Annual renewal process

We’ll start with the most obvious service: renewals. Over the years we have actively managed tens of thousands of renewals for our clients. All of this experience has helped us develop a keen understanding of how to get the best results. The one thing that stands out as the most important? Time. The more time we spend with the client, understanding the culture, goals, budget and the more time we spend working on it yields the best results. Surprisingly, the number of clients we have with each carrier is much less important than the time we spend. If a large, national broker boasts that they have more influence with BCBS, CIGNA, etc., the opposite is probably true. The carrier has more influence over larger brokers due to the lucrative financial deals they have to retain business. At BBI, the client’s interest comes first, not ours or the carrier. Furthermore, each client is assigned a dedicated, experienced account executive and one of our three partners who is involved throughout the renewal process.

Employee Engagement

We believe that employee engagement in benefits is an ongoing process starting with the onboarding process and continuing throughout the year until open enrollment. We help employers with materials and process to improve employee engagement so they can both be fully informed on their benefits package and be intelligent consumers. Engaged employees are both more satisfied with their benefit plans and better workers (this is particularly important to millenials). BBI is able to provide employers with tools such as digital enrollment, personalized benefit statements, and of course on site meetings.

Retirement Plans

Retirement plans such as 401k and 403b plans are critical to helping employees prepare for their future. BBI partners with a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) to provide non-conflicted advice for your company’s retirement plan. The analysis includes an executive summary, a holdings summary which compares the current and proposed funds by asset class, Morningstar Style Box Overview and an investment performance overview. All we need to get started is a copy of your current required fee disclosure notice (408b2). We are able to work with most existing recordkeepers and TPAs.

Day to day administration

This is what we like to think of as outsourced administration. When we take on administrative duties, our client lets us know when someone is hired or fired, and we take care of the rest. We customize this service to each client based on their needs and desired level of involvement. We utilize digital enrollment technology, our own experienced HR, enrollment and Cobra staff, and keep the plans running smoothly throughout the year.

Fiduciary Health Plans

About ⅓ of health care spending is wasted due to clinical waste, administrative complexity, excessive prices, fraud and abuse.*  BBI is committed to helping clients take an active role in eliminating a significant amount of the waste through supply side claims management.  This is the renewal conversation that you probably have not had in the past. In order to manage claims and reduce waste BBI uses an evolving framework which includes an unbundled health plan with cost/quality transparency, value based financial incentives for plan members, and non-conflicted, fee-based vendors.  Clients who have adopted this approach have seen a reduction, on average, of $2500 per employee per year from a more traditional, fully bundled approach in year 1. We believe we are just scratching the surface on driving down costs. Fiduciary Health Plans are a game-changing type of health plan that allows employers to move from being reactive with their health plans to proactively managing costs.  Each client is different but in general this transition is a 2-3 year strategy.  

* Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP; Andrew D. Hackbarth, Mphil; "Eliminating Waste in US Health Care," JAMA 307, no. 14 (2012)

Voluntary Plans

Voluntary plans can be group or non-group plans, and they typically include Life, Accident, Disability, and Critical Illness insurance.  However, a growing number of employers are implementing more creative perks such as pet insurance, identity theft coverage and group legal services.  All of these benefit plans can be added without any impact to the employer’s budget, and can, if implemented and communicated well, enhance the perception of the overall employee benefit package. 

Benefit Plan compliance

Compliance? With employee benefits? Yes, believe it or not, compliance is a continually shifting landscape of state and federal rules and regulations. We start out by reviewing the existing plan documentation and in many cases providing new plan documents (ERISA, Section 125, HRA, etc.). With a good set of documents and knowledge of the key compliance issues for each client based on their size and location, we will inform the client of what they need to do. We provide 6055 & 6056 reporting (ACA), 5500 reporting, Cobra administration and support for other requirements including state and federal notices. We also provide compliance alerts, newsletters and webinars.

Digital Enrollment technology

A growing number of companies have decided that a paper-based enrollment is outdated, inefficient, susceptible to errors and a poor communication tool.  We agree. We have a partnership with Goco.io, a web-based, all-in-one HR platform. Our clients receive the Goco Benefit Administration feature, plus basic HR for free (a value of $8 per employee per month).  Additional features such as payroll integration can be added at our client’s expense. For clients who wish to use Goco, our in-house team of experts will build the benefits onto the platform and upload employee information.  The system can be used to onboard new employees as well as open enrollment and qualifying event changes.

Health Accounts – FSA/HRA/HSA

BBI has a long and successful history of improving efficiency to health plans.  A key component of our strategy is cost-saving, consumer driven health account solutions that help our clients and their employees contain costs and improve their benefits.  Rising insurance premium rates force more creative approaches to structuring benefit plans and BBI’s health accounts provide the flexibility to take advantage of premium and tax saving strategies.  Our technology solution offers easy-to-use, online forms, reports, and secure self-service portals that deliver high consumer and employer satisfaction.  In addition, our my BBI mobile application and debit cards allow plan participants easy access to their account balances and payment options.  BBI’s Health Accounts are delivered with the same high degree of personal attention as our other benefits. NEW this year – our Health Savings Account investment platform allows BBI to customize HSA investments to closely match 401k investment options.