What are Voluntary Benefits? 

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “Voluntary benefits—or supplemental benefits—are products offered through an employer but are paid for partially or solely by workers through payroll deductions. An attractive perk of these benefits is that they can offer individual employees group rates that they would be unlikely to find on their own.”

Why are Voluntary Benefits Important?

Voluntary Benefits are extremely important for employees who want to fill the voids of coverage where their traditional benefits don’t give them the insurance they need based on varying life circumstances, current situations and down the road for those who plan ahead.

A few examples of the more popular voluntary benefits are:

• ID theft protection

• Disability Insurance

• Legal services

• Financial counseling

• Accident Insurance

• Critical Illness coverage
• And even pet insurance

In recent years, voluntary benefits related to the rapidly growing Wellness industry including gym memberships, virtual healthcare access, providing access to a recreation area for employees, among others, have become increasingly common. This is partly due to the well-documented macro effect of an aging population that’s living longer with more chronic conditions that require treatment. Not to mention the fact that employers can also implement these at little to no cost.

Last year alone, the wellness industry was valued at $4.4 trillion and is expected to have a CAGR of 5.29% from 2020-2025. With so much potential, online enrollment vendors that provide quoting and online enrollment for voluntary benefits like these will have a serious upper hand when it comes to winning new business, as these increasingly become more encouraged by employers.

When brokers offer a variety of voluntary benefits, it does a number of things for the employees. First, the employee can save money and enhance their medical coverage by supplementing core medical plans with voluntary products to reduce potential out-of-pocket costs. This sort of flexibility and plan customization allows employees and employers alike to focus on what really matters, the business.

On the employer side, those who provide quality benefits coverage are better able to attract and retain quality employees when they’re committed and more satisfied with their job. Did you know that “62 percent of employees under 50 wouldn’t consider working for a company that didn’t offer voluntary benefits?”. On the contrary, when they’re trying to fill open positions, the availability of voluntary benefits can lead to more competitive applicants, making your team that much more productive.

Today, brokers are turning to voluntary benefits more than ever to grow their business and stay competitive. In the 2018 annual BenefitsPro/Eastbridge Voluntary Benefits survey, it was recorded that 57% of brokers are now either selling or cross-selling benefits, up from 48% in 2015. This percentage has only gone up since and with no signs of a drop-off any time soon; how these voluntary benefits are administered will soon be the main differentiator. Companies offering online voluntary benefits enrollment early on will be able to gain a competitive edge before it’s too late.

With AgencySmart’s new voluntary life plan type with full support in MyBenefitLink, selling voluntary life has never been easier. The new component has built-in logic that calculates the cost per pay period for employee, spouse and child along with an auto-calculation of the reduction formula. We also included our proprietary logic to know the guaranteed limits along with the ability to inform the insured when the evidence of insurability is required. Just another way we try to help our users work smart…AgencySmart!