Remote hiring put your people outside the network your rates assume.
Software and data services, publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications. The workforce is educated, well paid and increasingly not in the state your plan was quoted in.
The rate was built on one market. Your people are in twelve.
What is actually true in information and software
- Remote hiring scatters employees into markets where your carrier’s network is thin, and the rate was built on the headquarters market.
- Benefits are read as a recruiting signal here more than in most industries, and candidates compare designs line by line.
- Wage levels make account-based designs genuinely workable, which is not true in every industry and is why copying another sector’s plan fails.
- Growth is fast enough that applicable-large-employer status can change in a year, and it is measured on the prior calendar year.
What CFH does about it
- Tests network adequacy where your people live, before the renewal rather than after the complaints.
- Benchmarks the design against the employers you actually lose candidates to.
- Models account-based designs against a payroll where employees can actually fund a deductible, and says plainly when the tax advantage is the only advantage.
- Flags the applicable-large-employer threshold in the year you cross it.
Four sizes, four different problems.
Find your headcount. What changes at that size in this industry, and what we do about it.
A small, young company is community-rated and age-banded, so a couple of hires move the renewal more than anything else does.
What we do about it: Prices the market annually and sets up a design that survives the next twenty hires.
Applicable-large-employer status and 1095-C begin, usually in the same year the company started hiring in other states.
What we do about it: Handles the threshold and the multi-state question as one problem, because they arrive together.
Claims become credible, and spend concentrates in specialty pharmacy and behavioral health rather than injury.
What we do about it: Models funding on your own claims and puts pharmacy under its own terms.
A distributed workforce means the network map is the employee experience, and carve-outs multiply the vendor stack.
What we do about it: Runs adequacy by market and keeps one renewal calendar across every vendor.
The three things employers in this sector ask us first.
Half our team is remote. Is one carrier enough?
Only if that carrier’s network is strong where your people actually live. We test that market by market before the renewal.
How does our plan compare to the companies we lose candidates to?
We benchmark against your real competitors for talent rather than a national average, and show where you are behind and what closing it costs.
Is a high-deductible plan with an HSA right for us, or just cheaper for us?
At your wage levels it often genuinely works, but we model it on your own claims and say plainly when the only beneficiary is the budget.
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.
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
248.370.8853
Colorado Springs, CO 80921
719.425.2649
Houston, TX 77084
281.404.5670
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