A new hire, a status change, a termination — each one touches payroll, benefits enrollment and, sometimes, COBRA. Handled as three separate errands, that is three places for something to slip. Handled as one coordinated workflow, it is the easy button: tell us once, and we carry it through.
Most employers run payroll, benefits enrollment and COBRA compliance as three separate relationships. Nothing forces them to talk to each other, so the coordination becomes one more thing on HR’s list, at exactly the moment HR has the least time to do it.
Payroll gets updated the day it happens, because payroll always runs on schedule — that part rarely breaks. The trouble is that a payroll change does not automatically reach the carrier or the COBRA process, so a deduction can stop while coverage keeps running, or the other way around.
Someone has to remember to tell the carrier. If that step depends on a person remembering, it is a matter of time before one slips. When a termination never reaches the carrier, the employer can keep paying premium for someone who has left, and carriers limit how far back they will credit it. When a new hire never reaches it, the first sign is often an employee turned away at a pharmacy.
A termination starts a federal notice deadline whether or not anyone has told COBRA administration yet. The employer has a short window to notify the plan administrator, and the administrator then has its own deadline for the election notice. A notice sent late, or not at all, can leave the employer paying claims for a former employee who would have elected coverage, plus penalties.
We sit at the center of your benefits administration and COBRA compliance, so a single update from you — the same one you already send to payroll — is enough to carry the change everywhere else it needs to go.
You tell us what changed once. We handle what it triggers on the benefits and compliance side from there. It is the same change notice you already send to payroll: a hire date, a status change, or a termination with its reason. From there the carrier enrollment and the benefits record are updated, and the COBRA administrator is notified where a notice is due.
A member of your team of five works on benefits technology specifically, because the eligibility file is where plans actually break. That seat checks the eligibility file sent to each carrier against enrollment, so a missed termination or a dependent left on the plan is found and corrected at the source rather than at audit.
Qualifying event notices, election windows and premium collection run on the calendar they require, tracked by us, not left to a reminder on someone’s calendar. We also watch the dates employees tend to miss, such as the election deadline and the grace period on each premium payment, so coverage ends correctly, and only when it should.
Every handoff between payroll, benefits and COBRA is a place where a deadline can be missed or a record can go stale — and the penalty for a missed COBRA notice lands on the employer, not on whichever vendor dropped it.
The fewer places information has to move between systems and people, the fewer places it can get lost. It also means one party can see the whole record of a change, from the payroll notice to the carrier confirmation, instead of each vendor seeing only its own part.
For proper coverage of an account we work in teams of five — an account executive, account manager, plan analyst, customer service and IT — so there is one number to call, not three vendors to coordinate. When a new hire, a termination or a qualifying event touches benefits, payroll and COBRA at once, the team works it through from one place instead of handing you three follow-ups.
Notices, elections and eligibility changes handled on a known process are easier to defend later than ones handled ad hoc. If a former employee disputes whether a COBRA notice arrived, the question becomes what was sent, when and to which address. A consistent process is what produces that answer.
COBRA administration → · Benefits administration and technology →
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.
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