Group Insurance A Good Deal For All  

Convinced of the merits of offering group insurance to its members, OSM has been engaged in discussions with insurers to determine the breadth of benefits that group insurance would secure.  As Bob Kowano president of Kowano Assurance Agency Incorporated explains, “Traditionally, insurance premiums for small groups are horrendous.  Take the typical small office with a staff of two to three persons.  It stands to reason that insuring individually translates into high individual costs.  However, if a series of “small offices” across the province can be insured under one umbrella, the overall cost will go way down.”  The average age of owners of businesses is also a factor in play.  According to statistics, the average age of those owning businesses in Ontario is roughly 50+.  The cost of the drug benefits for this age group represents a huge cost.  Since the administrative costs of insuring individual companies comes in at around 31%, it is obvious that huge cost savings are realized by grouping together businesses under a common umbrella.

Overall the array of benefits is worth considering from an individual company perspective as well as from an overall view, particularly in the light of the nature of sheet metal and mechanical operations:
  ▸ additional reduced cost to the existing cost savings for those companies who already have group insurance.
  ▸ contractors who offer benefits to employees will find themselves in a stronger position to attract a quality and discerning workforce than competitors who fail to offer such benefits.  
  ▸ as the workforce shrinks due to retirement of the current generation of workers, those offering benefits will be in a more powerful position to compete for employees in a shrinking workforce.
  ▸ companies are able to benefit from tax cost savings when they offer group insurance benefits.
  ▸ potential claims are mitigated with a larger group, meaning in layman’s terms that submitting a claim does not mean a huge increase in insurance payments.

Drawing on his experience, Kowano notes that claims can “kill” a small company, “One or two claims push up the cost of providing insurance and push the company over the edge.”  However, he continues, the larger the group, the greater its buying power.  For instance, Kowano says that his company would entertain the possibility of insuring critical illness given OSM’s size.

What can members of OSM expect under a group plan?  For one, all information between company and insurer is kept strictly confidential.  Ontario has stringent privacy laws that cover business, financial, health, medical and individual concerns.  The insurer is bound to maintain confidentiality for individual companies insured under the umbrella.  Kowano Assurance also provides insurance material on request and maintains a regular circulation of pertinent information including timely information on company concerns, providing added value to contractors.     

Kowano who boasts 30 years of experience insuring industry members is well known to OSM since he arrived on the scene in 1984.  Confident that his company understands the industry, he says, “We know how best to provide service.”  It’s fair to say OSM is taking his claim seriously.