COBRA notices fail on the handoff between payroll and HR, not on the letter itself.
The election notice is a form. What goes wrong is the event behind it: a reduction in hours payroll saw weeks before HR did, a divorce nobody reported, a termination entered late. We set up notices and election tracking on our platform, and we build the event feed that tells it when to start the clock.
Every deadline is counted from an event someone has to notice.
The federal timeline is fixed. The employer’s job is to make sure each clock starts on the right day, with the right people.
The General Notice
Each newly covered employee and spouse must get a general notice of COBRA rights within 90 days after coverage begins. We send it at enrollment rather than near the deadline, because a missing general notice weakens every notice that follows.
Employer to Plan
For termination, reduction in hours, death or Medicare entitlement, the employer has 30 days to notify the plan. The clock runs from the event, so a termination entered late in the system has already spent part of it.
The Election Notice
The plan then has 14 days to send the election notice, or 44 days from the event where the employer is also the plan administrator. We track both paths, so the notice goes out on the calendar that applies to you.
Events the Family Reports
Divorce, legal separation and a child losing dependent status must be reported by the employee or family, in a window the plan sets that cannot be shorter than 60 days. Your plan has to describe that procedure, or the missed report becomes your problem.
The events that get missed are the quiet ones.
Terminations make noise. The qualifying events that slip through are the ones that do not look like a separation at all.
Reduction in Hours
An employee moved from full time to part time can lose eligibility without leaving. Payroll sees the change first, which is why we connect eligibility changes, not just terminations, to the notice process.
Leave That Ends
An employee on leave who does not return may trigger COBRA on a date that is easy to miss. We tie leave tracking to the notice calendar so the event date is recorded at the time, not reconstructed later.
The Family Behind the Employee
A spouse and children are separate qualified beneficiaries with their own election rights. A notice written only to the employee can leave them without proper notice, so we address every beneficiary we know about.
The election window is where coverage disputes are born.
A qualified beneficiary has 60 days to elect, measured from the later of the loss of coverage or the date the election notice is provided. How coverage is handled during that window has to be consistent.
Coverage While Pending
Someone who elects late in the window is covered back to the loss of coverage. We coordinate with the carrier or claims payer on how claims are held meanwhile, so a provider is not told coverage ended and then told it did not.
Proof of Mailing
A notice that cannot be shown to have been sent is treated much like one that was never sent. Every notice leaves our platform with a record of what went, to whom and when.
Waivers and Revocations
A beneficiary who waives coverage can revoke the waiver before the window closes. We record both, so the election on file is the last one made, not the first.
What employers ask about COBRA notices.
Does federal COBRA apply to us?
It applies to employers that had at least 20 employees on more than half of their typical business days in the prior calendar year. Smaller employers often face state continuation rules instead.
Who is responsible if a notice is late?
The employer and plan administrator keep the obligation even when notices go out through a vendor’s platform. That is why we focus on the event feed you control, not only on the mailing.
What if a notice was already missed?
A missed notice can expose the plan to penalties and to claims for coverage it would otherwise not owe. Counsel decides the remedy, and we help build the record of what happened and when.
Send us your renewal.
We’ll tell you whether it looks competitive, where we see opportunity, and the five questions we’d put to your carrier. No cost, and no obligation to move anything.
The renewal letter
Your current plan summary
Contribution split by tier
Enrolled counts by tier
Four documents — two more if your group is 50 or more. Nothing else; every extra one is a reason to postpone.
An independent employee benefits consulting firm. We look at the entire benefits program — cost, plan performance, risk and administration.
Cookies on This Site
We use cookies to keep the site working properly and to understand how it is used. You can decline anything that is not essential. See our Privacy Policy for the detail.
- Essential — needed for the site to load and for you to move around it. These cannot be switched off.
- Analytics — tell us which pages get read, so we know what is worth writing more of.
- Advertising — set by third parties such as ad and social platforms to measure and target campaigns.