America's Benefit Specialist December 2022

VOLUNTARY DISRUPTION

let’s face it, as important as they are, it’s tough to get people excited about things like life insurance, critical illness and accident plans when open enrollment rolls around. If 70% of a client’s workforce has a pet at home, it’s a safe bet that 70% of those peo ple’s smartphone camera rolls are filled with pictures of Fluffy. As such, marketing a pet benefit is much more likely to resonate with the broader employee base than weighing the risks of an uncertain future. In my experience, enhanced benefits of any kind need to fulfill three important criteria: They must be highly applicable to the workforce, easy for employees to understand, elect and use, and cause little to no operational friction for employers (and brokers) to implement. Unfortunately, this is where most traditional pet insurance offerings fall short. Policy exclusions and individually rated plans make for a com plicated and confusing enrollment process, which prevents true integration with most benefits platforms and limits employee participation rates. There are a number of terrific solutions in the marketplace, and I encourage you to do your own research, but I often get asked which one(s) I like to use. I’m a big fan of pet benefit programs that are not fully underwritten and one of the top companies my brokerage and I have found great success with is a boutique firm out of Arizona by the name of United Pet Care, or UPC for short. From what I can tell, it operates as the industry’s first “HMO for fur-ba bies”—meaning, unlike most traditional pet insurance, UPC works for all pets, regardless of age, breed or pre-existing conditions. The company has a flat-rate pet healthcare mem bership program that integrates directly with many of the leading ben-admin enrollment platforms, which allows employees to enroll directly within the open-enrollment flow. I’ve seen strong participation in every case I’ve placed them, and I make sure my advis

FROM THE BACKYARD TO THE BOARDROOM: WHY PET BENEFITS ARE NO LONGER OPTIONAL

More working Americans require pet care than vision care. Employers that want to attract and keep top talent must provide benefits for all family members, even the fur-babies. The way we see pets and their roles within families has greatly shifted. This shift has important implications for employers and brokers committed to offering a competitive benefits package. Today’s pet ownership comes with a desire to provide a healthy and happy life for those pets and we’re seeing more gourmet pet food, pet-friendly hotels and premium medical care than ever before. These past few years have marked a seismic shift in pet ownership—both in raw numbers and in the intensity of bonds we’ve formed with our animals. In 1988, 56% of U.S. homes owned a pet, a number that has risen to more than 70% (more than 90 million U.S. households) in 2022. This is in large part due to the 23 million new pets that have entered Ameri can households since March 2020. It is no surprise this shift can mostly be credited to the pandemic. Many Americans turned to pets as their primary companions and key supporters in mental health and well-being during a very challenging time. This sudden change revealed a gap in many employers’ benefit offerings: More working Americans require pet care than they do vision care, yet for many companies and brokers, pet was still considered the most ancillary of ancillary benefits. With 95% of pet-owning households considering their pet to be a member of the family, employers that want to attract and keep top talent must provide benefits for them. As brokers, we are constantly challenged to keep our clients and employees alike engaged with relevant, cost-effective and operationally efficient benefits options. And,

By Eric Silverman Silverman Benefits Group Towson, Maryland eric@voluntarydisruption.com

benefitspecialistmagazine.com | ABS 33