What are the current trends in Employee benefits?

Employees’ financial and mental well-being is a crucial factor in the war for talent: you want your employees to be healthy and happy. Additional services provided by health partners that focus on preventive health and reintegration are good for your employees’ work/life fit and well-being.

These days, the role of insurers is not confined to reimbursing medical costs or arranging medical assistance – they are evolving into fully-fledged well-being partners. Insurers are increasingly focusing on your employees’ physical and mental well-being with a range of additional services such as teleconsultations with licensed general practitioners or psychologists, online burn-out assessment tools and mindfulness programmes. Making healthcare more accessible enables you as an employer to pay even more attention to mental well-being and preventive care.

👉  We’ll be happy to tell you about the various solutions and services that insurers and service-providers offer to support you as a caring employer.

Outpatient care plans have become more common over the last few years. This is because the costs of such care, including dental and eye care, can be high and the bill is often footed by the patient. An outpatient plan is therefore of obvious value to your employees: in effect, it gives them a cash budget to pay for their everyday medical costs for seeing a general practitioner, specialist, pharmacist, dentist, etc.

Digital tools for reporting outpatient costs or for online medical or psychological advice can also make life easier for your employees.

👉  We’ll be happy to advise you on the options for adding an outpatient plan to your Employee Benefits package and on the advantages of this for your employees.

The minimum guaranteed return or ‘WAP guarantee’ on supplementary pensions will rise from 1.75% to 2.50% on 1 January 2025. It’s currently unclear whether insurers will follow suit by bringing the guaranteed interest rates in Branch 21 group insurance into line with this new statutory guaranteed return. If your insurer offers an interest rate that’s lower than the WAP guarantee, this may leave a shortfall that you as an organisation will have to make up when an employee retires or leaves. It therefore definitely makes sense to examine both the methodology used in the pension plan and the current return on your group insurance.

To avoid or limit unpleasant surprises such as underfunding, it may be advisable to consider other possibilities, such as switching to Branch 21 group insurance with a higher guaranteed return, Branch 23 group insurance or a (multi-employer) pension fund.

👉  We’ll be happy to analyse the impact of the guaranteed return increase on your pension plan(s) and help you make the best choices in order to give both your company and your employees a financial boost in building up a supplementary pension.

The legal retirement age in Belgium will be raised from 65 to 66 in 2025 and 67 in 2030. Many collective plans for supplementary pensions and life, disability and health care insurance were previously drawn up on the basis of the current retirement age of 65. As this age limit is set to be increased, it is advisable to also adapt your Employee Benefits package to the new retirement age where necessary.

👉  We’ll be happy to look with you in more detail at what adjustments must and can be made to your various plans in order to keep your employees properly insured throughout their working lives.

Employees generally overestimate the statutory safety net available in the event of illness, disability and death. In addition, the statutory pension is coming under increasing pressure, partly due to the ageing of the working population. There are various ways for you as an employer to meet the financial challenges your employees face. For example, have you considered bonus group insurance or a flex plan for your employees?

👉  We’ll be happy to advise you on how to optimise your Employee Benefits package and support your employees even better in these challenging times.

The unified status legislation is designed to gradually eliminate the distinction in pension and death cover between blue-collar and white-collar workers. Sectors have until 1 January 2027 to reach an agreement with the various joint committees. It will then be the turn of individual companies. The harmonisation of the treatment of blue-collar and white-collar workers under the unified status must be completed by 1 January 2030. After that date, any difference of treatment based on a distinction between blue-collar and white-collar workers will constitute discrimination.

While the unified status legislation only refers to harmonisation of supplementary pensions, the possibility cannot be ruled out that a distinction between blue-collar and white-collar workers in relation to guaranteed income and medical expenses insurance will also be deemed discriminatory at some point in the future. As a company, you need to be aware of this potential risk.

👉  We’ll be happy to guide you through your harmonisation process and help you to make the best choices to bring your Employee Benefits package fully in line with the unified status requirements.

With increasing digitisation, more and more solutions are coming onto the market for managing your Employee Benefits package centrally and reducing your HR department’s administrative load. It is equally important in this context to inform your employees clearly about their Employee Benefits, so that they can assess them accurately.

👉  We’ll be happy to tell you about the options available for reducing your HR workload and highlighting your employees’ remuneration package more effectively.

The internationalisation of companies and the international mobility of employees present a challenge for you as an employer as you try to manage your Employee Benefits across national borders efficiently. Vanbreda Risk & Benefits has been part of the Lockton Global international network for many years, enabling us to offer our customers the same service and expertise all over the world.

Our Global Benefits Management approach is the ideal way to maintain an overview and decision-making powers on a centralised and transparent basis. By defining and managing the global Employee Benefits package centrally, as an employer you can ensure a consistent and optimised remuneration package and streamlined communication with your employees. For more information about Global Benefits Management, watch the episode of our video podcast on this topic here.

👉  We’ll be happy to listen to your Employee Benefits vision and strategy and come up with a customised process and outcome for you. Together we can look at what cover is desirable in which countries and bring in our international partners to implement and manage your international benefits properly.

Your Account Manager Employee Benefits at Vanbreda Risk & Benefits will be happy to help.