Sun life financial inc. is reaching out to advisors with its key software program, Total Benefits. Initially launched for Sun Life’s large corporate clients in late 2004, the Web-based program is being adapted to the needs of individual advisors who provide advice on Sun Life group benefits and retirement services.

Total Benefits works on two levels. It brings together Sun Life group products, such as defined-contribution plans and life, medical and dental benefits, with products offered by other partner-providers, such as defined-benefit plans, “flex enrolment” group plans and the services of “retirement modellers,” says Bill McCollam, Sun Life’s vice president of Total Benefits. “Currently, we have the capability to provide 10 links to additional services provided by organizations other than Sun Life.”

The program also brings together Sun Life’s group benefits and group retirement services. This “total” approach is a departure from the traditional way these services have been delivered, says Kevin Press, the director of market development for Total Benefits. “Historically, benefit and pension industry providers have operated in silos,” he says. “They developed expertise in group benefits and group retirement services, establishing their operations in separate business units along the way.”

While this may make sense from a provider’s perspective, Press says, it has meant that benefit and pension plan sponsors and their plan members have had to deal with business units that don’t work together — even when they use the same provider for both group benefits and group retirement services.

As a result, Total Benefits makes it easier and more cost-effective for plan-sponsoring clients to do business with Sun Life. And the employees’ access point to the program’s Web site can be designed to look like it is part of the employer’s Web site.

There are three elements:

> Customer information file. This includes all the data about a particular plan member, including multiple providers.

> Common identification and authentication process for the members of a plan. Members of an employer-sponsored group plan can access the multiple plans and providers in their group benefits and retirement services package through one Web entry point.

> Contact management. This allows Sun Life to keep track of every contact that a member has made. If a member calls one of Sun Life’s service centres, the service rep can refer back to the reasons for the customer’s previous contacts.

Up to this point, much of Toronto-based Sun Life’s focus in building Total Benefits has been on servicing its major clients, including RBC Financial Group, TD Bank Financial Group, Sun Microsystems Inc., Motorola Canada Ltd. and Magna International Inc. Now Sun Life is inviting advisors who are licensed to sell its products to provide their input. It wants advisors to take the Total Benefits message to those clients who are employer-plan sponsors. The program’s advisor-oriented Web site will be available in 2006.

Being able to combine the delivery of group benefits and retirement services has significantly helped Sun Life’s bottom line, McCollam says. At the end of the first quarter of 2004, prior to the launch of Total Benefits, 23% of Sun Life’s group retirement services’ top 200 clients were also group benefits clients. A year later, the number of joint clients rose to 34%.

By the end of the third quarter of 2005, McCollam says, the number had risen to 43%: “Our joint clients currently employ approximately 342,000 members.” Sun Life now has 21% of the group benefits market in Canada and is No. 1 in group retirement services.

Considering the effectiveness of this technology, are other major insurance companies nipping at Sun Life’s heels? It’s not that easy to make this work, McCollam says. It requires “a certain cultural openness” — the kind that doesn’t have business lines in separate silos. “We’ve built a lot of this on existing infrastructure,” he says. “That investment would have to be made by a competitor. We’re not seeing signs of it.”

Great-West Life Assurance Co. doesn’t have similar technology at this point but is working on it. Says Marlene Klassen, the Winnipeg-based company’s director of communication: “In the shorter term — 2006 — we will be linking our secure pension and benefits portfolios. In the longer term, we’re looking at a more robust link.”

Manulife Financial Corp. provides similar technology to its larger clients on an “as needed” basis instead of branding and marketing it, says Tom Nunn, assistant vice-president of media relations at Manulife in Waterloo, Ont.: “If the client wants that kind of solution, we approach it that way.” IE

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