Tips on Group Life Insurance as an Employee Benefit

Many employers now offer employee group life insurance as a benefit for staff members. In today’s workplace, employers are constantly seeking ways to foster an environment that builds morale thus increasing productivity and decreasing turnover. Employee group life insurance is also an attractive benefit that increases an employer’s appeal to well qualified candidates. These policies offer needed coverage for employees at attractive rates for employers. Employers considering group term life insurance may be surprised to learn that there are no tax consequences of these policies under certain conditions (for example, on group term insurance coverage amounting to $50,000 or less, and carried directly or indirectly by the employer). Employers with concerns about cost or very limited budgets can still offer employee group life insurance using one or more of the following strategies:

• Offering policies with a face value that covers only final expenses
• Offering the opportunity for employee contribution
• Restricting enrollment to full-time employees
• Delaying new employee enrollment for a specified period

Your employees are probably are very diverse group. There is wide variation in age, health history, nicotine use habits and so forth. Employers should evaluate several proposals to get the best coverage for employees at the best cost.