How flexible is your benefits administration system?
May 24, 2023
SEB Marketing team
Offering competitive employee benefits is important for small and medium-sized employers and their employees. However, meeting the needs of all the different generations in the workforce can be challenging. More and more of these businesses have an increased desire for unique and flexible plan designs to attract and retain talent.
Benefits Advisors know that one size does not fit all and when it comes to plan designs, and to remain competitive and relevant as an advisor, they need to offer unique and flexible plan designs. However, this does not come without its challenges. Here are some of the issues that advisors and their clients can face.
Lack of flexibility and customization:
If benefits administration is being done manually, or the current system does not allow multiple carriers, adding and administering products from other carriers or providers can be cumbersome and can create a strain on back-office operations to manage enrolments, changes and terminations for these additional products and services. Ideally, advisors need the option to easily design and manage plans from one carrier or multiple carriers to provide the flexibility that clients demand.
Companies are often looking for ways to control costs and having advanced options such as the ability to cost share a portion of benefits with employees can be an important feature for clients. However, without a robust technology solution with advanced configuration features it can be difficult to manage these customizations.
Difficulty in switching carriers:
Advisors act as an intermediary for their clients, the employers, and at time of renewal will shop around to find the best rates. However, if the advisor does not have access to the client data, they won’t have a record of current plan member data, such as coverage, dependents and beneficiaries, making a re-enrolment for the client and their employees necessary.
Employers often manage multiple roles in their company and the inconvenience of moving to another carrier can be a deterrent to making that switch, which is disappointing especially if every penny counts.
Scalability at risk:
Advisors need to balance their time between administering their client base and finding the time to build new relationships to grow their business. Setting up new employer groups and onboarding the employees can be a manual and time-consuming process that eats into the time that could be `pent with potential new clients.
Finding a technology solution that accurately streamlines the set-up of new groups and the administration of multiple carriers is essential to free up the broker’s valuable time.
Fortunately, all of these challenges can be tackled using technology and automation. At SEB, we developed FlexPlus® ENTERPRISE, a modern, scalable benefits administration solution for advisors administering group benefits for small and medium-sized companies. Learn more about what FlexPlus ENTERPRISE can do for your business.