The growth of voluntary products over the past few years hasbeen consistent. Year over year, the growth rate is in the 3percent to 5 percent range. This growth has been fueled by morebenefit brokers offering voluntary and by employers adding morevoluntary products to their benefits.

A recent study found that two-thirds or more of employers whooffer voluntary products, regardless of size, offerthree or more traditional voluntary products to their employeesand, among these, about one quarter offer six or more. As the graphbelow shows, fewer than 20 percent of employers offering voluntaryoffer just one product.

But the trend towards offering more products is even morepronounced when we look at both traditional voluntary benefits aswell as non-traditional products (pet insurance, IDtheft, and legal). Now we see 30 percent of the employers who offervoluntary are offering six or more products.

Almost 1 in 10 employers offer one or more of thesenon-traditional plans, but when you look at the large employers(1,000 or more employees), that percentage almost doubles.

More and more brokers are suggesting non-traditional products,even where only a minority of employees in a case want to purchasethem.

If you aren't offering your voluntary clients a full array ofboth traditional and non-traditional products, you are leavingyourself open to someone else coming in and suggesting them to yourclients. With a significant percentage of employers (anywhere from20 percent to 40 percent, depending on the size of the group)considering adding more voluntary benefits over the next one to twoyears, the opportunity for non-traditional product sales is there.Will you take it?