Opening up flex and voluntary cover to SMEs

One of the key trends in the employee benefits market is the growth of flexible and voluntary benefit schemes.  Where once only large companies could afford to set up the infrastructure necessary to run such schemes, software – middleware is the jargon – is fast becoming available in forms affordable for companies of all sizes.  We are supporting this movement  – after all there needs to be a product to serve this – by offering life and CI flex/voluntary products to schemes of all sizes. 

For advisers who have invested in the middleware to operate these schemes, our online quotes now provides flex and voluntary variants of our group life and group critical illness  products. If your middleware can handle the basics of running flex schemes, we would be delighted to switch on the flex quotes facility, giving you instant online quotes for flex and voluntary group life schemes with up to 500 members or group critical illness ones for up to 300 members.

We have also completed the automated process that allows our group risk administration to send/receive data to/from benefit platforms.  Our latest live links are to the Staffcare software  used by many advisers and JargonFreeBenefits.  This gives a real productivity dividend for all, particularly your clients 

·         Data updates driven automatically from your client’s payroll system

·         All accounts reconciled in the current month

·         Client pays for the cover – by DD – at the time they have it

·         No messy annual reconciliations

·         Totally secure data transfer

·         No backdating of medical underwriting decisions

·         Process efficiencies, ensures sustainably competitive premiums in the long term

Both these initiatives reflect our intention of becoming the group risk insurer of choice for flex and voluntary schemes.

 

Ed Bryan

Head of Distribution