A Benefits Agency Wanted to Offer LTC to Clients. They Started by Covering Their Own Team -- in 16 Days.
A mid-size Long Island insurance agency with 65 eligible employees had no long-term care coverage and no internal expertise to evaluate or enroll it. Hollowtree ran the full rollout -- product selection, employee education, and enrollment -- in a 16-day window. The agency invested 3 hours of HR time. Participation hit 32%.
The Client
A mid-size benefits insurance agency on Long Island that sells health, life, and P&C coverage to employer clients. The agency had strong benefits expertise for its clients but had never addressed long-term care for its own workforce. With competition for experienced producers and account managers increasing, leadership wanted to strengthen the internal benefits package -- and saw an opportunity to build firsthand experience with LTC enrollment before offering it to clients.
Why the Usual Approach Wasn't Working
The agency faced a set of problems common to brokers exploring LTC for the first time. No internal LTC expertise: The agency's core business was health and P&C. Its producers understood group medical, dental, and life -- but long-term care was a different product category with different carriers, different underwriting, and different employee education requirements. No one on the team had run an LTC enrollment before. Product selection paralysis: The LTC market includes standalone policies, hybrid life/LTC products, and group plans -- each with different underwriting models, benefit structures, and cost profiles. The agency didn't know which product type was right for a small-to-mid-size employer, or which carriers offered competitive group options. Enrollment complexity: Even after choosing a product, the agency had no playbook for how to actually run the enrollment. LTC is harder to explain than medical or dental. Employees don't intuitively understand the risk, and the conversation requires a level of specificity that generic benefits communication doesn't cover. The agency wasn't confident it could educate its own staff effectively, let alone a client's workforce. The underlying concern was straightforward: if they couldn't run a clean enrollment for their own 65 employees, they had no business recommending the process to clients.
The agency faced a set of problems common to brokers exploring LTC for the first time. No internal LTC expertise: The agency's core business was health and P&C. Its producers understood group medical, dental, and life -- but long-term care was a different product category with different carriers, different underwriting, and different employee education requirements. No one on the team had run an LTC enrollment before. Product selection paralysis: The LTC market includes standalone policies, hybrid life/LTC products, and group plans -- each with different underwriting models, benefit structures, and cost profiles. The agency didn't know which product type was right for a small-to-mid-size employer, or which carriers offered competitive group options. Enrollment complexity: Even after choosing a product, the agency had no playbook for how to actually run the enrollment. LTC is harder to explain than medical or dental. Employees don't intuitively understand the risk, and the conversation requires a level of specificity that generic benefits communication doesn't cover. The agency wasn't confident it could educate its own staff effectively, let alone a client's workforce. The underlying concern was straightforward: if they couldn't run a clean enrollment for their own 65 employees, they had no business recommending the process to clients.
How Hollowtree Structured the Rollout
Coverage That Matches the Risk
Hollowtree evaluated the agency's census and recommended Transamerica's group hybrid life/LTC product. The hybrid structure pairs a life insurance benefit with a long-term care rider -- if the employee never needs LTC, the life benefit pays to beneficiaries. If they do need care, the policy accelerates the death benefit to cover LTC expenses. The key unlock: Hollowtree negotiated guaranteed issue for all eligible employees working 30 or more hours per week. No medical underwriting. No health questions. Every eligible employee could enroll regardless of health history -- removing the single biggest barrier to LTC participation in a small group.
Reaching Clinicians Who Don't Sit at a Desk
Hollowtree ran a multi-touch campaign compressed into the 16-day enrollment window. It started with an on-site visit to the agency office. Hollowtree presented the product, walked through real-world LTC scenarios, and answered questions from the full team. This was followed by a webinar for employees who couldn't attend in person or wanted a second pass at the material. Personalized email sequences reinforced the key points -- what the coverage does, what it costs, and how to enroll. Each email linked directly to the enrollment microsite. The agency's HR contact sent three internal emails: one announcing the benefit, one reminder mid-window, and one final reminder before close. That was the extent of internal involvement.
15 Minutes to a Decision
One-on-one consultations were available for any employee who wanted to talk through the coverage in detail -- benefit amounts, cost scenarios, how the hybrid structure works, and how it compares to standalone LTC or self-insuring. Enrollment happened through Hollowtree's online microsite. Employees could review plan details, select their coverage tier, and complete enrollment digitally. The process took minutes, not meetings. All inbound questions were handled by Hollowtree. The agency's HR contact was not pulled into any individual enrollment conversations.
What Changed
In a 16-day enrollment window, 32% of eligible employees enrolled in group hybrid life/LTC coverage -- with no medical underwriting and no disruption to agency operations. The agency's HR contact invested approximately 3 hours total across the entire engagement.
What made the difference: the agency expected LTC enrollment to be complex -- a months-long project requiring specialized knowledge they didn't have. Instead, Hollowtree compressed the entire process into 16 days and handled every step that required LTC expertise. The agency's only role was sending three emails. The experience gave them something more valuable than employee coverage: a repeatable model they could confidently bring to clients, backed by firsthand proof that the process works.
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