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Exploring new business frontiers with employee benefits

As you evaluate new opportunities for your business, employee benefits

can be a game changer, and your existing client base may be ripe with opportunities. Tapping into relationships with individual clients who are business owners or decision makers could allow you to make a real difference in their business.

Bolstering those relationships and increasing client retention can help you future-proof your own business and, ultimately, improve insurance and retirement outcomes for a positive socioeconomic impact.

Getting started and finding an employee benefits provider

Nashalin Portrag, Head of FundsAtWork at Momentum Corporate, says the right provider can help you gain a solid understanding of employee benefits to make it easier for you to expand your business into this space. When choosing a provider, look for the following:

• An employee benefits provider who is in touch with the needs of changing workplaces, and has research and data-interpreting capabilities to provide insights that help you offer your clients solutions that add value beyond cost-efficiencies

• Innovation – combining insights, expertise and technology to optimise experiences at every touchpoint

• High levels of flexibility and choice that enable tailored solutions.

Portrag adds that some leading umbrella funds partner with financial advisers through programmes that support and reward them for helping their clients get greater value from their employee benefits through combinedsolution value propositions.

Licensing requirements and legislation

Although the employee benefits industry is highly regulated, it is easy to enter the market. Currently, these are the applicable licences required to sell employee benefits solutions (see full article for table).

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority has made extensive changes to the Policyholder Protection Rules (PPRs) prescribed by the Long-term Insurance Act. The amended PPRs incorporate the principles of Treating Customers Fairly to ensure that insurers offer products thatmeet clients’ and their employees’ needs, keep them informed of their benefits, and provide sufficient and correct advice.

Analysing potential employer clients’ needs

Various factors around clients’ businesses are relevant to the types of employee benefits they may want to provide. As a financial adviser, you will have an active role in helping employers balance the cost of benefits, while offering the choices that employees want and need in a changing world.

There are certain factors to consider that provide a thorough picture of employers’ varying and specific needs when advising them on group benefits for their employees. In short, these include:

• The sector in which the employer operates

• What benefits to offer - appropriate insurance cover, retirement savings, healthcare cover, and employee and employer rewards programmes.

Portrag concludes, “While 2020 hasn’t been easy for you or your clients, employee benefits can help you secure group business and unlock further opportunities with your clients’ employees as individuals. This full circle of recurring business means a group scheme client is a potential client for life.”

Nashalin Portrag, Head: FundsAtWork, Momentum Corporate