Although medical carriers continue to consolidate, that doesn't mean they are offering more of the same old thing. It appears more and more major medical companies are branching into the voluntary market, according to a study by Eastbridge Consulting. The depth of this trend varies widely as some companies are offering a full menu of voluntary products while others are just introducing one or two.

"We recognized that more and more medical carriers were calling us and asking about getting into the voluntary market," says Bonnie Brazzell, vice president of Eastbridge.

The report shows that 30 of the 40 medical carriers surveyed offer some voluntary products and another five either have access to voluntary products through a subsidiary company or are in merger talks with companies that offer voluntary.

"It was more qualitative data although we hatched some quantitative statistics," says Brazzell. "The trend was clear that they're all looking at voluntary products and they're trying to make them part of their offerings, not necessarily as part of their major medical … Most of them have it as part of the ancillary benefits they offer."

In the past, if a medical carrier offered voluntary it was limited to dental and vision. Now, more than 80% of those surveyed offer voluntary dental, but 78% are also offering life and 68% are offering disability. Just over half of the companies surveyed offer voluntary vision. However, voluntary medical products like limited benefit medical, critical illness and hospital indemnity are less likely to be offered.

Most medical carriers are not packaging voluntary products with their medical plans, instead they leave it up to the broker. Eastbridge says they're not seeing brokers packaging them very often. Carriers are trying to encourage packaging and cross selling by offering price discounts to accounts that allow ancillary products, including voluntary.

Brazzell says this is a notable trend because it raises an interesting question about the adviser/carrier relationship. "Are the advisers taking the medical companies there or are the medical companies taking the advisers there? My belief is that it's a little bit of both," says Brazzell. "Clearly, from the research we've done with employee benefit brokers and advisers, they're all getting much more serious about voluntary products. So, I think they're kind of walking hand in hand as the carriers see more and more of the brokers that sell for them also selling voluntary. If [the carriers] don't get on the bandwagon [brokers] are going to be selling someone else's voluntary products."