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Cliff's Insights Playbook # 6: Know Your Employer

Picture of Cliff Murch Cliff Murch : Sep 23, 2024 1:50:51 PM

Sales Distribution Strategy

Cliff's Insights Playbook # 6: Know Your Employer

You just received an RFP for a 500-life employer group. How will you quickly identify and seize this opportunity?

Proactively identifying opportunities with employers can be challenging if you don’t know where to look. With Benefeature and AskGMS, you can quickly access trusted, robust business intelligence to better understand employer needs and build a comprehensive offering.

By proposing tailored solutions that focus on their specific preferences, you’ll set yourself apart in an increasingly competitive market. I’ve included a couple of market-proven approaches below:

Generate an Employer Profile:

Benefeature offers a powerful employer search tool that allows you to locate any employer that has filed a recent Form 5500 with the Department of Labor. You can run and download comprehensive employer profiles that summarize key aspects of their benefit plans.

These profiles are invaluable for sales and underwriting teams as part of their employer evaluation and assessment process. Benefeature provides details on over 65,000 employers and 290,000 benefit plans.

Marketing Strategies Using Benefeature Employer Profiles and AskGMS Plan Design Benchmarking:

Find Missing Products:

Benefeature summarizes the benefits each employer offers in an easy-to-read format. It also allows you to search for missing products, such as identifying an employer that offers Hospital and Accident supplemental health benefits but lacks Critical Illness coverage.

Locate Employers with High Retirement Plan Loan Activity:

Employers reporting high participant loan activity in their retirement plans may have employees using funds for unexpected medical expenses. Offering Supplemental Health products can help these employees reduce the need for such loans and hardship withdrawals.

Identify Cross-Sell Opportunities Between Group Insurance and Retirement Plans:

Benefeature integrates both retirement and group insurance Form 5500 filings into one platform, enabling brokers and carriers to find employers that use them for retirement services but not for group insurance, presenting key cross-sell opportunities.

Compare Employer Plan Designs with Industry Benchmarks:

Using the industry-leading AskGMS plan design benchmarking feature, you can compare an employer's proposed plan design to industry standards. This helps validate that their plan aligns with competitors and can serve as a market differentiator.

Let’s walk through just two of the approaches mentioned above to better understand your employer; you will need to have a license to Benefeature and AskGMS to follow along.

Know Your Employer Strategy #1:

Generate a Benefeature Employer Profile

1. Log in to Benefeature and select the "Employers" option in the top-left menu. Begin typing the employer’s name in the “Search for employers” field; matching results will appear as you type.

2. Select the appropriate employer from the list. You’ll be directed to the employer’s “Overview” page, where you can also access the “Insurance” summary, a list of “Providers,” and available “Contacts.”

3. Generate a PDF profile by clicking the button in the top-right corner. Once the profile is generated, you’ll receive a notification saying, “Profile ready to download.”

4. The PDF employer profile will include details such as broker and carrier insurance relationships, participant and premium information, detailed plan breakdowns with proprietary premium and compensation benchmarks, and a list of retirement providers.

5. For example, Transamerica might be listed as the retirement provider, while a competitor is noted as the insurance provider.

6. In another case, MMA Securities may appear as the retirement advisor and Principal as the contract administrator, but neither would serve as the insurance carrier or broker of record.

Know Your Employer Strategy #2:

Sell Supplemental Products Based on Retirement Loan Activity

1. Filter employers using the search filters on the left side of the screen. Under "Retirement Plans," select "Add a plan" and choose a "Participant Loan Rate" of 1.5% or higher, which is considered high. Apply additional demographics as needed.

2. For this example, select employers with 100-500 participants in California, reporting a 2% Participant Loan to Asset ratio and not offering any Supplemental Health benefits. This search returned 201 matching employers!

3. Download the prospect list to an Excel spreadsheet by clicking the button in the top-right corner.

4. Suggested narrative for discussing with the employer’s decision-maker:

"In reviewing your data, I noticed your employees have a high level of retirement loan activity."
"This could indicate they’re using retirement savings to cover emergency medical expenses."
"Such withdrawals and loans reduce potential future retirement contributions and earnings."
"Offering Supplemental Health products can help reduce the need for employees to tap into their retirement savings."

Participant Loan Rate = Participant Loans / Assets Under Management

What’s Next?

Start using these tools today! If your sales teams have access to AskGMS and Benefeature, and leadership has emphasized the importance of discovering new revenue sources, following these proven, step-by-step instructions will help you harness the full potential of this business intelligence and drive significant new sales growth.

We want to hear from you! Please share your success stories or feedback with us. Remember, we're always here to support you—whether you need guidance, have questions, or want to explore any of these prospecting strategies in a 1-on-1 session. Feel free to email us or call at 207-618-8792.

Stay tuned! Coming soon:
Playbook #7: Building a Broker Plan

Cliff Murch has spent his career working closely with the sales, marketing, underwriting, and finance organizations of several large group insurance and retirement carriers designing and implementing business and broker intelligence capabilities, traveling across the country meeting with sales teams and broker partners; these proven capabilities have been employed to generate millions of dollars of sales revenue. He has recently founded and now offers consulting services related to these marketing and sales strategies to insurance carriers as well as brokerage firms of all sizes through his consulting firm Insight 360, LLC.