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After 17 years with major global employee benefits consulting firms, LeAnne Stefl in April 2016 founded her own consultancy, Solvere Global Solutions, based in San Diego, California.  

Cigna discovered that reimbursing employees for tuition spent on higher education is a good business practice that benefits the company as well as the employee. An analysis of Cigna’s own Educational Reimbursement Program (ERP) revealed that encouraging and helping employees attain a secondary or post-secondary degree increases employee retention and career opportunities. Moreover, participants in the program are 10 percent more likely to receive a promotion, 7.5 percent more likely

Despite moving at what may seem sometimes as a glacial pace, RESAVER, the pan-European pension plan project, appears to have reached a major milestone. RESAVER, which is set up as a defined contribution (DC) scheme that will provide second-pillar pension benefits, selected its key operational components – namely its third-party service providers – in April 2016, paving the way for its launch. BlackRock has been selected as the asset

As a response to growing concerns over the high cost of cancer care, the Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH) Solutions Center, over the course of two 2015 workshops, mounted a study that surveyed 19 self-insured employers representing 1.2 million employees, as well as physicians, oncology experts, employer benefits professionals, executives from health plans, hospitals, consulting organizations, cancer associations, and suppliers of healthcare-related services. The purpose of the study

Yellow Fingers and Diversity – Gender Quotas and Diversity Outcomes Norman Dreger Lifecycle DC Pensions in Brazil Andrego Barbosa De Oliveira Hedge Funds in Pension Funds – the New Normal? Eric Muller-Borle Picking a Winner – Managing Expatriate Selection Risk Paul Pittman and Natalie Richter From the Lab to the Trenches – Time for a Revolution in Executive Pay? Dr. Sandy Pepper

Generali Employee Benefits (GEB) on June 2, 2016, holds from 8 to 11am a breakfast workshop for brokers and consultants in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Senior experts from GEB will illustrate how multinational pooling and reinsurance to captive programs operate and what make them successful. Participants will gain insights into the set up and implementation of international arrangements and into how to maximize benefits to clients. Topics include: Why set

Scott Sutton in April 2016 joined L.E.K. as Director of Marketing, Americas. Previously, Scott was Director of Global Marketing at AIRINC, which he joined in 1997 as a Client Service Manager. L.E.K. is a global management consulting firm that is active in strategy, mergers and acquisitions, operations, and marketing and sales consulting, spanning a broad range of industries. Headquartered in London, L.E.K. employs approximately 1000 professionals and has 20

Health care costs will continue to rise worldwide in 2016 according to the Willis Towers Watson (WTW) 2016 Global Medical Trends Survey of 174 insurers in 55 countries, employers in 34 countries, and 30,000 employees worldwide who have employer-sponsored health benefits. As private medical insurance costs continue to rise, from 7.5% in 2014 and 8.0% in 2015 to a projected 9.1% in 2016, WTW noted that more than half

Aon Risk Solutions, in collaboration with the Risk Advisory Group, has identified 2015 as the most lethal year for terrorist violence since they started collecting empirical data in 2007. With the issuance in April 2016 of the new edition of its Terrorism and Political Violence Map, Aon particularly emphasizes the rapid evolution over the past year of terrorism and political violence present “a much broader spectrum of potential impacts”

Lockton Benefit in April 2016 appointed Dr. Ronald Leopold as leader of its national Lockton Health Risk Solutions practice. Dr. Leopold will combine his clinical knowledge with Lockton’s data intelligence platform to improve employers’ abilities to identify trends and respond to what’s driving the cost of health. He will also work closely with Lockton’s client service teams to advise employers on developing targeted health management programs to address the

The Cigna Foundation, a private foundation founded in 1962 and funded with contributions from Cigna, in April 2016 announced that it is seeking grant, sponsorship, and “thought leadership” opportunities related to workplace health in Middle East, Africa, India, China, and Europe. This Prioritizing Workplace Wellness campaign emphasizes Cigna’s commitment to health equity and improving wellness via the global workplace and builds on Cigna’s vision of the workplace as being

Lockton Benefit Group in April 2016 announced a material investment in its InfoLock data intelligence platform, used to advise employers on developing comprehensive health management programs to address the continuum of health risks across their working population.  InfoLock will now include predictive analytics solution SCIO Health Analytics, enabling client service teams to gain timely insights into trends and make evidence-based recommendations that have a high probability of improving employee behavior

The 2016 edition of the European Captive Forum will be held in Luxembourg on 8 and 9  November 2016. The 2016 agenda is not yet available, but it is worth noting that six sessions of the 2014 edition out of 37 were devoted to employee benefits or life insurance, as opposed to the ever-dominant theme, non-life coverages. That proportion is significantly higher than the prevalence of employee benefits among

Global employee benefits industry expert Margrit Schmid from Zurich, Switzerland and formerly CEO of the Swiss Life network, has made a momentous and pioneering change in her career path by joining Swiss micro-insurance group, ParaLife in May 2016. In 2016 Margrit Schmid is to familiarize herself with key micro-insurance markets and to contribute to corporate development projects in preparation of her assuming a senior Group Executive position in 2017.

Margrit Schmid, former head of the Swiss Life Network, in May 2016 takes up a new professional challenge in micro-insurance at ParaLife.

How to maintain leadership in a challenging environment: lessons learned from GEB Even the insurance sector, once widely associated with stability, is seeing the impact of disruptive forces and shifting landscapes, from technology to demographic trends and of course economic volatility. The new strategic plan announced by Generali Employee Benefits is all the more interesting as it sees a company that is an integral part of the history of

How to maintain leadership in a challenging environment: lessons learned from GEB Even the insurance sector, once widely associated with stability, is seeing the impact of disruptive forces and shifting landscapes, from technology to demographic trends and of course economic volatility. The new strategic plan announced by Generali Employee Benefits is all the more interesting as it sees a company that is an integral part of the history of

Michael Hansen in March 2016 took up the position of CEO of the Swiss Life pooling network. He succeeds Theo Iaponas, head of corporate clients, who held the interim after Margrit Schmid’s departure in May 2015. Michael is based in Luxembourg, where Swiss Life relocated its Zurich, Switzerland-based global employee benefits operations in 2015 and early 2016. A graduate from the Danish Insurance Academy, Michael began his career with

Medha Rishi in March 2016 was appointed Head of Global Benefits and Global Mobility at San Francisco, California-based payment solutions provider Square. Mehda previously was Vice President and Global Benefits/HR Practice Leader at insurance broker Woodruff-Sawyer, global consultant at Aon Hewitt, senior analyst at Mercer and began her career in the sales and marketing department of pharmaceutical devices manufacturer Cardinal Health. During her tenure at Woodruff-Sawyer, Medha was also

Marking GEB’s 50th anniversary, the 2016 edition of the GEB Forum will be held in Brussels, Belgium, from November 21 to 23, 2016. The preliminary agenda includes several presentations and round tables on the future challenges of the Employee Benefits industry. The event website is here. For more information on attending, contact the GEB event team at gebforum@geb.com .

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Melissa Ruchhoeft in March 2016 joined the Global Benefits Practice of Lockton Benefit as a Senior Consultant. Melissa comes to Lockton from Gallagher Benefit Services, where she served as the Area Vice President of the company’s Multinational Technical Consulting Unit. Before that, she was the Vice President of Technical Services at IBIS, which was acquired by AJ Gallagher in 2014. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wellesley

Nine Top Trends Shaping Global HR Strategy in 2015 Richard Polak From Maturists to Millennials – Why a Global Benefits Strategy is Key in Engaging the Multigenerational Workforce Chris Bruce Using Data to Identify Cost Drivers in Global Group Medical Insurance Eric A. Butler Interview: Ludovic Bayard, General Manager GEB Maximizing your Health Through Improved Sleep Dr. Leena Johns

Modern Survey, a Minneapolis, U.S.A.-based employee survey and talent analytics solutions provider, has been acquired by Aon Hewitt in February 2016. In search of new sources of revenues, large employee benefits consulting firms are diversifying into and/or expanding employee engagement services. Modern Survey is responsible for software solutions in the areas of talent analytics, onboarding, 360o feedback, engagement, retention, performance, and measurement. Modern Survey’s current offerings are visible at

Insurope and Ping An are hosting the 29th Insurope Conference in Beijing, China from 1-3 June 2016. This conference is free of charge and designed to bring together Insurope team members, advisors and persons responsible for international employee benefits. Client attendees work for benefits, risk management, finance and human resources departments. The conference allows to share experiences with peers dealing with all manners of employee benefits issues ranging from

A 2015 survey of U.K. defined contribution (DC) pension plans reveals that there is a disconnect between what new initiatives they want to deliver and what they can actually provide. The Aon DC Survey 2015 revealed that out of 330 respondents from 297 U.K. DC pension plans, 57% of respondents feel that the top priority for DC schemes is better member outcomes, while 47% identified the need for specific