Employee Benefits Pitfalls | What to watch out for quoting, enrolling and administiering your Group Benefit Plans

There are numerous gotcha's, tricks, and plain out scams when it comes to quoting, enrolling and adminstering your Employee Benefits. Honestly, I am sick of all of them and people using them to their advantage to trick naiive group administerators. In my 10 years in the industry, I have heard it all and seen it all. Im tired of it, so I am writing this article to give a guide to groups that quote with me or with whoever. Watching consultants/consultany firms take advantage of groups is sickening and it needs to stop. Once a consultant that you quote with does anything below, just know he/she is trying to manipulate you in a way that is advantagous for them. Once you see the first sign, run the other direction, if they are willing to cut corners on the small stuff picture how they will administer your group when it matters most.

Preliminary Medical Rates are Useless and Should Be Abolished

If you administer or quote your group's plan you are probably very farmiliar with Preliminary Rates. A practice that should be abolished from the employee benefits quoting process. So what are preliminary rates? They are projected medical rates without any underwriting and are rated assuming the best case scenario. Out of my 10 years quoting employee benefits there has never been one time that a group's rates were as low as the preliminary rates shown after underwriting. However, Carriers and other Brokers continue to show preliminary rates. You may ask, Why would they do that? Unforturently there is no good answer. I guess its because some people are just slimy and some are ignorant. Each year, groups get bombarded with rates/emails and think 'wow look how great these rates are', and then when they finally receive their underwritten quotes they realize they were being played the whole time. Everytime you quote ask point blank to your consultant if rates are final or underwritten. If he/she tells you they are preliminary rates end the meeting and thank them for wasting your time. That is what Preliminary rates are a waste of time.

Payroll Companies/P&C Agents Should not be Quoting your benefits

The amount of times I have quoted groups with their Payroll Provider or P&C agent as their consultant is sickening. They are sickening for seperate reasons. Payroll providers have online platforms which they set up a small subsection for 'benefits'. They are horrible about quoting, and administering groups throughout the year. The only good part is enrollment since they handle payroll it is easy to set contributions. None of them actively help you take control of your healthcare spend in any meaningful way. Nor have they shown any interest in that in the past. Having one system to run the entirety of your company is an amazing dream, but it is unrealistic. Especially with an industry like insurance with so many moving parts. These payroll providers are in fact damaging these groups for years to come. Yet they dont care, and they wont ever care. They just want the money. I will always scream this from the roof tops - DO NOT USE A PAYROLL PROVIDER FOR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS.
Now lets go over P&C agents which are just as bad if not worse than payroll providers. See a lot of these agents have the delusion that Health/Dental/Vision/Life benefits are easy to administer and they should just handle all the insurance for a group. If I could have half the premium I saved groups moving from a P&C agent handling their benefits, I would of been able to retire 10 years ago. They are lackisdasical in their quoting efforts and ignorant on the regulations/laws surrounding the benefits industry. Groups should not have to pay for their P&C agents incompetance yet I see countless that do daily. They make groups into a pool of uninsuranbles and throw up their hands while doing so, and say they cant do anything about it. They always could do something about it, its just they dont know what to do because they are P&C agents.

If your consultant is a P&C agent, Payroll provider, or a family friend. I can almost gurantee you are overpaying and not receiving the most benefits for your dollar. Stop getting played by these people use a professional. Its not just for your pocket book its for your teams well being.