At my company, VEBA, the most important information that clients want to know about is enrollment data. Who's participating? Are they young? Are they old? What's their average income? What's the male/female participation ratio? What products are they purchasing? In-depth metrics on the buying preferences of voluntary benefits provide new and valuable feedback to an engaged human resources professional. The level of data we provide our clients brings a global view of employee benefits and value. For example, the participation rate in a long-term care offering will provide feedback on employee concern about their care in the event of a daily living event. The same can be said for permanent types of life insurance and concern over financial security and final expenses.
The overall trend in our data shows more concern for living benefits like short-term disability, accident coverage and family vision insurance plans for employees under age 40. Financial planning products such as permanent life insurance with LTC options have expanded in the age 45-plus employee groups. The ability for a client to break down their data into a micro view of the purchases of each product by gender, age, coverage levels and even times of enrollment provides valuable insight into the needs of the work force.
How can we monitor our business better and grow from that intelligence?
THOM MANGAN
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. The best advisers invest in professional industry benchmarking services to find out how they compare to their peers and where they could be better.
ANDY TORELLI
It's surprising to me the number of advisers that don't have tools to provide information on their revenue by lines of business, industry groups and size. Without this information it's difficult to determine your most profitable (or least profitable) clients. It would assist in determining how an agency wants to deploy their resources.
