Small Business: Big Benefits with Colonial Life

At this time, I would like to formally begin today's conference and introduce Candice Tennett from score.

Thanks, Eddie. Hello everyone. My name is Candice and I'm the Marketing Manager at score. In just a moment, I will turn things over to Gill with Colonial Life to discuss employee benefits. But before I do, I'd like to chat with you about how you can get free advice on HR strategies or any other business topic or challenge. SCORE is America's Small Business Resource. We offer free advice to those that want to start, grow, or even exit their small businesses. We offer free and low cost workshops online and in communities across the nation. SCORE was formed in 1964 as a resource partner of the Small Business Administration. Since then, We've helped over 10 million people in pursuit of their business goals. We're proud to join the SBA in celebrating this year's Small Business Week. And we're also celebrating our 50th anniversary. That's 50 years of helping aspiring and existing entrepreneurs succeed. Since 2009 alone, we've helped over 200,000 businesses start, helped more than 230,000 businesses increase revenue, and helped create over 250,000 jobs. That's success that our mentors and small business clients are certainly proud of and we're eager to work with you to increase those numbers in the future. But how do we achieve this success? Score offers over 320 chapters with over 11,000 volunteers across the nation providing free mentoring and local educational workshops. We also offer free mentoring and a variety of business tools on score.org. So if you have a question about writing a business plan, developing a social media strategy, analyzing financial ratios, or offering employee benefits, our mentors are here to help. Our volunteers are successful business owners or executives that have walked in your shoes and are willing to share their knowledge to help you avoid common pitfalls and achieve your goals. And it's all for free. In addition to our free mentoring and online and local workshops, you can find a host of free online templates and resources created by our experts and partners. These resources provide the latest information on trends affecting the small business landscape. You can also learn from your peers and local small business roundtables. The biggest benefit of SCORE Mentoring and resources is that you don't have to go it alone. We've got a network of experts ready to help online or in a chapter near you. As you're listening to today's presentation, I encourage you to jot down a few questions, then visit score.org to connect with a mentor that can help you apply ideas presented to your business. But with that, I'd like to turn things over to Eddie and Gill with Colonial Life. Thanks.

Thank you, Candice. Today's presentation will be conducted by Gil Yeomans, Director, Small Market Solutions for Colonial Life out of Columbia, South Carolina. Gil, please go ahead.

Thanks, Eddie. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I just want to let you know I'm actually coming to you from Kansas City where they're having a Small Business Week event today. And it's a really great event. Lots of excitement here. They have a lot of great speakers. If you have any plans to go to the Boston or events in Boston or Washington, D.C. i hope you get the chance to do so because it's really a top notch event. Met a lot of great people today. You're actually not going to believe this, but there are people standing outside the building right now who are not dialed into this webinar. So I was kind of shocked. But they're going to miss out on some really great information that I'd like to share with you. I really want to talk to you about some things that we hope will help you as small employers with your growing benefit challenges. My main objectives today are to explain what voluntary benefits are and how they're important to small businesses and their employees. And also, you might not know this, but you can have as few as three employees and still be eligible for a robust benefits package. So I'm going to kind of go through and lay some statistics on you today. There's going to be some time after the presentation is over for questions, and so we'll kind of move forward from there. So kind of start off with a little grounding on what exactly are small businesses and kind of for what we're talking about today. Starting off the overwhelming incredible statistic is that 98 of businesses in the US have fewer than 100 employees. And if you really kind of made that a little bit larger, net about 90% have fewer than 20 employees. Those small businesses accounted for 60% of new jobs that were created between 2008 and 2010. And as you probably already noticed, if you are a small business owner, small businesses just by their nature are very innovative too. Compared to large companies, small businesses produce 16 times more patents per employee than larger businesses. Some more statistics here for you. Most small businesses, about 80% have fewer than 10 employees. About the same amount are family owned. This is one that really was kind of interesting to me is that they're also very established. So over half have been in business for 20 years or more. But then on the benefit side, less than half of small businesses offer group insurance benefits when they do. Medical insurance is the most common with about 44%. Prescription drugs is next with about 40%. About a quarter of those small businesses offer some sort of dental benefit and then about the same offer life insurance. I just kind of shown you in some real numbers what kind of getting back to that 98% number I was talking about a minute ago, just to show you the impact of small businesses on employment, if you add the numbers up in those first two segments, about 4.6 million companies have fewer than 10 employees. And if you expand that to those with up to 99 employees, there are five and a half million firms employing over 39 people in the United States. So definitely a driver of America's economy. The challenges felt by small business owners closely parallel the pain points cited by big business leaders. Economic uncertainty and of course, finding and keeping qualified workers. And as you probably know, these challenges are more acutely felt by leaders of firms with fewer than 100 employees. Small businesses tend to be led by sole owners who must wear many hats. You've got to be the financial expert, the team captain, and the benefits expert among those. On the plus side, if you're looking at a small business, a smaller size often translates into fewer management layers, which lends itself to faster decision making. Therefore, you have faster change management and creative agility. Some of the challenges can include things like and inability to access needed financing for expansion. So there's about 30% of small businesses that report that they have trouble with that. You have lack of economy of scale. Often, when it comes to keeping up with regulatory and legal changes, smaller companies actually typically pay more employee more per employee in compliance than larger firms. You have difficulty in finding qualified applicants for job openings, which makes retention of current well trained employees a high priority. And of course, with wearing all the hats, it's difficult to find time to focus on employee benefits. The problem with that, however, is that when you ignore employee benefits, it puts small businesses at risk of losing workers and then you lose your competitive edge. In a struggling economy with anticipated new regulatory burdens, small employers are understandably hesitant to add new benefits. The 2013 survey, as you see on the slide here, found only 7% of small firms of those with 100 or fewer employees planned to add an insurance benefit within the next two years, while another 8% were considering it. On the flip side, however, only 1% of firms in the same survey plan to drop a benefit. Oftentimes, if a small business must cut benefits, they tend to drop non medical insurance benefits or find ways to transfer these to the menu of voluntary employee funded choices. The competing demands of operating a small business leave little time for owners to focus on employee benefits. Comparing insurance plans and selecting a benefit package that provides value is complicated and time consuming. As a result, many employers are simply unaware of the options available outside of core health benefits. Voluntary benefits in particular get little attention. While 57% of large employers say voluntary benefits are an important part of their company's benefit strategy, only 31% of those with 500 or fewer employees assign a similar value. That's where there's a gap between what employers think and what employees really value. Most employers believe workers value take home pay over other benefits. There's a huge gap between what employers believe and what their workers say. Employees value non medical insurance benefits and voluntary benefits almost twice as much as what employers believe. Salary remains the top loyalty driver, but the majority of employees in small firms value health and retirement benefits as well. 44% say non medical benefits are also key to keeping them loyal. So that raises the question of why aren't the benefits being offered? The number one reason given is cost, at least from small firms that don't offer benefits. Their health insurance premiums are often significantly higher than large businesses because of the increased risk pool. Like I was saying before, but employers also believe they may not have enough employees to qualify for a group policy, especially firms with fewer than 10 employees. They also perceive plan administration to be too complex or costly. Small firms typically pay more for lesser benefits than what larger companies can offer at a lower price. That's why many small firms offer health, dental and vision and life insurance benefits but think that because of their size, they're unable to offer group benefit options for disability and accident insurance. What employers often don't take into account is the real cost of not providing such benefits, which can lead to unmanaged chronic disease or preventable injury. Employee absenteeism or presenteeism, which is really just employees coming back to work before they're fully recovered, for example from an accident, is more keenly felt in a 20 person shop than in a large business where co workers can step in and fill the gaps when health and disability benefits are too lean or not even offered at all. Employees who can't afford their own insurance don't seek needed care. Their lack of access to preventive and screening services can result in serious conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, which often go undiagnosed until the employee or family member develops symptoms they can no longer ignore. Even when employees are present at work Unmanaged Chronic Disease Lowers Productivity Research demonstrates that up to 60% of the total cost of employee illnesses comes from people continuing to work despite illnesses that reduce their productivity. Employees in small firms that do offer benefits tend to participate at a lower rate than those at larger firms. This is just some statistics that kind of lay the groundwork for you. Employees cites cost as the overriding factor for declining to enroll, but usually cultural myths are a factor in that 20% of those in smaller firms say they're too young to need benefits, compared to just 8% in large firms. There's a strong need for employees to have coverage, as you can see from the statistics on the screen. And got to put a few statistics on here just to make it hard for those people listening to the recorded version later. But you get the benefit since you dialed in here today, so you can see several of the numbers on the screen here. Employees who don't have adequate benefit options. For those employees, an unexpected life event could mean financial ruin for the household, especially for the 36% of workers who report living paycheck to paycheck. More than a third of small business employees are concerned about having enough savings if they're unable to work, and one third is concerned about having enough savings to cover medical costs not covered by their regular health insurance. Voluntary benefits, which are insurance products that workers may buy through their employers at a lower rate than they could get on their own, are a means for small businesses to overcome many common competitive compensation challenges. First is cost. Voluntary benefits are funded in whole or in part by the employee so employers can control how much they want to spend while at the same time adding to the menu of options of benefits available to employees. Moving some benefits to voluntary coverage can also support a health plan design strategy by helping alleviate some of the potential for employees to experience higher out of pocket costs associated with higher deductibles and coinsurance that may be part of a new core benefits plan. Secondly, on here you'll see choice employees insurance needs are unique. By offering a range of low cost options, a small employer can help workers become more engaged in their benefits arrangement to choose options that fit their budgets and life needs. Finally, there's convenience. Qualified benefits carriers can take the burden of employee education, enrollment and administration off of the employer by handling the communication, group and individual counseling and technical details to the experts and allowing the employer to concentrate on his or her core business. So what are voluntary benefits? Basically, they're Insurance products may buy through employers at a lower rate than they could get on their own. They can include everything from identity theft protection to pet insurance, but most are designed to address critical life needs and provide a financial safety net. Group rates, payroll deduction, and the prospect of portability make benefits affordable and attractive.

Benefits.

Employees in small businesses show considerable interest in purchasing additional insurance benefits if they're made available at work. You can see some statistics there on the screen. Short term disability and life insurance are at the top of the list. Baby boomers and younger workers are particularly interested in the choice that voluntary benefits provide and that can translate into greater employee retention. Small business workers who are satisfied with their benefits are more likely to report greater job satisfaction and loyalty. Employees are playing a greater role in making their benefit decisions, yet employees at small firms are less likely to get the information they need to make informed decisions and complete their enrollment. Workers at Smaller firms with 100 or fewer employees consistently report less familiarity with different types of insurance such as life, vision, and disability. When employees don't understand or fully appreciate the benefits available, employers lose an opportunity to improve morale and increase loyalty. Benefits education is more than just a brochure or website. Small businesses can rarely have a dedicated benefits manager who can adequately educate and manage enrollment. Personalized counseling, which is taking into account the individual's financial, health and family situation, requires an understanding of benefits that most small business owners don't have. Voluntary benefits providers are willing and qualified to provide these educational resources for the employer as part of their enrollment services and most importantly, at no cost to the employer. Employees want and need benefits education. 98% of those surveyed said their benefits counseling sessions were important, and 97% said the sessions improved or significantly improved their understanding of their benefits. Almost three out of four small business employees report that they're interested in their employer providing financial education programs, yet only 29% of small employers offer them. You can see how happy it makes them. Look how happy the lady looks on the page right there. She must have just had a benefits counseling session. Entrusting your benefits communication and enrollment to a vendor is a partnership and demands careful evaluation to ensure they're up to the task. So there are several things you want to keep in mind, and I'm just going to kind of walk through them for you. First, you want to make sure they have special experience in the small employer landscape. There's a world of difference between a company with 500 employees and one with 500. Look for a vendor with expertise in businesses that look a lot like yours. You want to find somebody who uses a consultative approach. Your company culture is unique and you want to select a vendor who will take the time to learn your benefits, communication and and enrollment goals and who will work closely with you to be part of your team. Are they well informed, honest, disciplined, creative and open to your leadership? Those are all things you need to be asking. They need to have the ability to make your job easier. A qualified partner can handle the benefits information, education and enrollment process. Check to see if the vendor can verify employee and dependent information to help keep your records current and ensure employees and dependents are eligible for the benefits already being offered. Your benefits providers should be able to bring a range of communication methods from face to face counseling sessions to paper brochures and E based technologies. Materials should be in simple to understand terms that your employees understand. And lastly, they need to have a full portfolio of benefit offerings. You may only be interested in adding a voluntary disability or life insurance benefit this year and next year may bring the opportunity to expand. You want to make sure you're selecting a vendor with a range of benefit offerings that can grow with your needs. Hiring and keeping strong employees is one of the top and most challenging priorities for small businesses. Benefits not only play an important role in keeping employees healthy and secure, but they're also key to attracting and retaining good workers. Slow economic growth can continue to create new challenges for employers who want to offer the range of medical and non medical benefits that their employees want. As HR work increases, a quality benefits carrier can be an effective part of your benefits team, providing benefits communication, enrollment and administration support at little or no cost to you. Voluntary benefits can offer more choices and positively affect employee morale and job satisfaction. Lower cost voluntary benefits such as disability life, accidental injury and critical illness coverage offer an avenue for employers to satisfy employees and balance business needs. So actually I just heard from our technical advisor that I have two more hours to talk about voluntary benefits. Oh actually no. They actually said that we're kind of coming to the end of our time, so that is actually all I had for you today. I just wanted to thank everybody for your time. I want to take some questions in a second and I see there's a few that have come in. I really hope you found the information helpful as you seek ways to keep your small business growing and successful. To learn more about voluntary benefits and how they can help your business, please contact us at Colonial Life at the website on the screen@smallmarketeloniallife.com or our friends at the SBA have also included a couple of very helpful links, especially if you have questions about the Affordable Care act, you can visit sba.gov. For more information and resources. So let's take a look at the questions we have here. Eddie, can you kind of read back the ones that came in?

Absolutely, Gail. Absolutely. I will proceed to read the questions out loud to you here so you can answer them for our audience. Before I do that, I would like to remind our participants that if you would like to submit a question, you may use the Send Note Note icon at the top of your screen or the chat box and simply select all presenters or all moderators there in the drop down box. Again, that's the Send Note icon or the chat box. And please submit your questions to all moderators or presenters Now.

Gil, there have been a few questions.

About whether there will be a recording made available for today's webinar or whether your slides will be available. The SBA will post a recording of today's webinar on their YouTube channel. And closer to the conclusion of SBA Small Business Week, because we have all registered for today's webinar, you will receive an email containing that link where you can go back and watch the webinar on demand. Now we'll proceed to read the questions as they arrive here. Gil how does the new health care law affect small business?

I'm probably not an expert on the new health care law. Our products from Colonial Life are actually voluntary benefits that fall outside the spectrum of the Affordable Care Act. They're not actually health insurance. There things that I talked about like accident coverage or disability, that kind of thing. But I would suggest going to that the link on the screen there the sba.govhealthcare for more information on that. I don't profess to be the the expert on the Affordable Care act though.

Sounds good. Gil, the next question what percentage of a business's annual budget should you allocate for benefits?

Well, I guess that would depend on the business more. What I'm talking about from a voluntary benefit standpoint, usually the I guess part of it is what is they able to what you're able to absorb as an employer. But from the voluntary benefit side it's usually more of an employee paid situation where employees look somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of their income is a normal amount.

Sounds good. There is a question asking if you are able to offer benefits to part time hourly employees.

It will probably depend on the industry what we have. If someone is employed at a workplace, we do offer accident plans other coverage that they can get if they are employed by the business. Especially if there have been if there's a record of Employment usually somewhere in the neighborhood of six months, then they can obtain coverage.

All right, sounds good. Let's see, Gil, what is the smallest number of employees eligible for benefit access? Would a sole proprietorship qualify with plans to expand to an llc? Also, what are costs associated with teaming with an organization like Colonial Life?

Normally, we require that there be three employees to be eligible for one of our benefits packages. There is no cost to teaming with us. As far as the second question goes, a lot of the things I talked about in the presentation, as far as the counseling or having the benefits representative meeting with the employees to talk about their current benefits packages, just really given that benefits, education, those things are provided at no cost. And then really, as long as there's the opportunity to speak with the employee about possibly filling in gaps in their existing benefits package. Thank you.

Gil. There's another question asking if you have any information on child care assistance.

I'm sorry, but I don't. That's kind of out of our scope.

No problem. There is another question asking if you have benefit packages available for businesses with less than five people.

Yes. Yes. If we have three employees or more, then we can offer our products to you.

That sounds good. I'm getting a few more questions asking again about the the recording of today's webinar. Just a reminder that SBA will post a recording of today's webinar to their YouTube channel towards the conclusion of Small Business Week. And as far as some information and some more resources in terms of Small Business Week, you can visit sba.gov and it's going to be there on their front page. Just a quick reminder to all of our participants if you would like to submit a question, you may use the Send note icon at the top of your screen or the chat box and address your questions to all moderators or presenters. Gil, we just received another question asking if you have any packages geared around military hires.

Not specifically. I mean, we do. Our basic avenue would be just business to business. So we would talk to an employer about the possibility of talking to their employees about our offerings and what we could do for them. It's just very minimal requirement of three employees or more. It's all done through worksite marketing. So we don't necessarily do what maybe historically has been known as kitchen table underwriting. It's all done through the workplace, usually through payroll deduction.

All right, sounds good. The next question, what do you suggest to home based or self employed businesses?

Can you repeat that, Eddie?

Sure.

I think it's, I suppose more of a general Question, but it's simply asking what you might suggest to home based for self employed businesses.

Well, I can kind of speak from the viewpoint of colonial life as far as our most popular products are disability and accident. And it kind of goes back to that the point I made in the presentation about presenteeism. And also there's just an overwhelming percentage of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck. If you have, it's just surprising that over half people, half of the people, or 84%, excuse me, of America's workers, have no form of disability coverage. So if you combine those two things, someone's living a paycheck to paycheck and they also don't have disability coverage. Well, what happens if you have someone who uses their body for a living? If someone works in a shop or has some other sort of physical labor and they're injured? There's statistics that talk about the number of medical related bankruptcies and that's just if somebody had something like that happen to them, they would have no income protection. So if I had a small business, the first thing I would look at, especially if I were providing it as an owner, would be offering some sort of disability coverage. Because not only is it important to help your employees protect themselves and their paycheck, but also it's just a great loyalty builder. Where I was talking earlier about how important it is to keep and retain those employees that you maybe spend a lot of money trying to find and hire them or if they left, what it would do to your business. Having disability coverage would be my number one choice. If I had to pick a second one, I would say accident coverage because kind of the same thing if you have something that happens to you just being covered. When I say accident coverage, it's usually what's called an indemnity product. So if you have an accident where you break your leg or break your arm, there would just be a flat amount paid to you based on a menu of items. So different rates for breaking an arm or breaking a leg or some other injury that would help cover your out of pocket medical expenses that maybe your regular medical insurance doesn't cover.

Thank you, Gail. There's another question asking if these benefits are tax deductible.

Yes, some of our products can be offered on a pre tax basis, which is actually one of the even better benefits I didn't really talk about today. And that is the fact that if you pick a product that can be offered on a pre tax basis, then not only can we set up that it's called A premium only plan, we can set that up for you at no cost to the employer. But you're pre taxing the benefits, which also lowers your payroll taxes as an employer. So you might offer voluntary benefits to your employees and they choose them. Even if it's employee paid, it would actually save money for the employer. So not only does it not cost you anything, but it would actually reduce the payroll taxes and you would actually increase your bottom line, which you could turn around and use that as a benefit bank or some other way to supplement what the employees are paying for.

Thank you, Gil. The next question, what would you say is the most popular voluntary benefit that small employers?

Well, I said disability earlier. Statistically, the most popular voluntary benefit is life insurance. A lot of people, especially at small businesses, they probably are hourly employees or they often are. They probably don't have any sort of access to a financial consultant or advisor or anything. And they rarely have any sort of life insurance or even enough life insurance. So the most common one specifically is life insurance. The most common one from our company is disability.

Thank you, Gil. The next question, do you charge a flat rate to the business for your service to their employees?

No, there is no fee charged. Really. All that voluntary benefits providers should ask is that they be able to sit with the employees and maybe see where they have gaps in their coverage. There's no cost to the employer. The way that the products are marketed is just if the employer will allow the benefits counselors to sit with their employees to review their current coverage, maybe even just make them aware of things that the employer is already paying for, they'll do that at no cost. And then it's for them giving the time to the voluntary benefits provider. There's no charge for that. In exchange for letting them talk to the employees about where they might have needs or gaps in their coverage.

Great. The next question asks, typically, what are the premiums paid for disability insurance?

Well, you got me on that one. It would probably depend on the person's income, but I'd hate to give you a number and then it'd be wrong. I apologize. I just don't know the number off my head. If you wanted to send me an email at that small marketoloniallife.com when I get back, I can actually, or even today I can send an email to somebody in the home office and get an answer for that, but I don't know it off the top of my head.

All right, the next question. Do you offer any type of baseline packages that provide two different products together, such as Life and disability.

Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have a special underwriting offer for small businesses and it's really targeted at businesses that have fewer than 100 employees. We have four of our most popular products and Life and Disability are two of those where we. You can combine those and as long as you have minimal participation, usually three people buying at least two different products, then you can get guaranteed issue coverage, which is something that is new to us as a company and also something that's pretty rare to be able to get that kind of coverage for such a small number of people.

All right, the next question. I am planning to hire people that are retired. Are there any problems with that? Are there any special things I need to hear?

No, I would just say if there are products that are age sensitive, such as life insurance, obviously there might be age limits on the issue. Age, but for things like accident and disability, that would not be an issue. I actually had an answer given from one of our reps back in South Carolina who sent me a note. He said that to go back to that disability question you had earlier, there is a wide range and that's probably why I didn't know the exact answer. But disability rates are going to vary based on plan design, benefit amount. Like I was saying, your income is going to help determine how much you're paying for that and then also risk class industry. So if you're in a, if you work in an office versus working in construction, you're probably going to pay less as an office employee than you would as a construction worker. I also misspoke earlier someone was asking how much does someone typically pay for the benefits? I think I said 5%. I apologize, that was just a slip of the tongue. It's actually normally about an hour to two and a half hours of their weekly salary. So just kind of use that as a guideline.

Thank you, Gil. The next question asks, can a self employed individual get voluntary benefits through the business or does he or she have to get these benefits simply as any individual in the public at large?

That is a good question as well. We do have sometimes individuals that purchase the products. Again, I would just suggest maybe contacting me at that small marketoloniallife.com just so we can get your specific situation. Normally we would have three employees to actually consider opening an account. Usually that's our normal means of premium collection is through payroll deduction. And so sometimes that doesn't translate to a sole proprietorship. But if you don't mind, maybe email me and we can figure out the specifics.

All right, the next question. Does your health benefits package also cover dental? Is that part of the basic package?

Actually, that is a great question. We are planning on introducing a dental product later this year, but I don't really have any details about that at this time. Currently we do not.

All right, the next question. Is the three employee minimum a standard requirement of all voluntary benefits partners? I'm starting with two employees as I buy a business and they already have retirement accounts. The seller has more than three employees, but I will only have myself and another staff.

I don't know if I'd say the three employees are standard. I mean, you're welcome to shop around and see if other people would talk to you for, you know, a smaller group like that. All I can know, you know, I know some competitive intelligence, and I know that that's really, from a colonialized standpoint, that's just kind of our forte. We have about 80% of our accounts have fewer than 100 employees. And we're really in that, especially in accounts or businesses with less than 50 employees. There are not that many that are kind of in that space. So, I mean, there are several other providers you're welcome to check with. But I mean, we would. We have special, like I mentioned, the special underwriting offer for small businesses. Things like that that are just. It's just we've been working with small businesses for 75 years and it's just our bread and butter. So I don't know. I guess everybody has competition. But I think that you'll find us right there with the others or right ahead of the others. Kind of put me on the spot. Next question here.

What type of insurance should small businesses look for? Life insurance or accident or a whole package deal?

Well, I mean, we kind of touched on that one a little while ago. I mean, obviously if you're in an industry where you have. Where you're at risk of losing talented employees to other competitors, then if you can afford to maybe share the cost with the employees and maybe go in on two products, then that would obviously increase that loyalty that I was talking about earlier if you offered one. If you're going to offer one or the other. Life insurance and disability are so important in the short term. Disability. If you don't have disability coverage, you're just really at risk. If something happens to you, how are you going to feed your family? That's the only thing I would say about disability insurance. Everybody thinks that they don't need it because they're careful or they work in an office. But if you're out playing rec league basketball with your buddies and you break both arms and you use a computer every day for your, for your job, how are you going to manage until you're back at work? So that's what disability coverage is all about. I think the statistic is that something like one in three people are going to be disabled for at least, I can't remember how many weeks, but at least some period of time during their career. So there's a pretty good likelihood that you're going to. They always say that about insurance is you only need it when you need it. I hope that helps.

Thanks, Gil. The next question here. What is the best split between percentage of cost to employee and cost to employer?

Again, that just depends on you as a business owner. We have plenty of businesses that we work with that all they do is they open the door and let us go talk to the employees. And the employees pay the full cost of the policies. We have plenty of other ones who, maybe they don't offer health insurance anymore, but they take some of that money that they used to pay for health insurance. Maybe their deductibles got too high and they couldn't afford it. So they take some of that money they used to spend and they offer a benefit bank to, to the employees. I mean, there's plenty of different ways you can do it. I can't really. There's not really an across the board answer for that. It's just kind of what is your appetite for as an owner, for participating in those costs with the employee and also. What is the need?

All right, the next question. Do employees have to be W2 employees or do 1099 consultants qualify?

That is a great question. Actually, 1099s can qualify. There's usually, I think one of the questions from earlier, there's a time of service, if you will, requirement. And off the top of my head, I think that that is about six months. So if it's a 1099 who's been with the business for six months or more, and it may be 180 days, I apologize, but it's either 180 days or six months, then we can offer them, they can be eligible for the offering.

All right, the next question. I believe you may have touched on this briefly not too long ago, Gil, but the question asks, are the costs for those voluntary benefits packages usually shared by employer and employee, or is it usually a cost the employee pays?

Yeah, that was one I just kind of answered. It varies. Some places it can be all employee pay or all employee. It can be all employer or it can be a split. It just depends on the business owner.

Thank you. The next question, if the business is decentralized, how do you do the meeting or assessment?

That is a great question, too. Well, if it's decentralized, we can either have someone we actually are a national company. So say if you had one location in LA and one in New York, we could send local people out to do a presentation. We could do a webinar like we're doing today, or maybe just a conference call, but however it would fit your needs. But there's we have representatives all across the country and local offices in every state. So there's a number of ways we can handle that.

All right, the next question. What is the best way to get in contact with someone from colonial life to talk about the specific voluntary benefits needs of my business?

I'm sorry, can you say that one more time? Sure.

What is the best way to get in contact with someone from colonial life to talk about the specific voluntary benefits needs of my business?

Probably the easiest way, especially if you're on this webinar, is just to send me an email@smallmarketcoloniallife.com those will all come to my department, and we're going to go through those. If someone is in Kansas or someone's in South Carolina and they've never spoken to somebody, we'll at least get our local person out to talk to them, see if they can schedule an appointment, just see if it's a right fit for their business. But I can. We're going to take all the inquiries that come from this webinar or this week and funnel them to the local people so that you have somebody you can actually build a relationship with instead of somebody just over the phone.

Great. The next question asks, are there typically annual enrollment periods or can employees add coverages throughout the year?

Typically? I mean, just because to avoid the interruptions of the business. Typically there's an enrollment period each year. But I mean, we definitely are open to adding coverage during the year. Normally there are people whose sole function is to coordinate that type of function. So if you have new hires, especially companies that are bringing on new people during the year, if you just had an enrollment in February and someone's hired in March, and maybe you don't want to make them wait until next February to be eligible for the benefits, somebody could come out to talk to that person or any other new hires, or if they're existing people, they could add a benefit at that time as well. If you were doing business with Colonial Life, you would have a local sales rep working with you, and you would have that person's contact information. You could call them anytime to have them come out for that kind of thing.

All right, the next question. Can you discuss more benefits than the ones already mentioned?

Yeah, I think the main ones I've been talking about were disability, life and accident. Probably our other two most popular are critical illness and cancer. So critical illness would be if you're for things like a heart attack or a stroke, you can buy coverage to pay a flat amount. I mean, one of the main things it offers is maybe you have a $20,000 pace amount. So if you have a qualifying event such as a heart attack or a stroke, then whatever your face amount of your coverage is, you would receive that amount after filing the claim. And that kind of thing goes to help with out of pocket medical expenses, maybe loss of wages from being out of work. There's all the other things that go with having a heart attack or stroke, like being in the hospital. You've got people visiting you that have hotel costs, you've eaten at restaurants, all the kind of out of pocket costs that you incur in addition to that lost income. But cancer and critical illness are probably next to most popular products. We also have Medical Bridge, which is kind of a hospital indemnity plan. It really helps fill gaps. If you have an insurance plan with a high deductible, maybe you have a $2,000 deductible. You have what's called a medical bridge or medical bridge product, where if you're admitted to a hospital, then it pays you a certain amount per day. That fills in some of the gaps instead of having to come out of pocket for those costs.

Thank you. Gil, there's been a question as to the source of the statistics presented during your presentation.

Okay. I think I actually included the source on every slide that we went through. So we had a variety of of statistics in there. A lot of those came from LIMRA studies, which is just really the voluntary benefits industry as just the go to source for statistics like what I was talking about. Some of those came from just kind of flipping through what I have here. We actually did a couple of Harris polls that we paid for as a company, and some of those came from that. A lot of the profile statistics on small businesses were just from 2011 Census Bureau statistics. And then there were a few that came from a few assorted ones that came from different articles that we referenced.

Okay, the next question, as a Business owner, would it be better to offer major medical first or supplemental?

Well, I guess that kind of goes back to the two questions are what can you afford as a business owner? If you can offer medical benefits, I would think that would be the priority, just for competitive reasons. And then the voluntary benefits fill in the gaps. I mean, if you're looking to attract an employee and they have an offer between you and your competitor, and you're offering disability coverage and the competitor is offering full medical plan, then you're probably not going to be competitive there. Obviously, there's things to consider, like the Affordable Care Act. So if they're already. If it's a smaller business and they're already getting coverage through the Affordable Care act, then that maybe is not an issue. So it just would kind of depend on the situation.

All right, there is a question about if you only have independent contractors, can you offer them medical insurance?

Well, I don't know anything about medical insurance. Again, all I'm talking about is voluntary benefits, not medical or health insurance. So someone from our company actually sent me a note earlier that said we. About the 1099 employees, you know, if it's. We've had, it's kind of a special situation, but we've had accounts that I believe have had all 1099 employees, but they all met certain length of employment standards, so they would be eligible. It just kind of depends on a case by case situation. We have an underwriting department that really makes. Makes the call on situations like that. So I wish I could give you a blanket answer, but I can't say a blanket yes, but also can't say a blanket no because there's several examples of both. Thanks, Gil.

And I actually misread that question. It was not asking about medical insurance, just insurance in general.

Okay. Okay.

The next question. What does guaranteed issue mean? Is that something that's important for small employees?

Yeah. So guaranteed issue means kind of going back to the underwriting offer I was talking about earlier. For small businesses, if you have a product that has certain maybe we normally ask health questions that would disqualify a person from receiving coverage. If we meet minimum participation requirements. Like for the small businesses, it's typically three employees participating. If we meet the requirements for those products in this underwriting offer, then the employees get that coverage, what's called guaranteed issue. So they don't have to. As long as we have, like for the offering we have now, as long as we have three people, then they get the coverage for that, regardless of their prior medical history.

Thank you, Gail. Let's see the next question here. Are there tax benefits to the business by offering healthcare coverage other than healthcare.gov?

Well, I can't really speak to health care coverage, but if you're offering voluntary benefits and you are pre taxing those benefits, not only does it increase the employees check, you know, the same way if you have medical insurance, you know you're pre taxing that. So you, if you, if your deduction each week is $100, then your out of pocket is maybe 80. The same way with voluntary benefits, if you're pre taxing the benefits, it's going to be less than the cost of the product that comes out of the employee's check. But then the employer saves the money from payroll taxes because you're reducing the taxable income that's being paid. You're reducing your taxable payroll.

Great. The next question. If a business is operated overseas or if employees are on a work visa, can they qualify?

Typically, no. We would not underwrite anything outside the US or someone who's on a visa.

All right, the next question here. Is enrollment guaranteed to employees? Are costs constant or do they vary according to employee circumstance?

Is enrollment guaranteed? That would depend on if we meet minimum participation requirements. So we normally need three people to participate. And then do the costs vary based on circumstance? The cost of the products are going to vary on things like income. So if disability is protecting your income and someone that makes 100,000 is going to pay more than someone who makes 20,000 things like an accident plan, the price will vary based on if you're doing just covering yourself or if you're covering yourself and a child or your entire family. But the cost is going to vary based on for things like accident, based on who you're covering, or for things like critical illness. The cost is going to vary obviously based on the face amount because if you get higher coverage it's going to cost more. But it also varies based on age. So it's age banded. The rates are age banded.

All right, I believe we have time just maybe one or two more questions here before the top of the hour. Gil, is there an age limit for life and disability insurance?

There is an age limit for life. Again, if you could just email me that question, I can find out specifics for you on that because I can't quote the underwriting requirements as far as disability. I don't believe there's any kind of age banding for that or I'm sorry, any age limit.

All right, and the last question here, Gil, that we'll have time for. Can a company make a standardized plan that it offers as a hiring package?

Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, with our underwriting offer, if you wanted to say, you know, you're going to offer accident and life or accident and disability, you know, if you've met the minimum requirements, you know, you can offer that if you're large enough to participate in it. If you want to say we're going to hire this new person and we're going to, if you come to work for us, we're going to pay for you an X Men policy and life insurance up to this amount, then. Yeah, I mean, of course you can do that.

All right, Gillen, I believe that's the last question. Technically, with the time constraints here that we've been able to get to.

Okay, I did have an answer back on that disability, though. It here's a cap at age 64. I apologize for that. I didn't realize that had a limit. Well, thank you all for your questions. I really appreciate them. If we didn't get to your question today, just go to that. Just send an email to smallmarketcoloniallife.com and I'll be glad to get on that for you and get a response back to you or get in touch with someone if you want to talk to somebody about more information.