Mercer Marketplace offers identity theft protection as voluntary benefit

Identity theft and data security is a concern of every shopper whether they shop online or at brick-and-mortar stores. But as the more profound breaches at Target and other retail giants have gained hold on consumer minds, voluntary benefit offerings have surfaced on private insurance exchanges to help combat this growing digital dilemma for employees.

Approximately 1.6 million taxpayers were affected by identity theft in the first half of last year, according to a recent audit from the U.S. Treasury Department. There’s value for employers to proactively help employees protect themselves against identity theft as it can profoundly affect employee productivity and absenteeism. “Everything is growing, and the Target breach [has] brought heightened awareness to the marketplace,” says Karrie Nelson, principal at Mercer Voluntary Benefits.

Mercer’s private exchange for active employees, Mercer Marketplace, recently announced the addition of a voluntary ID theft protection benefit from InfoArmor. It is the only ID theft provider on Mercer Marketplace, but is also available on other exchanges. “With more consumers using digital electronic media for transactions, I think the marketplace is just more aware of the risk at a personal level than they were in the past,” says Nelson. She names AllClear ID and Kroll as other companies in the market that offer identity theft and credit monitoring protection.

The Federal Trade Commission said in its 2013 annual report that over 290,000 consumer complaints related to ID theft were filed last year. And since 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that the number of identity theft-related crimes concluded with more than $78.6 billion in restitutions and $4.6 billion in recoveries.

For more on medical identity theft, read Medical identity theft: a ‘freight train’ coming our way.

For ID theft protection tips, read 5 ways to keep your identity safe.

Similarly, more than 300 employer groups have signed up to use InfoAmor, which offers financial identity protections such as cyber monitoring of all electronic credentials, recovery protection and credit checks.

“We see huge problems with workplace productivity when folks deal with identity and privacy financial fraud,” says Drew Smith, founder and CEO of InfoArmor. “Since day one, we really had a focus on identity protection as an employee benefit.”

It takes roughly 160 hours for employees to remediate their own identity. Usually, this is during work hours, which hinders productivity, says Emily Snell, who heads employee benefits for InfoArmor. Starting in late 2008, roughly a year after it was established as a firm, InfoArmor began receiving requests to modify its PrivacyArmor product for voluntary benefit needs.

“When Identity theft strikes an employee, employers become a victim as well, leading to employees using business hours to remedy their problems, absenteeism, health care benefit usage increase and productivity on the job decreases,” says Nelson.

As consumers and employers unknowingly find themselves victimized by identity theft crime, employers should expect this growing trend to continue.

“It’s anticipated that almost one-in-four companies will be adding identity protection sometime 2014 as a benefit,” Smith explains.