I wanted to share the good news with all Church Benefits Board members that as of January 1, your life and disability insurance benefits coverage has expanded, without any premium increase.

At CBB, we continually monitor the benefits market and search for ways to expand and enhance benefits on behalf of churches and related entities. We also listen to your concerns and requests related to insurance coverage and plan features. So the enhancements to our benefits are not unusual.

For me, some factors drove the quest to get better coverage:

• Ministers and staff are living longer, on the job longer and there’s a need for benefits to extend longer into to what have historically been ‘retirement years.’
• Every 90 seconds, someone files bankruptcy in the wake of serious illness.
• For today’s 20 year olds, 3 of every 10 will become disabled before reaching age 67.

Armed with these facts, and requests we heard from our members to add options to expanded life insurance coverage for spouses and dependents, we engaged our existing partners with the goal of giving us more options, with this very important bottom line: no additional out-of-pocket money.

The details of the changes can be found at the enclosed links, but some highlights include:

• Up to 8 times annual salary payout for accidental death (an increase from six times last year)
• Four times annual salary payout up to $500,000 for general life insurance.
• Policy coverage for spouse and dependents is included.
• To protect part-time ministers and staff, minimum participation is still only 20 hours a week.

Because the housing allowance is such an important component of compensation for ministers, we have maintained this language benefit in our long-term disability policy as well as “own occupation” language. Since ministerial skills are unique, benefits may be suspended only upon return to your “own occupation,” not another. In some disability policies, employee benefits are terminated when worker is eligible to return to “any” job. We believe this best protects our unique members.

The Standard, our retirement plan provider in retirement benefits, has stepped up to provide these benefits at no additional cost and to enhance other benefits for our participants with minimal change in the detailed provisions. We have also maintained our travel benefits, employee assistance, rehabilitation provision, dependent education, cost of living adjustments and other benefits in the plan.

For more information on our new insurance policy upgrades, click on these links:

• Group Long Term Disability Insurance
• Group Basic Life and Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance

One last commercial: If you are not yet a CBB member, I’d like to take this opportunity to personally invite you to find out more about us and how CBB benefits can add value for your employees. We invite you to do a comparison. Have your financial advisor or an independent retirement planner compare our plans to any available. We think you’ll agree that Church Benefits Board provides the best benefits in church life.

If you have questions, or want to find out how you can become a CBB member, contact me at 1-800-352-8741 or email me at churchbenefits@churchbenefits.org.