Five questions to ask your broker before you sign the renewal.
Most employers can say what their plan costs. Far fewer can say where the money went — and that gap is where renewals get decided without anyone really deciding anything. Whoever handles your benefits should be able to answer these five.
What a good answer sounds like.
None of these are trick questions. A broker who is doing the work will have the answers ready, usually with the numbers behind them.
For the wider checklist, see what to look for in an employee benefits consulting firm, or, for groups under 50, how to choose a small business health insurance broker.
What Specifically Is Driving Our Increase?
A good answer takes the percentage apart: medical and pharmacy trend, your own claims experience if your group is large enough for it to count, changes in age or enrollment, and anything the carrier has added for risk. “Trend is up” is not an answer on its own.
How Do Our Benefits Compare to Similar Employers?
Comparable means your size, your industry and your region, not a national average. You should hear where you sit on premium, deductibles and the share employees pay, and what that means when you are trying to hire.
What Claims or Utilization Trends Should Concern Us?
Where your group is large enough to receive claims data, someone should have read it: high-cost claimants, pharmacy growth, emergency-room visits that could have been urgent care. Where it is not, you should hear what the pool you are rated in is doing instead.
What Alternatives Did You Actually Investigate?
Not “we shopped it.” Which carriers, which funding arrangements, which plan designs, and why each one was or was not a fit. The options that were ruled out tell you as much as the one that was recommended.
What Can We Do Before Renewal to Improve Our Position?
The best time to change a renewal is months before it arrives: contribution strategy, plan design, pharmacy management and the data you ask the carrier for. If the only conversation happens when the rate lands, the options are already narrow.
Quoting a plan and understanding one are different jobs.
We do this analysis for every client. Most brokers don’t — and it’s the second job that moves the number.
The Renewal Is an Opening Position
A carrier’s first offer is a starting number, not a verdict. Knowing what is inside it is what gives you something to negotiate with.
A Team on Every Account
For proper coverage of an account we work in teams of five: an account executive, an account manager, a plan analyst, customer service and IT.
Independent
No carrier owns us or sets the recommendation, so the answer to “what else did you look at” is a real list.
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.