Group Sales of Voluntary Benefits Services Lag Behind Individual Sales

The shift in voluntary sales from group to individual sales, which began in the last 10 years, continues, as group sales lagged behind individual sales by only $25 million last year. Group voluntary sales were $2.069 billion while individual sales were $2.634 billion.

Source: Source: Eastbridge Consulting Group | Published on August 8, 2011

“As we predicted a number of years ago, the voluntary market is becoming primarily one comprised of group platform products,” says Gil Lowerre, president of Eastbridge. Of the top 15 companies, all have some group products and most are predominantly group or hybrid plans. [Hybrid products are products that are filed on a group platform but have some characteristics that are more common with individual plans.]

Both group and individual plans experienced a decrease in sales for 2010, but the decrease for individual plans was greater than for group voluntary. Individual voluntary sales were down almost four percent while group voluntary was down less than two percent

The U.S. Worksite Sales Report is an annual report conducted by Eastbridge for the past 11 years. The most recent report includes detailed data on the performance of 64 worksite marketing carriers, both group and individual, and represents the largest number of carriers included in any sales report for the industry.