December 21, 2023 • 22 mins
Have you ever wondered how to provide better coverage for your employees beyond the traditional group insurance plans? Well, in this podcast episode, Bob Gaydos from Pendella, shares his insights on why individuals should have access to individual life and health insurance coverage.
With a background of 33 years in the life and health space, Bob is an innovator who has been at the forefront of creating innovative solutions for employee benefits. He discusses the challenges of relying solely on employer-provided group insurance, which often falls short in terms of coverage. Bob explains that the problem arises from the fact that most Americans get their benefits, including life insurance, through their employers. This system was never intended to be the only source of life insurance, and it often leaves individuals with inadequate coverage.
So, if you're looking to offer your employees better coverage and more flexibility, Pendella's innovative solutions might just be the key. Give this podcast episode a listen and discover how individual life and health insurance can make a significant difference in the lives of your employees.
It's time to rethink traditional group insurance and explore the world of individual coverage.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:25):
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Bob on fromPindella and we'll be talking
about the use case of thebusiness case for why customers
and prospects pick his company.
So why don't we do introductionsfirst.
Bob, tell us a little bit aboutyourself and
Bob Gaydos (00:42):
Pindella.
Well, I've been in the life andhealth space selling mainly to
employers for like 33 years.
Can you believe that?
William Tincup (00:53):
At one point we stopped saying years.
I know.
Have you noticed that?
At one point?
A long time.
Long time.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Longer than I care to admit.
Bob Gaydos (01:02):
I've always been an innovator in the space.
Um, in the nineties we weredoing level funded health plans
before anybody knew what levelfunded health plans were in the
two thousands, I innovated bycreating a company called Choice
Care Card, and we were one ofthe first HRA debit card based
HRA in the United States.
And then in the 2010s, Iinnovated by getting involved
(01:24):
with companies like MaxwellHealth and Limelight Health and
creating technology for thegroup market.
So I've always been an innovatorin this space, um, of employee
benefits.
Uh, of course that, you know,brings me into lots of
relationships with, uh, the HRpeople over the, over the
decades.
William Tincup (01:44):
That is fantastic.
And now Pindella, what do you,what do you, uh, what do you do
there?
What's the, why, why do we have
Bob Gaydos (01:51):
Pindella?
That's a great question.
And I actually wrote thebusiness plan in 2010.
Hard to believe.
Oh, all right.
I thought about it during whenthe Affordable Care Act, when
it'd be, when the AffordableCare Act was passed, that's when
I realized that maybe we couldgo back to the future.
And here's what I mean by that.
The problem, the reason why weexist and the problem that we're
(02:12):
trying to solve is this, youknow, most Americans, as we
know, get their benefits fromtheir employers, including their
financial protection of lifeinsurance.
And in fact, for the majority ofAmericans, the only life
insurance they have is theemployer provided group term
insurance.
That's an accident.
It was never supposed to betrue.
(02:34):
And the problem with that isthat the group insurance many
times is inadequate.
Um, you know, maybe it's only50, 000 base or one time salary,
and even if you can buy avoluntary buy up, it might be
capped at 500, 000, which issimply not enough coverage in
today's world.
Right.
And it still has a leftoveroddity, which is the spouse can
only get half of whatever theemployee has.
(02:55):
Like, somehow that makes sense,which it doesn't.
Um, and of course it's notportable.
And, you know, look, 30 yearsago, we didn't change jobs.
That's right.
Now we change jobs every twoyears.
Right?
30 years ago, my mortgage was35, 000.
Now the average mortgage is 400,So, it's really a tough place
(03:15):
that we're in.
And so, what I realized backthen was that the only way the
Affordable Care Act was going tobe implemented was online.
We had to create What is now,you know, Online Benefits
Administration, right?
And that would create a virtuallunchroom where you could go
back to the future, because alot of people don't know what
happened.
(03:36):
I've been in this business longenough to know what happened.
If you go back into the early1990s, Every life insurance
company in America had a healthinsurance plan.
Every one of them.
Guardian, MassMutual, Principal,Northwestern, you name it.
And they were using healthinsurance as a loss leader to
get into the lunchroom so theycould sit with the employee and
(03:57):
introduce them to the individualprotection of life insurance or
disability or even individualretirement accounts.
Well, they all got out of thatbusiness because once the state
started reforming health care,they just, they got out so fast.
It was unbelievable, right?
And so suddenly they didn't haveaccess to everyday Americans.
And also, the other thing thathappened at the same time was,
(04:19):
and this is, you know, thereason why a lot of HR people
think you're never bringingindividual life insurance back,
is the carriers started takingblood and urine from everybody
because of the AIDS epidemic.
And I remember, I mean, youknow, we were trying to do it,
like we would go to thelunchroom and we would bring a
nurse.
And the employers were like, getout of here.
What are you doing?
(04:40):
Right.
You're taking blood and urinefrom my employees in order for
them to get life insurance.
Get out of here.
And so we just defaulted to thegroup market and it was
guaranteed issue and it was easyand it worked for a while, but
it doesn't work anymore.
Right.
So what I looked at thesituation, said, okay, we're
going to go online.
That's going to create virtuallunchrooms.
The carriers are going to startusing big data.
(05:03):
Big data will eliminate the needfor the blood and urine, and we
can go back to the future and wecan bring individual life
insurance, individualdisability, and other individual
products to the employee in theemployer setting.
And this will be a great thing.
So that's, that was the idea.
Okay.
Now it just took forever to gethere.
(05:23):
You know, um, the market, youknow, it took a long time for
the market to get online.
Now every, all employers useonline benefits, payroll, HR
now, right?
Nobody did 13 years ago, right?
Right, right, right.
The carriers, you know, 13 yearsago, they were definitely afraid
of big data.
Now they're all using it in someway, shape or form.
And some of them are using itgreatly.
Yeah.
And so we finally got to thepoint where we can do it, right?
(05:45):
Where we can get ourselvesembedded into that platform,
benefits, payroll, HR platform.
And bring important individualplans, individual policies to
those employees, to theirspouses, to their children.
365 days out of the year,because it's individual, right?
They get a ticket with them.
You know, it's like people sayit's a portable.
(06:07):
It's individual.
By definition, it's
William Tincup (06:09):
portable.
That's right.
That's right.
So the, what are the offeringsthemselves?
What's the array?
What are, where are we, whereare we starting to stop?
What's the Well,
it's
Bob Gaydos (06:18):
a great question.
When we, we ran a pilot in 2017and we quickly realized that you
couldn't have one product fromone carrier because people come
in all shapes and sizes with alldifferent needs and you know,
very few carriers have anappetite for everything.
Right.
So we, we have several carriers.
I think we have like sevencarriers on the platform
(06:41):
digitally end to end right nowand a variety of products.
So we, you know, 10 level term,10 to 40 years, decreasing term,
uh, whole life, you know, weeven have individual disability
final expense because, you know,look, sometimes that's all you
can, sometimes people.
That's all they're going to getis the final expense plan,
because they're unhealthy, butwe're going to bring something
(07:03):
to them, right?
So we had to build an array ofproducts.
And once we started building thearray of products, we realized
that we had to build what wecall our recommendation engine,
which is a field underwritingmachine.
Because what is a human agentsupposed to be doing?
A human agent is supposed to beassessing the person's risk and
assessing their financialsituation.
(07:24):
Right.
And so we do that.
We take in self reported data,system data, and big data in
order to make the properrecommendation, right?
Am I talking to a healthy singlemother who rents?
Or am I talking to a 50 year oldempty nester who's got a health
issue and owns his house?
Who am I talking to, right?
Because those are very differentpeople with very different
(07:45):
needs, and their underwritingjourney will be different.
Um, so it's a variety ofproducts.
We can write as little as 10,000 coverage, as much as 3
million in coverage.
The spouse, the children.
You know, all of them.
We try to have it be instantissue as much as possible.
That's not always possible.
Sometimes people are outside ofinstant decision either because
(08:07):
of a significant health issue orthey have significant needs.
I can get I can get 2 millioninstant issued on a 40 year old,
but I can't get 2 millioninstant issued on a 60 year old.
Right.
Right.
They're going to have to go intosome type of underwriting.
Those are
William Tincup (08:22):
different, uh, actuarial
Bob Gaydos (08:23):
tables.
Exactly.
Very different people.
William Tincup (08:26):
Right.
So, the benefit to the employer,I mean, I would assume that
you're selling into HR, and thenyou get into benefits and comp,
or even total rewards, whatever.
Um, what's, how do you sell itinto them?
Like, what's the uptick?
Bob Gaydos (08:45):
Yeah, there's two things.
One is easy and fast, which isonce you have a conversation
with any HR person, they knowthat that group term is
inadequate.
They know, right?
Right.
Okay.
They just didn't know there wasa solution because whenever,
when they, when an HR personhears individual life insurance,
what they, what they hear is,The old fashioned way of
(09:07):
somebody comes to your house andyou're going to have this agent
and then you're going to, youknow, they hear that old process
and they're like, no, I don'twant that.
And so once we explain to them,no, it's digital, it's embedded
into your platform and it'sgoing to be convenient and all
that, you get over that.
And so that allows them to justdo one very important thing,
which is bring better coverageto them.
(09:30):
Now what's evolving, and I thinkit'll evolve.
Quickly in the next few years,as you have different companies
now starting to use lifestyleaccounts.
I think lifestyle accounts are abig part of the future of
employee benefits.
Um, just give people money andlet them take care of
themselves.
Right?
(09:50):
Right.
Um, and then, you know, what doyou care whether, if you give
them a lifestyle account andit's 2, 000 and they decide to
take 500 of that and buy anindividual policy, that's great.
Let them do it.
Right?
Um, and I think that becomes arecruiting tool now to say,
well, we, we do have lifestyleaccounts and you can do all
sorts of things with thelifestyle accounts, including
use it towards individual lifeinsurance.
(10:13):
Now, it may evolve to the pointwhere it really was in the 70s
and 80s, which was the baseinsurance was individual
insurance in the 70s and 80s.
Right.
Um, where that employer said,I'm going to give you 50, 000,
it was individual, but that'sgoing to take several years
because it's going to take awhile for the big data
underwriting to get to the pointwhen it can spread the risk
(10:36):
enough to guarantee issue a baseamount of individual coverage
across the entire employee base.
But I think it will get there,but it'll take a while.
What I
William Tincup (10:44):
like about this is, uh, you know, this is
something you could see atleast, uh, years ago, this would
be afforded to executives.
Bob Gaydos (10:51):
Yes.
William Tincup (10:52):
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
And, and now you've, you've madethat available to everyone,
everyone that's, everyone thatworks there, which, which again,
I think is great as a retention.
You said recruiting, uh, it'sgreat as an engagement, uh, uh,
apparatus.
It's great as a retentionapparatus.
Uh, people feel safer.
I think when they feel safer,uh, they probably do better
(11:15):
work.
I don't have any data on that,but it's just my gut.
Tells me that they're not asstressed, uh, because they feel
like there's a security blanketfor their, for their family.
So I love that.
Um, what's been your take on,and well, let's do buying
questions first, because I thinkthis is more important.
What are questions if they'venever done this before, if
(11:38):
you're interacting with a CFO orCHRO or somebody like that, and
they've never bought thisbefore, what are some of the
questions that they should beasking you?
Bob Gaydos (11:49):
Well, the biggest thing they've got to, well, the
hurdle usually they get over is,um, there's, they're like, well,
I've never really promotedindividual products out to my
employees before.
Right, right.
It's like, well, why is that abad thing, right?
And they're kind of like, well,I guess it's not, right?
(12:09):
Because their minds are stillkind of stuck in the past of,
you know, I've got everything ona group chassis and if they
leave, they don't get to take itwith them.
And it's like, you know, welcometo today's world.
They're going to leave.
They're not going to stay withyou for 30 years.
They're going to leave andgiving them flexibility and
giving them individual productsand individual choices is
actually far more important thansome golden handcuff that just
(12:32):
isn't going to be there anymore.
And that does mean that nowyou're going to start
communicating with them in a waythat you haven't communicated
with them before, right?
You're, you're used tocommunicating one thing right
now, which is, Hey, it's openenrollment, go, go enroll in
open enrollment and that's it.
And they go through a process,but these are individual
policies.
They can buy 365 days a year andpeople's lives changed 365 days
(12:56):
a year.
So one of the biggest thingsthat we say to them is we would
like to take your data, youremployee data and analyze it
and, and do some targetmarketing with them.
Um, if we know that.
These are the people that boughta house in the last 90 days, and
these are the people that had akid in the last 90 days, and we
should reach out to them and letthem know that.
Send them a company emailsaying, hey, don't forget, you
(13:16):
can buy individual lifeinsurance.
And that's something differentfor them.
They haven't really thought itthrough, right?
And, um, but I think it'ssomething important.
That if you're going to, ifwe're going to move into this
world of individuality aroundbenefits, which certainly
lifestyle accounts is doing,then the data is the key to
telling you what it is that theyneed.
(13:37):
Use that data, right?
Um, so the biggest thing that Ithink that I've seen people get
hung up on is, um, Yes, Bob,this makes perfect sense.
We know our group coverage isn'tadequate.
You're not telling us to get ridof the group coverage.
You're telling us that thisshould go on top of it.
But we're not used tocommunicating to people in this
way.
Right.
(13:57):
Um, and that doesn't mean it's abad thing.
It's just they have to change alittle bit.
Yeah, but it's,
William Tincup (14:02):
uh, you know, to me, it's, again, getting over
kind of, uh, how we've done itall, how we've done it before
is, is the need for the auditfrom the audience and in this
case, the employees to have itpersonalized to them.
Yes.
You know, they, they, they don'twant this.
You know, I used to tell peoplewhen I did marketing, if, if the
(14:23):
respondent ever feels likethey're one of 85, 000 people
that got the email, it's DOA.
So, it's, it's similar in thesense that, like, you can use
those specific life events astriggers to then say, hey, know
that you did this.
By the way, you're alreadythinking about this, here's an
(14:44):
option.
And again, that's, to me, that'sa better employee experience.
So when we talk about EX, likethat's just a better employee
experience and journey that likethe company actually cares
enough.
to care about what's going on inmy life and then give me
suggestions that make sense atthat particular
Bob Gaydos (15:03):
moment.
Uh, absolutely.
That's the premise of what we'retrying to do, but it is
different, right?
They're used to saying one thingonce a year, it's open
enrollment time.
Right.
William Tincup (15:16):
And that's, and that's not even done well, but
Bob Gaydos (15:18):
yes.
Yeah, exactly.
And our message to them is Look,the way to take care of these
people, the secret to take careof these people, is in the data.
And the data is right there.
You, you've got the data on whothese people are.
You know who the single mothersare, you know who the parents
are, you know who the emptynesters are, right?
And we should be doing targetedmessaging to them to let them
(15:40):
know what's important to them.
To your point, right?
Um, if they open up an email ontheir 30 year old single mother
and it's two old people, that'snot an email meant for them,
right?
Right.
It's speaking to them, speakingto them, showing a product
that's important to them tounderstand.
Um, and it's in the data and,but it, but it does mean
(16:02):
changing the way you viewcommunication, right?
Um, targeted Targetedcommunication to the employees.
And they have, what I'm findingis that's a new thought for
employers.
That's a new thought for HR, butthat is the secret to the
success, not just in yourbenefits, but even in retention
(16:23):
and recruiting.
It's like, no, you, the datatells you who these people are.
Target to them based on that.
Okay, whatever those benefitsare.
And I think a lot of that willcome down to these lifestyle
accounts.
Like I said, I really thinkthese lifestyle accounts are
going to be a big part of thefuture where you can say, I'm
going to give you a sum of moneyand I'm going to put up some
(16:44):
stuff that you can go look atand you can buy what's important
to you.
You can take my money and buywhat's important to you because,
you know, you're very, all ofyou are different in different
places in your life, differentfamilies, whatever.
Um, but the data tells you whatto do.
And they're just not used tousing that data and doing any
targeted messaging out to them.
(17:05):
Yeah.
William Tincup (17:06):
And again, that open enrollment, that one size
fits all communication strategy,get everybody on the same page.
And then, and then again, it'sstill confusing as all get out,
um, because we're using the, uh,we're using the insurance terms,
not necessarily terms thatpeople's plans be.
Uh, Well,
Bob Gaydos (17:25):
let's spend a minute talking about just open
enrollment itself.
The shortcut for underwriting.
Okay, the fact of the matter isthat if, if it, if we get to the
point, and I believe we will,where all of the insurances are
using big data and instantdecision, then open enrollment
(17:46):
becomes meaningless.
That's right.
And then you, and we can get outof this cycle, um, and let them
buy whatever benefits they wantanytime they want, right?
Because the only, the onlyreason we have open enrollment
is because it was a shortcutpath to underwriting people.
That's it.
Right,
William Tincup (18:05):
right.
Let's create a False momentwhere we can get everybody
together, do everything at onetime, December 31st, July 31st,
whatever the bit was, geteverybody in a room, make this
decision, great, we don't haveto talk about it
Bob Gaydos (18:17):
until next year.
Well, you know, it's funny asyou go back into prior, prior to
early 90s.
Um, when health, all healthinsurance, certainly below 50
was underwriting and no one, andeverybody was okay with that.
Okay.
Right.
There was no guaranteed issue,but I'm not saying that was
right.
I'm just saying it was okay withit.
You didn't have open enrollment.
Okay.
(18:38):
no.
People bought, people bought theproducts they wanted when they
wanted, and yeah.
And they just, they just filledout applications and went
through underwriting.
There was, there wasn't thisinsanity.
I remember when the movehappened and how crazy it became
when all of a sudden we weretrying to do everything in a 45
day period.
Right.
William Tincup (18:54):
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
With, uh, let's see, uh, 70, 000employees.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Let's do that.
Okay.
Two questions.
One is, when you get to showpeople, or your team gets to
show people, uh, Pandela for thefirst time, what's, what's your
favorite part?
Bob Gaydos (19:14):
Like, what do you know?
Oh, there's no question thatdemoing the application is
wonderful.
People, they're like, cause whenwe demo the application and they
see that somebody can literallybuy a million dollar policy,
totally issued in six minutes,they're like, holy cow.
That's amazing.
That's great.
That's amazing.
That's great.
It's, it's really that easy?
Yes.
Yeah.
William Tincup (19:34):
Yeah.
It really is that easy.
Uh, but wait, there's more.
Um, the, uh, I love that.
Um, and then that's theirresponse as well, because then
when they see that, they'relike, Oh my God, I hadn't,
hadn't even contemplated thatthis happens as fast or could
happen as fast.
Bob Gaydos (19:52):
Yeah.
We love to, you know, we love towatch.
Cause we see, see on a platformthroughout the day, we love to
see how many people look, thatguy just got through in three
minutes.
That was like the fastest ever
William Tincup (20:04):
yet.
Yeah.
Boop.
Done.
That just happened.
All right.
Um, and the, and the secondquestion is around customer
success stories without names,brands and stuff like that, but
just people that maybe were alittle skeptical or cynical and
then all of a sudden turn thison and it just changed
everyone's lives.
Bob Gaydos (20:23):
Yeah, we, well, I will say this, I mean, most of
our early traffic, early successhere has been in the PEO
marketplace.
And we have, uh, absolutely seenthat success of like, it's very
turnkey for the PEO.
They can be up and running veryquickly.
Right.
Um, and we do everything forthem.
Right.
(20:44):
We, we take care of announcementemails and all of that, and it
is very painless.
And they're like, holy cow, thatwas way easier than I thought it
was going to be.
Yeah, if you sign the contract,do a couple of things inside
your platform, you're up andrunning and we take care of
everything else.
Um, and then you've got thosesuccess stories of people
telling you that, boy, he's gotan individual plan.
I'll tell you what, it's amazingto me, the number of people
(21:06):
that, cause they, they, Theystill talk.
We have agents and they chatwith us and talk to us.
Of course.
The bulk of them are, one of thebiggest things we hear is, I
didn't know that my group wasn'tportable.
I thought it could come.
Uh
William Tincup (21:20):
huh.
Uh huh.
They find out, they find
Bob Gaydos (21:23):
out too late.
That's right.
Um, when we run email campaignsand tell them, you know, the
group is great, but it's notportable.
This is portable.
It's yours.
You own it.
You can take it with them.
We get very high open rates andvery high click through rates
with those because then they'rechatting going, I didn't know I
couldn't take my group with me.
Yeah, I need, I need anindividual plan that I can take
with me.
(21:43):
Because again, we live in adifferent world.
This is not my father's worldwhere people never talked about
leaving their employer.
They thought they, they wantedto be there for a generation.
We all know we're going to leaveand go someplace in a couple of
years, right?
That's just the way the worldworks today, right?
And so knowing, having thefinancial security of knowing
that I was able to get anindividual policy from this
(22:04):
employer and I own it and it'smine, that's, that's a lot of
peace of mind.
William Tincup (22:09):
Love it.
Man, this has been great.
Uh, Bob, thank you so much forcarving out time for the
audience, for myself, and itjust got school in us.
I appreciate
Bob Gaydos (22:18):
it.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
William Tincup (22:20):
Absolutely.
And thanks everyone forlistening until next time.
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Bob on fromPindella and we'll be talking
about the use case of thebusiness case for why customers
and prospects pick his company.
So why don't we do introductionsfirst.
Bob, tell us a little bit aboutyourself and
Bob Gaydos (00:42):
Pindella.
Well, I've been in the life andhealth space selling mainly to
employers for like 33 years.
Can you believe that?
William Tincup (00:53):
At one point we stopped saying years.
I know.
Have you noticed that?
At one point?
A long time.
Long time.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Longer than I care to admit.
Bob Gaydos (01:02):
I've always been an innovator in the space.
Um, in the nineties we weredoing level funded health plans
before anybody knew what levelfunded health plans were in the
two thousands, I innovated bycreating a company called Choice
Care Card, and we were one ofthe first HRA debit card based
HRA in the United States.
And then in the 2010s, Iinnovated by getting involved
(01:24):
with companies like MaxwellHealth and Limelight Health and
creating technology for thegroup market.
So I've always been an innovatorin this space, um, of employee
benefits.
Uh, of course that, you know,brings me into lots of
relationships with, uh, the HRpeople over the, over the
decades.
William Tincup (01:44):
That is fantastic.
And now Pindella, what do you,what do you, uh, what do you do
there?
What's the, why, why do we have
Bob Gaydos (01:51):
Pindella?
That's a great question.
And I actually wrote thebusiness plan in 2010.
Hard to believe.
Oh, all right.
I thought about it during whenthe Affordable Care Act, when
it'd be, when the AffordableCare Act was passed, that's when
I realized that maybe we couldgo back to the future.
And here's what I mean by that.
The problem, the reason why weexist and the problem that we're
(02:12):
trying to solve is this, youknow, most Americans, as we
know, get their benefits fromtheir employers, including their
financial protection of lifeinsurance.
And in fact, for the majority ofAmericans, the only life
insurance they have is theemployer provided group term
insurance.
That's an accident.
It was never supposed to betrue.
(02:34):
And the problem with that isthat the group insurance many
times is inadequate.
Um, you know, maybe it's only50, 000 base or one time salary,
and even if you can buy avoluntary buy up, it might be
capped at 500, 000, which issimply not enough coverage in
today's world.
Right.
And it still has a leftoveroddity, which is the spouse can
only get half of whatever theemployee has.
(02:55):
Like, somehow that makes sense,which it doesn't.
Um, and of course it's notportable.
And, you know, look, 30 yearsago, we didn't change jobs.
That's right.
Now we change jobs every twoyears.
Right?
30 years ago, my mortgage was35, 000.
Now the average mortgage is 400,So, it's really a tough place
(03:15):
that we're in.
And so, what I realized backthen was that the only way the
Affordable Care Act was going tobe implemented was online.
We had to create What is now,you know, Online Benefits
Administration, right?
And that would create a virtuallunchroom where you could go
back to the future, because alot of people don't know what
happened.
(03:36):
I've been in this business longenough to know what happened.
If you go back into the early1990s, Every life insurance
company in America had a healthinsurance plan.
Every one of them.
Guardian, MassMutual, Principal,Northwestern, you name it.
And they were using healthinsurance as a loss leader to
get into the lunchroom so theycould sit with the employee and
(03:57):
introduce them to the individualprotection of life insurance or
disability or even individualretirement accounts.
Well, they all got out of thatbusiness because once the state
started reforming health care,they just, they got out so fast.
It was unbelievable, right?
And so suddenly they didn't haveaccess to everyday Americans.
And also, the other thing thathappened at the same time was,
(04:19):
and this is, you know, thereason why a lot of HR people
think you're never bringingindividual life insurance back,
is the carriers started takingblood and urine from everybody
because of the AIDS epidemic.
And I remember, I mean, youknow, we were trying to do it,
like we would go to thelunchroom and we would bring a
nurse.
And the employers were like, getout of here.
What are you doing?
(04:40):
Right.
You're taking blood and urinefrom my employees in order for
them to get life insurance.
Get out of here.
And so we just defaulted to thegroup market and it was
guaranteed issue and it was easyand it worked for a while, but
it doesn't work anymore.
Right.
So what I looked at thesituation, said, okay, we're
going to go online.
That's going to create virtuallunchrooms.
The carriers are going to startusing big data.
(05:03):
Big data will eliminate the needfor the blood and urine, and we
can go back to the future and wecan bring individual life
insurance, individualdisability, and other individual
products to the employee in theemployer setting.
And this will be a great thing.
So that's, that was the idea.
Okay.
Now it just took forever to gethere.
(05:23):
You know, um, the market, youknow, it took a long time for
the market to get online.
Now every, all employers useonline benefits, payroll, HR
now, right?
Nobody did 13 years ago, right?
Right, right, right.
The carriers, you know, 13 yearsago, they were definitely afraid
of big data.
Now they're all using it in someway, shape or form.
And some of them are using itgreatly.
Yeah.
And so we finally got to thepoint where we can do it, right?
(05:45):
Where we can get ourselvesembedded into that platform,
benefits, payroll, HR platform.
And bring important individualplans, individual policies to
those employees, to theirspouses, to their children.
365 days out of the year,because it's individual, right?
They get a ticket with them.
You know, it's like people sayit's a portable.
(06:07):
It's individual.
By definition, it's
William Tincup (06:09):
portable.
That's right.
That's right.
So the, what are the offeringsthemselves?
What's the array?
What are, where are we, whereare we starting to stop?
What's the Well,
it's
Bob Gaydos (06:18):
a great question.
When we, we ran a pilot in 2017and we quickly realized that you
couldn't have one product fromone carrier because people come
in all shapes and sizes with alldifferent needs and you know,
very few carriers have anappetite for everything.
Right.
So we, we have several carriers.
I think we have like sevencarriers on the platform
(06:41):
digitally end to end right nowand a variety of products.
So we, you know, 10 level term,10 to 40 years, decreasing term,
uh, whole life, you know, weeven have individual disability
final expense because, you know,look, sometimes that's all you
can, sometimes people.
That's all they're going to getis the final expense plan,
because they're unhealthy, butwe're going to bring something
(07:03):
to them, right?
So we had to build an array ofproducts.
And once we started building thearray of products, we realized
that we had to build what wecall our recommendation engine,
which is a field underwritingmachine.
Because what is a human agentsupposed to be doing?
A human agent is supposed to beassessing the person's risk and
assessing their financialsituation.
(07:24):
Right.
And so we do that.
We take in self reported data,system data, and big data in
order to make the properrecommendation, right?
Am I talking to a healthy singlemother who rents?
Or am I talking to a 50 year oldempty nester who's got a health
issue and owns his house?
Who am I talking to, right?
Because those are very differentpeople with very different
(07:45):
needs, and their underwritingjourney will be different.
Um, so it's a variety ofproducts.
We can write as little as 10,000 coverage, as much as 3
million in coverage.
The spouse, the children.
You know, all of them.
We try to have it be instantissue as much as possible.
That's not always possible.
Sometimes people are outside ofinstant decision either because
(08:07):
of a significant health issue orthey have significant needs.
I can get I can get 2 millioninstant issued on a 40 year old,
but I can't get 2 millioninstant issued on a 60 year old.
Right.
Right.
They're going to have to go intosome type of underwriting.
Those are
William Tincup (08:22):
different, uh, actuarial
Bob Gaydos (08:23):
tables.
Exactly.
Very different people.
William Tincup (08:26):
Right.
So, the benefit to the employer,I mean, I would assume that
you're selling into HR, and thenyou get into benefits and comp,
or even total rewards, whatever.
Um, what's, how do you sell itinto them?
Like, what's the uptick?
Bob Gaydos (08:45):
Yeah, there's two things.
One is easy and fast, which isonce you have a conversation
with any HR person, they knowthat that group term is
inadequate.
They know, right?
Right.
Okay.
They just didn't know there wasa solution because whenever,
when they, when an HR personhears individual life insurance,
what they, what they hear is,The old fashioned way of
(09:07):
somebody comes to your house andyou're going to have this agent
and then you're going to, youknow, they hear that old process
and they're like, no, I don'twant that.
And so once we explain to them,no, it's digital, it's embedded
into your platform and it'sgoing to be convenient and all
that, you get over that.
And so that allows them to justdo one very important thing,
which is bring better coverageto them.
(09:30):
Now what's evolving, and I thinkit'll evolve.
Quickly in the next few years,as you have different companies
now starting to use lifestyleaccounts.
I think lifestyle accounts are abig part of the future of
employee benefits.
Um, just give people money andlet them take care of
themselves.
Right?
(09:50):
Right.
Um, and then, you know, what doyou care whether, if you give
them a lifestyle account andit's 2, 000 and they decide to
take 500 of that and buy anindividual policy, that's great.
Let them do it.
Right?
Um, and I think that becomes arecruiting tool now to say,
well, we, we do have lifestyleaccounts and you can do all
sorts of things with thelifestyle accounts, including
use it towards individual lifeinsurance.
(10:13):
Now, it may evolve to the pointwhere it really was in the 70s
and 80s, which was the baseinsurance was individual
insurance in the 70s and 80s.
Right.
Um, where that employer said,I'm going to give you 50, 000,
it was individual, but that'sgoing to take several years
because it's going to take awhile for the big data
underwriting to get to the pointwhen it can spread the risk
(10:36):
enough to guarantee issue a baseamount of individual coverage
across the entire employee base.
But I think it will get there,but it'll take a while.
What I
William Tincup (10:44):
like about this is, uh, you know, this is
something you could see atleast, uh, years ago, this would
be afforded to executives.
Bob Gaydos (10:51):
Yes.
William Tincup (10:52):
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
And, and now you've, you've madethat available to everyone,
everyone that's, everyone thatworks there, which, which again,
I think is great as a retention.
You said recruiting, uh, it'sgreat as an engagement, uh, uh,
apparatus.
It's great as a retentionapparatus.
Uh, people feel safer.
I think when they feel safer,uh, they probably do better
(11:15):
work.
I don't have any data on that,but it's just my gut.
Tells me that they're not asstressed, uh, because they feel
like there's a security blanketfor their, for their family.
So I love that.
Um, what's been your take on,and well, let's do buying
questions first, because I thinkthis is more important.
What are questions if they'venever done this before, if
(11:38):
you're interacting with a CFO orCHRO or somebody like that, and
they've never bought thisbefore, what are some of the
questions that they should beasking you?
Bob Gaydos (11:49):
Well, the biggest thing they've got to, well, the
hurdle usually they get over is,um, there's, they're like, well,
I've never really promotedindividual products out to my
employees before.
Right, right.
It's like, well, why is that abad thing, right?
And they're kind of like, well,I guess it's not, right?
(12:09):
Because their minds are stillkind of stuck in the past of,
you know, I've got everything ona group chassis and if they
leave, they don't get to take itwith them.
And it's like, you know, welcometo today's world.
They're going to leave.
They're not going to stay withyou for 30 years.
They're going to leave andgiving them flexibility and
giving them individual productsand individual choices is
actually far more important thansome golden handcuff that just
(12:32):
isn't going to be there anymore.
And that does mean that nowyou're going to start
communicating with them in a waythat you haven't communicated
with them before, right?
You're, you're used tocommunicating one thing right
now, which is, Hey, it's openenrollment, go, go enroll in
open enrollment and that's it.
And they go through a process,but these are individual
policies.
They can buy 365 days a year andpeople's lives changed 365 days
(12:56):
a year.
So one of the biggest thingsthat we say to them is we would
like to take your data, youremployee data and analyze it
and, and do some targetmarketing with them.
Um, if we know that.
These are the people that boughta house in the last 90 days, and
these are the people that had akid in the last 90 days, and we
should reach out to them and letthem know that.
Send them a company emailsaying, hey, don't forget, you
(13:16):
can buy individual lifeinsurance.
And that's something differentfor them.
They haven't really thought itthrough, right?
And, um, but I think it'ssomething important.
That if you're going to, ifwe're going to move into this
world of individuality aroundbenefits, which certainly
lifestyle accounts is doing,then the data is the key to
telling you what it is that theyneed.
(13:37):
Use that data, right?
Um, so the biggest thing that Ithink that I've seen people get
hung up on is, um, Yes, Bob,this makes perfect sense.
We know our group coverage isn'tadequate.
You're not telling us to get ridof the group coverage.
You're telling us that thisshould go on top of it.
But we're not used tocommunicating to people in this
way.
Right.
(13:57):
Um, and that doesn't mean it's abad thing.
It's just they have to change alittle bit.
Yeah, but it's,
William Tincup (14:02):
uh, you know, to me, it's, again, getting over
kind of, uh, how we've done itall, how we've done it before
is, is the need for the auditfrom the audience and in this
case, the employees to have itpersonalized to them.
Yes.
You know, they, they, they don'twant this.
You know, I used to tell peoplewhen I did marketing, if, if the
(14:23):
respondent ever feels likethey're one of 85, 000 people
that got the email, it's DOA.
So, it's, it's similar in thesense that, like, you can use
those specific life events astriggers to then say, hey, know
that you did this.
By the way, you're alreadythinking about this, here's an
(14:44):
option.
And again, that's, to me, that'sa better employee experience.
So when we talk about EX, likethat's just a better employee
experience and journey that likethe company actually cares
enough.
to care about what's going on inmy life and then give me
suggestions that make sense atthat particular
Bob Gaydos (15:03):
moment.
Uh, absolutely.
That's the premise of what we'retrying to do, but it is
different, right?
They're used to saying one thingonce a year, it's open
enrollment time.
Right.
William Tincup (15:16):
And that's, and that's not even done well, but
Bob Gaydos (15:18):
yes.
Yeah, exactly.
And our message to them is Look,the way to take care of these
people, the secret to take careof these people, is in the data.
And the data is right there.
You, you've got the data on whothese people are.
You know who the single mothersare, you know who the parents
are, you know who the emptynesters are, right?
And we should be doing targetedmessaging to them to let them
(15:40):
know what's important to them.
To your point, right?
Um, if they open up an email ontheir 30 year old single mother
and it's two old people, that'snot an email meant for them,
right?
Right.
It's speaking to them, speakingto them, showing a product
that's important to them tounderstand.
Um, and it's in the data and,but it, but it does mean
(16:02):
changing the way you viewcommunication, right?
Um, targeted Targetedcommunication to the employees.
And they have, what I'm findingis that's a new thought for
employers.
That's a new thought for HR, butthat is the secret to the
success, not just in yourbenefits, but even in retention
(16:23):
and recruiting.
It's like, no, you, the datatells you who these people are.
Target to them based on that.
Okay, whatever those benefitsare.
And I think a lot of that willcome down to these lifestyle
accounts.
Like I said, I really thinkthese lifestyle accounts are
going to be a big part of thefuture where you can say, I'm
going to give you a sum of moneyand I'm going to put up some
(16:44):
stuff that you can go look atand you can buy what's important
to you.
You can take my money and buywhat's important to you because,
you know, you're very, all ofyou are different in different
places in your life, differentfamilies, whatever.
Um, but the data tells you whatto do.
And they're just not used tousing that data and doing any
targeted messaging out to them.
(17:05):
Yeah.
William Tincup (17:06):
And again, that open enrollment, that one size
fits all communication strategy,get everybody on the same page.
And then, and then again, it'sstill confusing as all get out,
um, because we're using the, uh,we're using the insurance terms,
not necessarily terms thatpeople's plans be.
Uh, Well,
Bob Gaydos (17:25):
let's spend a minute talking about just open
enrollment itself.
The shortcut for underwriting.
Okay, the fact of the matter isthat if, if it, if we get to the
point, and I believe we will,where all of the insurances are
using big data and instantdecision, then open enrollment
(17:46):
becomes meaningless.
That's right.
And then you, and we can get outof this cycle, um, and let them
buy whatever benefits they wantanytime they want, right?
Because the only, the onlyreason we have open enrollment
is because it was a shortcutpath to underwriting people.
That's it.
Right,
William Tincup (18:05):
right.
Let's create a False momentwhere we can get everybody
together, do everything at onetime, December 31st, July 31st,
whatever the bit was, geteverybody in a room, make this
decision, great, we don't haveto talk about it
Bob Gaydos (18:17):
until next year.
Well, you know, it's funny asyou go back into prior, prior to
early 90s.
Um, when health, all healthinsurance, certainly below 50
was underwriting and no one, andeverybody was okay with that.
Okay.
Right.
There was no guaranteed issue,but I'm not saying that was
right.
I'm just saying it was okay withit.
You didn't have open enrollment.
Okay.
(18:38):
no.
People bought, people bought theproducts they wanted when they
wanted, and yeah.
And they just, they just filledout applications and went
through underwriting.
There was, there wasn't thisinsanity.
I remember when the movehappened and how crazy it became
when all of a sudden we weretrying to do everything in a 45
day period.
Right.
William Tincup (18:54):
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
With, uh, let's see, uh, 70, 000employees.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Let's do that.
Okay.
Two questions.
One is, when you get to showpeople, or your team gets to
show people, uh, Pandela for thefirst time, what's, what's your
favorite part?
Bob Gaydos (19:14):
Like, what do you know?
Oh, there's no question thatdemoing the application is
wonderful.
People, they're like, cause whenwe demo the application and they
see that somebody can literallybuy a million dollar policy,
totally issued in six minutes,they're like, holy cow.
That's amazing.
That's great.
That's amazing.
That's great.
It's, it's really that easy?
Yes.
Yeah.
William Tincup (19:34):
Yeah.
It really is that easy.
Uh, but wait, there's more.
Um, the, uh, I love that.
Um, and then that's theirresponse as well, because then
when they see that, they'relike, Oh my God, I hadn't,
hadn't even contemplated thatthis happens as fast or could
happen as fast.
Bob Gaydos (19:52):
Yeah.
We love to, you know, we love towatch.
Cause we see, see on a platformthroughout the day, we love to
see how many people look, thatguy just got through in three
minutes.
That was like the fastest ever
William Tincup (20:04):
yet.
Yeah.
Boop.
Done.
That just happened.
All right.
Um, and the, and the secondquestion is around customer
success stories without names,brands and stuff like that, but
just people that maybe were alittle skeptical or cynical and
then all of a sudden turn thison and it just changed
everyone's lives.
Bob Gaydos (20:23):
Yeah, we, well, I will say this, I mean, most of
our early traffic, early successhere has been in the PEO
marketplace.
And we have, uh, absolutely seenthat success of like, it's very
turnkey for the PEO.
They can be up and running veryquickly.
Right.
Um, and we do everything forthem.
Right.
(20:44):
We, we take care of announcementemails and all of that, and it
is very painless.
And they're like, holy cow, thatwas way easier than I thought it
was going to be.
Yeah, if you sign the contract,do a couple of things inside
your platform, you're up andrunning and we take care of
everything else.
Um, and then you've got thosesuccess stories of people
telling you that, boy, he's gotan individual plan.
I'll tell you what, it's amazingto me, the number of people
(21:06):
that, cause they, they, Theystill talk.
We have agents and they chatwith us and talk to us.
Of course.
The bulk of them are, one of thebiggest things we hear is, I
didn't know that my group wasn'tportable.
I thought it could come.
Uh
William Tincup (21:20):
huh.
Uh huh.
They find out, they find
Bob Gaydos (21:23):
out too late.
That's right.
Um, when we run email campaignsand tell them, you know, the
group is great, but it's notportable.
This is portable.
It's yours.
You own it.
You can take it with them.
We get very high open rates andvery high click through rates
with those because then they'rechatting going, I didn't know I
couldn't take my group with me.
Yeah, I need, I need anindividual plan that I can take
with me.
(21:43):
Because again, we live in adifferent world.
This is not my father's worldwhere people never talked about
leaving their employer.
They thought they, they wantedto be there for a generation.
We all know we're going to leaveand go someplace in a couple of
years, right?
That's just the way the worldworks today, right?
And so knowing, having thefinancial security of knowing
that I was able to get anindividual policy from this
(22:04):
employer and I own it and it'smine, that's, that's a lot of
peace of mind.
William Tincup (22:09):
Love it.
Man, this has been great.
Uh, Bob, thank you so much forcarving out time for the
audience, for myself, and itjust got school in us.
I appreciate
Bob Gaydos (22:18):
it.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
William Tincup (22:20):
Absolutely.
And thanks everyone forlistening until next time.
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