Meeting the Demand

For brokers (or benefits consultants, resellers, etc.) responding to the demand for wellness programs will be a call to action. The industry providing wellness programs remains fragmented; carriers currently have 44% of the market, TPAs 17%, specialty vendors 1%, and others 18%.

No one has any significant market share at all, and it’s a wide open market. In many ways, this wellness boom is like the dot-com boom. Companies are being very pro-active to establish prevention plans within their organization and brokers are scrambling to create alignments with strategic partners.

Companies that previously felt that they didn’t have a budget for wellness programs are now looking at this as a long-term commitment.

The corporations' reasons for promoting wellness are:

1. Reduce indirect costs associated with absenteeism, presenteeism, disability, and workers' compensation.
2. Improve work engagement, such as productivity and performance. 
3. Reduce direct and indirect health care costs. 
4. Improve the image of the company internally (for retention).
5. Improve the image of the company externally (for recruitment).