As an employer, you spend a significant amount on health care benefits. You want employees to have health and welfare options that meet the needs of their families – and understand their options so they pick the right plan.

5 Reasons to Start Looking for a New Health & Welfare Consultant

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Your relationship with a Health & Welfare consultant is an important partnership that must be cultivated over time. However, there are signs that indicate when it’s time to start looking for a new consultant partner:

  1. Seeing High Turnover in Your Consulting Team. As consulting firms experience turnover, this could trickle down to your team. Some turnover is good as it provides you with new team members who can share new ideas or help refine current processes, but cycling through consultants on a consistent basis is a red flag.
  2. Experiencing a Service Level that has Gone Steadily Downhill. At the start of any new consulting relationship, it is not uncommon to have a very engaged and proactive consulting team. That same level of service may diminish as the relationship matures over time.
  3. You are Experiencing Organizational Changes. As your Benefits/HR team or organization (through a merger, acquisition or divestiture) undergoes change, your current Health & Welfare Consultant team may not be the right fit for the new team or organizational structure.
  4. Your Needs have Evolved. Your organization or benefits administration strategy may have grown in complexity (e.g., new populations, new focus on wellness, etc.) and your consulting needs may have outgrown your current consultant relationship.
  5. It is Time to See What Else is Out There. It may be time to hear from other benefit experts with different perspectives to determine if your current consultant is the right partner for the long-term.

As an independent and objective benefits advisor, we can help you conduct a search for a Health & Welfare benefits consultant that will be a great fit for your needs. We typically begin each project by benchmarking your current fees and services. If warranted, we can then help you conduct a full marketplace evaluation.

Curcio Webb utilizes a flexible and proven evaluation process, honed through 20 years of experience and ensures our clients have a market competitive consulting agreement at the end of the process. Let us help you achieve your goals.

Ask us how to get started with a benchmarking project!

Written by: Gayle Michaels, Curcio Webb

benefits administration advisor

You’ve Selected an Active Health Insurance Exchange Service Provider—Now What?

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Active health insurance exchanges are growing in popularity.

Although adoption rates for active health insurance exchanges (HIX) have not yet reached the levels predicted when these delivery models first hit the market, steady growth continues as employers evaluate health & welfare benefit administration delivery strategies. The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust 2016 Employer Health Benefits Survey showed that twenty-eight percent of employers with 5,000 or more employees are considering HIX models to more effectively deliver benefits and manage costs.

The HIX marketplace is evolving

The HIX marketplace continues to evolve with enhanced delivery models, new service providers and expanded offerings. Evaluating the merits of adopting a HIX strategy and selecting the service provider best positioned to deliver on this strategy can be challenging. Desired outcomes will be diminished without a meticulous focus on building a solid foundation through one of the most critical phases of the process—implementation and effective change management.

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