Word & Brown to Compete with You for IFP

al3 · 10-13-2009, 07:24 PM

I don't know if any of you use the Word & Brown GA for your group biz, but I do and they are very good. However, I got the this e-blast yesterday.

I saw that they had a new service to sell individual plans through a new company they started called HealthCompare

I spoke with one of their top guys this morning asking why they want to compete with their brokers for IFP. They said that they hired a whole bunch of eHealthInsurance call-center guys, formed a new company around them, and are going to make IFP "available" to companies who have "too many" people on COBRA. Through their Conexis company (large COBRA TPA), they will be contacting ex-employees in YOUR GROUPS in order to "persuade" them off of COBRA and on to IFP.

If you are a group-only agent who does not do IFP, you can turn leads over to HealthCompare and they will give you a 25% split if they close the case for you. (In CA, IFP usually pays 20% of first year premium... so you get 25% of 20%.)

I think it is a smart move for Word & Brown financially (Conexis). Of course it shows a certain lack of "sensitivity" to their brokers who DO SELL individual health care, but when did any carrier or GA really CARE about us brokers? This is a case in point.

I won't be putting any more biz through W&B as I don't want to do business with a GA that competes with me. I have lots of options as there are lots of good GA people in my area... and I can always go direct to the carrier... which on small groups is often easier.

Al

TXINSURANCE · 10-13-2009, 07:53 PM

Correct me if I am wrong didn't Word & Brown by Quotit or am I mixing this up with someone else?
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Nevermind it's in the e-blast... Yes they own Quotit.

al3 · 10-13-2009, 10:18 PM

W&B and Conexis is really going after their broker's client-population big time. Below is the link to the second email I've received in the past two days for this deal.

If you put a group with Conexis, you are basically giving them permission to solicit the employees for IFP.

Read it yourself and see if you agree. YMMV.

This Conexis/HealthCompare thing makes Ceridian andAmeriflex look a lot "safer" to me and my book of biz. I really like the W&B service, but I won't use it anymore. Fortunately we have a LISI GA gal in my area who has a hundred years of group experience and TTBOMK is not trying to compete with me!

I'm sending (faxing) a letter to all my groups that are on Conexis telling them to tell their COBRA "employees" to talk with ME first... before the eHealth call-center drones latch on to them because I know what I'm doing... and HealthCompare $10/hr. drones do not. I figure that if W&B wants to mount an attack for my clients that I better "shoot back" ... and I may not be so hot with a gun, but W&B is no competition to me when it comes to words on paper!

Al

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency

mayhem87 · 10-13-2009, 10:35 PM

Thank you for this information. I have been using Word and Brown for the past year now and am supposed to have lunch with Jeff Miller (Regional VP) tomorrow. I will make certain to ask him why they feel they need to intrude on our book of business.

al3 · 10-13-2009, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by mayhem87

Thank you for this information. I have been using Word and Brown for the past year now and am supposed to have lunch with Jeff Miller (Regional VP) tomorrow. I will make certain to ask him why they feel they need to intrude on our book of business.

Let us know what he says.

I don't want to sound like W&B is "evil" because I've had good results with their GA services in the past, and I also write Cal Choice and KP Choice... both good products for my small-group market.

However, this decision by Conexis (A W&B company) seems to me to be very anti-broker and I think it is short sighted to compete with your sales channel... especially when their weapon of choice is the eHealth model... which we all know is not exactly the most client-centric one out there (putting it politely.)

Perhaps the solution for those who want to use W&B is to not use Conexis. W&B gives a free POP to most (all?) groups if requested by the agent or client and that is how Conexis gets their "hooks" into a group. However, even if you don't use Conexis, by writing your group with W&B you are still putting money into a parent company who seeks to compete with you. We do that with some carriers who have in-house sales teams, but we have little choice with them. We have a lot of choice as to which GAs we use.

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency

smarterfaster · 10-14-2009, 04:55 PM

I'm confused. My understanding is they are NOT going to go after small group businesses online. I checked and it's true. You can not get a small group quote (unlike ehealthinsurance). I think selling to the IFP people that fall off group is pain in the you know what. I'd rather let them do that for me especially since as Conexis they have better access to them and while my piece of pie may seem smaller, I get bigger pie. But I guess if you love selling IFP and sell a ton of it, you'd be mad. I don't think W&B has many top IFP brokers going through them so that's probably why they aren't able to take care of the people who can't afford cobra. I heard they have an affiliate program so that if you are good at the internet thing you can now get paid in states you aren't listed in. Not sure how that would work but I've been checking out their quotit platform that could help.

GreenSky · 10-14-2009, 05:02 PM

The issue is that W&B will be going after YOUR clients without permission. I have no problem with this if they would send a list of groups/individuals and ask if you agree to have them contacted.

The bottom line here is that it would appear that W&B is no longer honoring the fact that these clients belong to agents, not to them.

It will be moot in 3 years when we all watch our clients enroll in Obamacare.

Rick

mayhem87 · 10-14-2009, 11:04 PM

Here is my update after the lunch.

I was told that you can actually opt out of having Conexis do this. It is designed for the brokers that do not wish to get involved in the IFP market. Jeff said all a broker would have to do is contact their W&B rep and tell them they do not wish to have Conexis call on the Cobra members.

Believe it or not there are some brokers that rarely contact groups and could careless if a member is on cobra or leaves. At least this way they would earn something for doing nothing.

Jeff might have a W&B rep actually join the board to clarify more on this. He agreed there is a lot of rumors going on about this and that there does need to be some further clarification.

leftsided · 10-15-2009, 04:35 PM

Something that comes to mind is how exactly will "Health Compare" be contacting the COBRA eligible employee? From my understanding, due to privacy, this data is only accessible for the actual administrator to send out the enrollment packets, nobody else. So........if another company, aka Health Compare, is soliciting alternatives, how do they get this data?