Ancillary Insurance

What are Ancillary Benefits in Insurance?

Ancillary insurance products are the same as supplemental insurance products.

They are used to supplement existing benefits, usually to provide enhanced protection from health insurance benefit gaps. Enrollment occurs through an independent agent or during an open enrollment through employer sponsored benefit plans.

Ancillary insurance can be any type of supplemental insurance, but there are a few common types:

Accident Insurance
Cancer Insurance
Hospital Insurance
Critical Illness Insurance
Dental Insurance
Disability Insurance
Vision Insurance
Term Life

What is Accident Insurance?

Accident insurance is an affordable ancillary insurance policy that pays a pre-determined amount of cash benefit to your client when they suffer an accident.

For example, what if your client’s child breaks their leg at the playground? Their accident policy kicks in and pays cash benefits at nearly every step of the treatment process to help offset medical expenses. This could include an ambulance ride, x-rays, surgery, follow up visits, etc.

What is Cancer Insurance?

Cancer insurance is a supplemental insurance policy that pays a benefit to the policyholder in the event they are diagnosed with various types of cancer.

For example, you have a cancer insurance plan and are diagnosed with breast cancer. Based on the policy type, you will be paid a lump sum for diagnosis or begin receiving payments based on the various treatments.

What is Hospital Indemnity Insurance?

Hospital indemnity insurance is used to help policyholders manage the financial risks of a hospital stay, especially those with high deductible health plans or plans that have daily hospital copays. In some instances families will choose this as another way to supplement their HSA plan.

For example: you spend four days in the hospital and your plan states they are responsible to pay $250 per day for the first seven days. In this scenario, you could make a claim to their hospital insurance plan which will pay you $300 per day.

You will end up paying $1,000 to their insurance plan and will receive $1,200 from their hospital insurance plan. It’s a great way to cover the risks of expenses associated with a hospital stay.

What is Critical Illness Insurance?

Critical illness insurance is a policy that is designed to pay out when someone is diagnosed with a variety of critical illnesses:

Heart Attack

Stroke

Organ Transplants

Cancer

Many others…

These are all illnesses that require ongoing treatment which can carry a hefty price tag. When paired with the abundance of high deductible health plans, it’s a major financial risk.

What is Hybrid Ancillary Insurance?

You guessed it, this a hybrid ancillary insurance product that has elements of the major supplemental insurance products listed above, and some have additional bells and whistles.

These products drastically simplify the process and give strong protection.

Which scenario would you rather?

Scenario A: Understand 4 different supplemental insurance plans, benefits, costs, and try to complete 4 different applications.

Scenario B: Understand the different supplement insurance plans and protect yourself from those risks with 1 policy, 1 application, and 1 bank draft.

Using a hybrid product can often provide some level of coverage vs. potentially no coverage.