Stay Informed

When sign-up for Indiana Farm Bureau Health Plans opens Oct. 1, members who are interested in the program will find it easy to get more information.

“Click, call or walk into an office – you will have a choice,” said Rick Kuster, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance.

The program will officially roll out on Sept. 1, sign-up begins Oct. 1, and benefits will take effect Jan. 1, 2021. Before Sept. 1, an Indiana Farm Bureau Health Plans website will be launched, as will a dedicated toll-free number.

But members who prefer to talk to someone local will be able to walk into any county Farm Bureau office and find agents and marketing associates who have been trained to answer questions about the benefits offered through the plans.

“Our model is a face-to-face model,” Kuster said. “We thrive on building relationships with our clients. We want to leverage that, given the complexity of health plans.

“We have 139 offices, and that footprint cannot be equaled. We’re very proud of that. That gives us an opportunity because we’re present in the community,” he added.

To prepare for the program’s launch, the insurance company will intensively train agency managers and customer service managers, and they will, in turn, train agents and marketing associates.

“We’re using a train-the-trainer approach,” he said, noting that this approach has worked well when other new insurance products have launched.

“We want to make sure they have enough knowledge to know how to answer questions and enough support that they can feel comfortable,” he said.

Kuster added that the new program fills a “real market need.”

“Not everyone will qualify but there is a genuine need for this product, and we’re filling that need.”

It’s also an opportunity, Kuster said, for the company to help its current member clients but also reach new people.

“This product will appeal to members and non-members, and it will bring them to Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance,” he said. “We really look forward to that.”