A disconnect?\u00a0 Oh, yeah!<\/p>\n
Why is That Bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the obvious.\u00a0 Insurance carriers are like credit card payment processing companies; they\u2019re strictly transactional.\u00a0 Carriers are focused on processing claims.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 They could care less about onboarding, ACA compliance, payroll, paid time-off or any other human resources function, but these matter to you.\u00a0 So, why would any technology solution financially backed by a carrier address these things?<\/p>\n Carrier technology is almost exclusively limited to benefit enrollment and management, and employees almost never have ongoing access to make life event changes or to update information.\u00a0 Yet according to the LIMRA study \u201cBenefits Technology: What do employers want?\u201d 80 percent of employers say it is important for a technology platform to be accessible all year so they can use it for ongoing administration and updates, rather than a \u201cone-and-done\u201d enrollment system.<\/p>\n Similarly, that study found 77 percent of employers want a technology system that can manage all their benefits on the same platform, regardless of which carriers are providing the products.\u00a0 How high on the priority list do you think it would be for one carrier to integrate with another and to share information about its customers with that carrier?<\/p>\n We live in an Application Programming Interface (API) economy.\u00a0 APIs are programs that act like waiters that take our requests and deliver them to others to be filled.\u00a0 Think Amazon.\u00a0 Amazon is the ultimate API.\u00a0 Amazon doesn\u2019t own any production facilities for the products it sells.\u00a0 Amazon\u2019s market dominance can be attributed to a collaborative business strategy that is solely focused on connecting buyers with sellers of goods and facilitating an exchange between the two.<\/p>\n Insurance carriers, on the other hand, operate largely in individual standalone silos.\u00a0 However, what employers want when it comes to benefits administration and compliance is the API experience.\u00a0 They want to go to one place to access and manage this information.\u00a0 They want a benefits administration platform that can be used for all their needs and that talks to other systems, such as payroll.\u00a0 They simply want their lives to be easier.<\/p>\n So, if the carriers aren\u2019t the answer, then who should employers turn to for help?<\/p>\n Why the Broker Needs to Lead<\/strong><\/p>\n The broker is in the best position to be your API and deliver the API experience to you.\u00a0 They meet with you.\u00a0 They talk to you, and, hopefully, they listen to you.<\/p>\n Ideally, your benefits broker should help you not only with the insurance, but with human resources and compliance.\u00a0 They should be providing you with the advice, education and tools to help you navigate the ever more complex employee benefits and compliance environment.\u00a0 They should be connecting you with others who can solve your problems.\u00a0 They can do this by taking a leadership role in finding the right benefits administration system that fits your needs.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll go even further.\u00a0 Your employee benefits broker doesn\u2019t need to just lead the effort to research and evaluate employee benefits platforms, they need to lead the implementation and support of the chosen platform.\u00a0 They should know the system in and out.<\/p>\n And, guess what? There are platforms that will deliver this API experience to you.<\/p>\n Reevaluate Your Broker<\/strong><\/p>\n So, why does your broker believe the carriers should have primary responsibility for delivering this technology to you?\u00a0 Most employee benefits brokers are operating from a 20th<\/sup> century model and see themselves as extensions of the carriers.\u00a0 They think that because the carrier pays them they should focus on developing those relationships, but the carrier doesn\u2019t pay them.\u00a0 You do. The carrier is simply the conduit.<\/p>\n Most brokers are passive and reactionary.\u00a0 They\u2019re looking for the carriers to tell them what to do.\u00a0 They\u2019re interests are not aligned with yours.\u00a0 If your broker doesn\u2019t have any skin in the game do you think your broker will play an active role in helping you solve your problems?<\/p>\n So, the next time your broker says, \u201cwe have great relationships with the carriers,\u201d you should know that they don\u2019t and that it doesn\u2019t matter anyway.\u00a0 What should matter is that your broker is focused on helping you solve your problems, not those of the carriers. In that vein, they should be spearheading the effort to evaluate possible technology solutions, making recommendations, and helping you implement them.<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to speak to an employee benefits broker who believes that it is his responsibility to deliver advice, education and tools that solve your <\/em>problems call me at (952) 237-6956 or email me at mdmowski@comprehensivebenefitservices.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are in the beginning of a revolution in how employers manage employee information, benefits and compliance. Enrollment and administration of benefits once a manual process is now shifting to electronic benefits platforms.\u00a0 There are a lot of options and a lot to consider, so who is helping you evaluate possible technology solutions for your\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.comprehensivebenefitservices.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/alignment.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n