Asking the right questions about wellness benefits

Sometimes the right answers come from asking the right questions. There’s a big difference between asking my kids, “What time do you want to go to bed?” and asking them “Isn’t it time for bed?” I may be getting at the same thing in both cases, but I can tell you from experience that one of those questions gets much better results. 

When it comes to benefits, one of the questions brokers run into all the time is: what carrier offers the right wellness benefit? Simple enough on the surface, but when that question inevitably pops up, are you asking the right questions to get to the best answer for clients? How do you define best? What questions do you ask to get to the information you need? There’s plenty of nuance there, so below are a few of the overlooked questions brokers might want to ask when it comes to wellness.



Question 1: How much will the carrier pay AND how often?

Now, this is an obvious one, but there’s nuance to the question which is why there are two parts. You can’t just look at benefit amounts and call it a day. In addition to how much a policy will pay, there’s the question of how often. 

If a plan pays multiple times over the course of years, then there’s more value than one that only pays as couple of times throughout the life of the policy. You’d rather have 10 singles than one five dollar bill, right? For many, this isn’t just a calculation about their own health, but their family’s health. So, looking at what kind of payments are being made for spouses and children is going to paint a much different picture than the individual buying the policy.

Question 2: Do the benefits align with real world scenarios?

A little while ago, a colleague of mine here at Trustmark wrote a great article on how the world of insurance and the world of medicine aren’t always aligned. There can be a similar principle at play here with wellness. Sure, a policy might have a rich benefit for a rare test or screening and, yes, it might look good on the spreadsheet, but how does it align with customer needs?

In addition to how much a wellness benefit pays, its important to think carefully about what’s covered. Do the benefits align with how customers live and how they would use their benefits. For example, routine physicals – how robust is the coverage there? Since it’s a commonly-used benefit, it should be well covered. And, returning to that first questions we asked, it shouldn’t just be well covered, it should offer multiple payments on those benefits since they’re commonly used year-over-year. It’s a much more valuable and realistic path to delivering a quality wellness benefit.

Question 3: What does the claims process look like?

This isn’t something you’ll find in a policy’s details, but it’s a critically important question to ask. You know what wellness benefit provides the least benefit? The one that doesn’t pay because you can’t file a claim. A wellness benefit can’t provide much protection if filing claims is exceedingly difficult. In fact, recent research from Trustmark found that paying claims quickly and accurately is a number one motivating value proposition when choosing a carrier.¹

Of course, there are a lot of tried and true methods for evaluating wellness benefits and benefits in general. I’m not suggesting we discard those entirely. But, much like medicine, insurance policies should always be evolving. And, with that, the questions we ask and the ways we look at policies should evolve too. That’s the best way that we can deliver the right products to employers and the right protection for their employees.

¹Trustmark and C+R Broker Research. 2020.