According to a recent survey by Eastbridge, "product competition" was named most frequently as an obstacle voluntary and worksite executives' businesses will face over the next few years. Forty percent of the executives deemed this a top issue.

"This is different from our last survey," says Gil Lowerre, president of Eastbridge. "Two years ago, 'attracting quality brokers' was the number one obstacle; however, this tied for the third spot in the recent survey."

Eastbridge Vice President Bonnie Brazzell says that although the products sold by executives have not seen a "tremendous amount of change or innovation in recent years, we think this will not be the case over the next 3-5 years."

With health care reform, carriers will have to come up with new ways to market their products to bypass competition. The changes may be rapid so carriers will need a product development process that is fast, efficient and effective.

The “Worksite Marketing: An Executive Perspective 2011” report is based on a bi-annual survey of executives in the voluntary and worksite market.