Employees Demand Benefits: How Insurance Carriers Can Help – InsuranceNewsNet

InsuranceNewsNet — Your Industry. One Source.™

Sign in
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
Home Now reading From The Field Exclusive News
Topics
    • Life Insurance
    • Annuity News
    • Health/Employee Benefits
    • Property and Casualty
    • Advisor News
    • Washington Wire
    • Regulation News
    • Sponsored Content
    • Webinars
    • Monthly Focus
  • INN Exclusives
  • NewsWires
  • Magazine
  • Free Newsletters
Sign in or register to be an INNsider.
  • INN Exclusives
  • NewsWires
  • Magazine
  • Free Newsletters
  • Insider
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Editorial Staff
  • Contact
  • Newsletters

Get Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
From The Field Exclusive News
From The Field Exclusive News RSS Get our newsletter
Order Prints
December 28, 2020 From The Field Exclusive News No comments
Share
Share
Tweet
Email

Employees Demand Benefits: How Insurance Carriers Can Help

By Chuck Johnston

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increased demand for benefits like telehealth, employee assistance programs (EAP) and mental health services for employees. Employers will need to move beyond traditional employee benefits to gain a competitive advantage in the talent marketplace.

As employers begin to recognize the growing desire for these new kinds of employee benefits, carriers will need to innovate to keep up with demand and provide a more complete product suite. It will be critical for carriers to adapt with innovative products and new technologies to remain strong contenders offering employee benefits suited for the modern workforce.

The Growth in Telehealth, EAP, and Mental Health Benefits

We have recently seen benefits like telehealth, EAP, and mental health gain popularity. Some of these benefits have largely been embedded in existing health plans, so the changes we’re going to see will mostly be in regard to exactly what those benefits include, and how they are used. In addition to these changes, the employee benefits industry can also expect to see some new trends in non-traditional benefits in 2021 which may well change employee benefits as we’ve all come to know them.

Telehealth, EAP, and mental health benefits have been historically underutilized, but it’s not surprising that we’re seeing a rise in interest in these benefits during this time of COVID-19. With stress levels at an all-time high, employees are beginning to wonder how their employers can help support them. Employers, in turn, are starting to explore benefits options that provide more holistic care for their employees to improve their quality of life and enhance their productivity at work.

Expanding Carrier Product Range

On the carrier side, one change that will definitely happen is developing more critical illness products, potentially tied to pandemics. Quite honestly, that's a very difficult thing to do because of the wide potential impact of pandemic insurance, which we're seeing on the property and casualty side right now. But there is going to be a desire for these products, and carriers should be prepared to deliver reasonable offerings that are useful to the employee while remaining a sustainable insurance offering.

In the past, people would have thought cancer insurance was ridiculous because the condition was completely unmanageable. But now, cancer certainly is managed, and cancer insurance is becoming one of the more popular products amongst ancillary benefits. Carriers can expect to see the need to create more and more products like this, probably more heavily reliant on information and machine learning than anything we've ever seen before on the product development side.

Streamlining Processes

In addition to products, carriers will also need to develop new processes. Particularly due to the introduction of telehealth for major medical, which will also impact things like disability check-ins, carriers are going to have to re-examine how they gather data around individuals. It’s going to become more likely that there will be more telehealth medical visits for anything that can possibly be done remotely.

Carriers are also going to have to revamp and streamline processes for the visits that must be done in person. We're already seeing that to some extent, even just in physicians visits when someone has to go into an office for a blood test or other test where samples are collected.
Because of the need for new and more efficient processes, we’re going to see an even greater reliance on digital processes. When one is not working physically with someone else, it allows for the opportunity to digitize things which may not have been done that way in the past

Enhancing Carrier System Requirements

Many carriers moving into the employee benefits space are taking refurbished property and casualty core systems or life systems and trying to extend them to handle the commercial side of life, accident, and health, as well as using them to deal with employee benefits. In this scenario, what carriers discover is that they are refurbishing and repurposing things to make them fit as opposed to designing them from the ground up so that they work properly for their needs.

Insurance providers will require a new breed of core systems designed specifically to develop and support the modern products they must offer and facilitate efficient digital processes. These systems need to be agile for carriers to keep up with rapidly changing employee benefits and break away from the traditional product boundaries still ingrained in legacy systems. Robust digital and mobile capabilities are also becoming increasingly necessary with so much remote work happening on both the carrier and employer side, which industry standard legacy systems are not equipped for.

The Future of Employee Benefits

In 2021, we’ll continue to see a growing focus on employee peace of mind as employers put new initiatives in place and seek to offer new benefits to ensure employees show up to work as their best selves. This means carriers will need to expand their product range and streamline their processes in order to keep up with the new demands from employers and their employees.

Most current insurance core systems are designed to meet immediate business requirements at best, with small regard for where our market is headed in the foreseeable future. As the employee benefits space begins to make changes to accommodate employee wants and needs, carriers will need to adapt and implement new technologies in order to provide more modern, people-centric offerings.

Chuck Johnston is chief marketing officer of FINEOS. Chuck can be reached at [email protected]

© Entire contents copyright 2020 by InsuranceNewsNet.com Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted without the expressed written consent from InsuranceNewsNet.com.

 

Older

Hall Of Shame Showcases $80B Pandemic Of Insurance Fraud

Newer

NCOIL Adopts Transparency In Dental Benefits Contracting Model Act

Advisor News

  • U.S. markets close flat as more positive inflation data rolls in
  • 69% of Americans concerned about their current financial situation
  • Expand your Social Security knowledge with these four terms
  • FINANCIAL FOCUS: Are you properly insured?
  • Liz Weston: 3 ways to fight inflation and win the long game
More Advisor News

Annuity News

  • National Western Life introduces new fixed indexed annuity, NWL New Frontiers
  • Jackson National announces second quarter 2022 results
  • Brighthouse Financial adds to Shield Level annuity suite with new product
  • Prudential FlexGuard reaches $10B total sales milestone at record pace
  • Retirees can rely on annuities as a source of guaranteed income for life
More Annuity News

Health/Employee Benefits News

  • UnitedHealthcare introduces new business unit Surest
  • Texas lawmakers ask feds to reconsider Medicaid expansion proposal
  • Plan to help poor Mississippians with health insurance stripped from latest federal bill
  • Giannis Antetokounmpo invests in telehealth company
  • Drug companies are warning that pricing reform spells doom. Don't fall for it
More Health/Employee Benefits News

Life Insurance

  • Alex Murdaugh petitions to delay Mallory Beach trial amid murder charges
  • Sales of life combination products rebound in 2021, LIMRA reports
  • Integrity Marketing Group acquires Richman Insurance Agency
  • How to get the most out of Life Insurance Awareness Month
  • Life application activity down in July, MIB Index reports
More Life Insurance

- Presented By -

How to Write For InsuranceNewsNet

Find out how you can submit content for publishing on our website.
View Guidelines

FEATURED OFFERS

Get Linked INN to your industry Connect with INN on LinkedIn to be first on all the news and insights that matter to your industry.

Press ReleasesAll press releases

  • National Western Life introduces newest fixed indexed annuity, NWL® New Frontiers
  • CybeReady Supports Security Defenses with CISO Toolkit
  • Life and Disability Income Insurance Products from MassMutual Now Available on iPipeline®’s End-to-End Digital Platform
  • Business on the Go with The Crump Mobile App
  • iPipeline® Provides Advisors Excel with Unified Path Toward Accessing Core Data Analytics in Financial Services
Add your Press Release >

Topics

  • Life Insurance
  • Annuity News
  • Health/Employee Benefits
  • Property and Casualty
  • Advisor News
  • Washington Wire
  • Regulation News
  • Sponsored Content
  • Webinars
  • Monthly Focus

Top Sections

  • Life Insurance
  • Annuity News
  • Health/Employee Benefits News
  • Property and Casualty News
  • AdvisorNews
  • Washington Wire
  • Insurance Webinars

Our Company

  • About
  • Editorial Staff
  • Magazine
  • Write for INN
  • Advertise
  • Contact

Sign up for our FREE e-Newsletter!

Get breaking news, exclusive stories, and money- making insights straight into your inbox.

select Newsletter Options
Facebook Linkedin Twitter
© 2022 InsuranceNewsNet.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • AdvisorNews

Sign in with your INNsider Account

Not registered? Become an INNsider.