BeamaLife Blog

In the December issue of Employee Benefits Advisor magazine, a survey of 4,500 employers found that 2010 will be a good year for your employee benefits in lots of ways.  Most employers remain committed to keeping their benefits plans robust, offering medical and dental, vision, life insurance, short and long term disability insurance.

Here are the highlights you should know about:

• 82% of employers plan to keep their contributions levels the same for employee medical insurance in 2010.  With premium increases in the double digits, this is definitely good news for employees.
• 97% of employers do not plan to make any changes to their dental coverage in 2010.  Dental premiums are not rising as fast as those for medical insurance, but this also great news for employees. 
• Very few employers plan to add vision coverage this coming year, while a small percentage are actually considering dropping the coverage to save money.  If you have health insurance, you probably have some vision insurance as well.  I suggest employers make vision coverage voluntary – make it available for employees who want to pay for the benefit themselves.
• 90% of survey respondents indicated that they offer life insurance, and another 8% said that they intend to add life insurance in 2010.  This is great news, as the number of Americans with adequate life insurance is really quite low.  As I’ve written before, however, if your employer offers voluntary group life insurance, it may actually be less expensive to buy the same amount on your own.  Get the term insurance insurance or whole life insurance you need, and be smart about how much you pay for it!
• 90% of employers that currently provide long term disability insurance coverage are planning to keep it in 2010, but only 4% of companies that don’t offer it now are planning to add it.  Whether your company offers it now or not, you should have right amount of disability insurance coverage.  Please call (866) 972-3262 to speak with disability specialist about supplement coverage if you have disability from work or new your own coverage if you don’t have any protection.
• Short Term Disability is the least likely to be added in 2010.  Most disabilities are short term – less than 90 days in duration.  But that’s enough time to ruin your finances.  Protect yourself, even if your employer is already providing you with some short term disability.

The majority of Americans get the majority of their some financial services through their employers, so it’s great that companies are still willing and able to fulfill that role.  My advice is that what your employer offers should be your starting place – not the end of your financial planning journey.   visit BeamaLife for Term Life Quote, Whole Life Quote, Disability Insurance Policy, Long Term Care, College Savings and Retirement Savings – and make 2010 your best year ever!