You don’t get a broker. You get five people who already know your plan.
For proper coverage of an account we work in service teams of five. Every one of them has access to your plan, your carrier history and your open items — so the answer doesn’t wait on one person’s calendar.
Come meet your new team.
Not five names to memorize — five jobs, each one owned by somebody, so nothing sits in the gap between them.
Account Executive
Owns the strategy — the direction of the renewal and the case made to the carrier.
Handles
Renewal strategy and negotiation position, funding model (fully insured, level funded, self funded), which carriers go to market and why, plan design changes, multi-year cost strategy.
You hear from them
At renewal planning, at the strategy meeting, and any time the cost trend changes what the plan should be.
Account Manager
Owns the execution — the open items and the dates they have to land on.
Handles
Carrier submissions and follow-up, renewal timeline, open enrollment project plan, implementation of anything that changes, chasing the carrier when the carrier goes quiet.
You hear from them
Throughout the renewal cycle, and whenever something is outstanding. This is usually your most frequent contact.
Plan Analyst
Owns the numbers — what the renewal actually says once the letter is decoded.
Handles
Claims and utilization review, rate and contribution modeling, side-by-side plan comparisons, stop-loss and reserve analysis, benchmarking against comparable employers.
You hear from them
When the renewal arrives, when you are weighing options, and whenever a number needs to hold up in front of a board or a CFO.
Customer Service
Owns the day to day — the things your employees call about.
Handles
ID cards, eligibility questions, denied and mishandled claims, billing discrepancies, provider network questions, prior authorizations that stall.
You hear from them
Between renewals, on your employees’ behalf — often without the question reaching your HR desk at all.
IT
Owns the plumbing — the systems that carry your data.
Handles
Eligibility file build and testing, benefits administration platform configuration, payroll-to-carrier feeds, open enrollment system setup, fixing the discrepancy report before it becomes a coverage problem.
You hear from them
At implementation, at open enrollment, and any time a feed breaks or a system changes.
The same five people, across the whole cycle.
A renewal is not one conversation. Here is who is carrying it at each stage.
Before the Renewal
The plan analyst pulls claims, utilization and benchmarking. The account executive sets the negotiating position and decides what goes to market. IT confirms the eligibility data the carriers will be quoting against is actually right.
At the Renewal
The account executive presents the options and the recommendation. The plan analyst models the contribution and cost impact of each. The account manager runs the timeline so decisions land before the carrier deadlines do.
At Open Enrollment
The account manager runs the project plan. IT configures the enrollment system and the payroll feed. Customer service takes the employee questions so your HR team is not the help desk.
The Rest of the Year
Customer service handles claims and coverage issues as they come up. IT keeps the feeds clean. The account manager tracks compliance dates. The account executive watches the trend that becomes next year’s renewal.
The people on your account decide what it takes to run it.
CFH is managed from the bottom up. The team servicing an account — not a layer sitting above it — decides what technology, software and services the work requires, and the firm resources them.
Technology and Software
If running your plan properly calls for a different enrollment, reporting or eligibility tool, the people using it every day are the ones who say so. The decision does not travel up and come back as a budget answer. Where a change reaches your employees, such as a new enrollment platform, the IT seat sets it up and tests it before anyone logs in.
Data and Research Access
Benchmarking and market data is added when an account needs it, so a question about how your renewal compares is answered with evidence rather than an opinion. That evidence is what the plan analyst uses to compare your contribution split, deductibles and rate history with employers of similar size and industry, and it is what gets put in front of a board or CFO.
More People
When the work on an account outgrows the team carrying it, the answer is another hire, not a longer queue. Staffing follows the work rather than the other way around. Nobody on the account has to argue for the hire; the team that sees the workload makes the call. For a client, the practical sign is that the same people keep answering as the account grows, rather than the work being handed to whoever has time.
And the bench behind them.
The five are your day to day. Behind them sits the rest of the firm — a team of benefits professionals, independent since 2007.
Where We Are Licensed
Offices in Michigan, Colorado and Texas, with benefits expertise well beyond Michigan — so a population that crosses state lines does not need a second broker. When you hire in a new state, the same team checks the network, the state continuation and leave rules and any state reporting, so one renewal covers the whole population. More on growing across state lines.
Specialist Advice
CPAs and ERISA attorneys are available through us once you are a client, for the questions that run past what a licensed insurance broker should answer alone. Typical examples are a plan document question with legal weight, the tax treatment of an executive benefit, or a controlled-group question after an acquisition. We bring the specialist in alongside your team, so the answer comes back in the context of your plan.
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.
Switch to CFH. Unhappy with your broker? Your employees won’t notice. You will. →