The DBL Center is your wholesale general agency, helping your clients save money and rolling those savings into enhanced ancillary benefits – all year long!
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner, beginning Friday, November 29, 2024, everyone is looking for the best deals. Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and Target, all the way to your local mom-and-pop retailers on Main Street are taking the opportunity to boost their bottom lines for the year. As a result, consumers win with steep savings on everything from smart TVs to home security systems, gifts, clothing, and more.
Insurance Brokers Seek to Finish Strong, Too
Just as retailers seek to increase sales in the final months of the year, insurance brokers hustle in the fourth quarter to meet quarterly and annual goals and build their book of business for solid growth in 2025.
But, unlike retailers, insurance carriers don’t offer sales that make it easier for brokers to grow their book of business, sign new customers, or sell ancillary benefits to existing clients.
The best way to find the lowest premiums and white-glove service is to negotiate volume discounts – just like Costco and Amazon do! The DBL Center, as an insurance wholesaler, can help you deliver lower premium rates to your clients by privatizing statutory employee benefits. Then, your clients can roll that savings into in-demand ancillary benefits. Everyone wins!
Premium Rate Increases Will Stretch Budgets in 2025
New Jersey has reinstated employee contributions for Temporary Disability Insurance (NJ TDB) in 2025, with employees contributing 0.23%, up to $380.42 per year. Additionally, the employee contribution for Family Leave Insurance (FLI) in New Jersey has jumped to 0.33%, up from 0.09% in 2024.
For 2025, the PFL (Paid Family Leave) premium rate in New York has increased to .0388% of an employee’s gross wages, up from .0373% in 2024.
Meanwhile, New York has not increased its short-term disability benefit for 2025. The maximum benefit for DBL remains at $170 per week, providing opportunities for insurance brokers in New York to help their clients enhance this benefit with enriched DBL.
Through our decades in the industry and longstanding relationships with carriers, The DBL Center secures the best rates on TDB in New Jersey and Paid Family and Medical Leave benefits in a growing number of states.
In New York, we can help you enhance DBL benefits to provide a safety net for your employees who have to take leave. Enhancing disability benefits up to $850 per week, plus in-hospital coverage, makes DBL a viable and important benefit.
Boost Employee Benefits Without Breaking Budgets
With the savings we uncover by privatizing benefits, you can offer your clients other desirable benefits, including dental, vision, and Group Life / AD&D, either on an employee-paid, employer-sponsored or cost-shared basis.
Small to mid-size businesses should expect to spend 15% to 20% of total employee compensation on employee benefits, according to GrowthLabFinancial.com. While the bulk of the budget often goes toward health insurance, ancillary benefits can help employees better manage their money at every stage of life and prepare for various contingencies.
The DBL Center: Boutique Service, Wholesale Prices
Let’s go back to our thoughts about Black Friday and the rest of the upcoming holiday sales week. American Express has been promoting Small Business Saturday, as an alternative to shopping big box retailers, since 2010.
But in reality, many consumers gravitate toward Amazon and wholesale clubs like Costco to maximize their holiday shopping savings. In 2023, Amazon reached record sales of $9.8 billion on Black Friday, with those numbers continuing to soar through Cyber Monday.
In a press release, Amazon shared that more than 500 million items sold were from Amazon independent sellers, mostly small- and medium-sized businesses. It’s the best of both worlds: Consumers can support small businesses without sacrificing the convenience, low prices, and fast shipping Amazon provides.
When you work with The DBL Center as your insurance wholesaler, you receive that same winning combination of volume pricing and boutique service. David Cohen founded The DBL Center decades ago with a clear vision. He wanted to help insurance brokers save business owners money on required benefits while offering personalized service.
Cohen always loved traveling. On trips, he would seek out unique experiences and small, boutique hotels that delivered personalized service and would go the extra mile to treat guests better than the large hotel chains.
From this concept, The DBL Center’s philosophy of cost savings combined with white-glove service was born. Since then, the insurance products we offer have expanded dramatically. Our footprint has extended from coast to coast as more states introduce mandatory paid family and medical leave benefits. But our philosophy of providing stellar service and best-in-class pricing remains.
If the idea of saving your insurance clients money while having a white-label, back-office staff to provide superior service appeals to you, reach out today to work with The DBL Center as your insurance wholesaler.
FAQs
What is a wholesale insurance broker?
A wholesale insurance broker works with top-rated insurance carriers to negotiate volume pricing on employee benefits and other insurance products for insurance brokers. Insurance brokers who work with a wholesaler can pass that savings on to their clients, while offering expanded coverage lines. The DBL Center is an insurance wholesaler that has been providing mandatory and ancillary benefits since 1976.
What is an example of ancillary benefits?
Ancillary benefits include dental, vision, Group Life / AD&D, accident insurance, and other benefits that are not mandatory but may be provided by an employer on a voluntary, employee-funded, employer-funded, or cost-shared basis.
