agents get paid to offer solutions.  In this case, Allstate was a great brand with very unique, group-filed worksite products that acted much more like traditional benefits than individual worksite products. 

More and more, these situations will require a partner like Allstate. Benefit Profiles Inc has access to a variety of systems, products and ideas surrounding the voluntary benefits.  Give us a call to discuss a meeting where we can dive more deeply into the details of products and where they would work in some of your groups.