Alera Group was contracted by a start-up national credit counseling company to assist with maintaining employee health benefits offerings while mitigating the costs to the employer.
Process
Initially, Alera Group worked hand-in-hand with the client to develop and implement their first-ever employee health benefits offering, while being flexible to accommodate the client’s rapid growth. At that time, the client was interested in a traditional health benefits plan and, with Alera Group’s help, executed a contract with a major national health insurance company. However, after the year-over-year renewal rates increased drastically, the owners became concerned that they couldn’t afford to offer health benefits and would have to discontinue the offering.
Alera Group continued negotiating with the traditional insurance company while simultaneously educating the client about the benefits of self-funding employee health insurance. When the next year’s traditional insurance renewal rate was extremely high, Alera Group was able to present the client with another option as a result of proactive due diligence. By researching and comparing these options, they determined that they could offer more comprehensive health coverage for less by utilizing the self-funding option. Alera Group then worked with the client to implement the innovative Lead2Health self-funded health insurance program, and cancel the traditional insurance coverage.
Challenges
Because the client was a new company that was rapidly onboarding new employees, the client was particularly cost sensitive. Alera Group was able to help the client maintain affordable health insurance benefits through periods of employee expansion.
Results
The company’s employees and dependents are benefiting from the many advantages of the Lead2Health self-funded insurance program that aren’t always provided through traditional health insurance coverage:
- Very high-quality medical care
- Exceptional customer service and user experience
- Use of a dedicated care coordinator, who spends as much time as needed to resolve concerns and answer questions
In addition, the company is on track to realize approximately $250,000 of healthcare cost savings in the first year with Lead2Health, compared to the previous year with the traditional health insurer.
The company reports being very happy with the new benefits package and particularly enjoys working with Alera Group. The company reports that whenever a competing brokerage contacts them, they respond that nobody could do better for them than Alera Group did.
