You are hiring against companies ten times your size.
Engineering, environmental, laboratories, software, consulting, accounting and legal. Your candidates compare plan design line by line against employers with a benefits department, and half your hires may not live in your carrier’s strongest network.
Benefits are a recruiting instrument here, and priced like an afterthought.
What Is Actually True in Professional and Technical Services
- Benefits are a recruiting instrument here in a way they are not in every industry — candidates read the deductible before they read the job description.
- Remote and multi-state hiring puts employees outside the network your rates were built on.
- Growth changes applicable-large-employer status a year before the obligation lands, because it is measured on the prior calendar year.
- Wages are high enough that account-based plans genuinely work here, which is not true everywhere and is why copying another industry’s design fails.
What CFH Does About It
- Benchmarks your design against what your actual competitors for talent are offering, not a national average.
- Tests network adequacy where your people live before the renewal, not after the complaints.
- Flags the applicable-large-employer threshold in the year you cross it rather than the year it bites.
- Models account-based designs on your own numbers, and says so when they do not pay off.
Six Industries We Serve in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services.
Each industry below has its own guide to eligibility, funding, compliance and retention for employers like yours.
Law Firm
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for law firm employers.
Accounting and CPA Firm
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for accounting and cpa firm employers.
Engineering and Architecture Firm
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for engineering and architecture firm employers.
Marketing Advertising and Media Agency
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for marketing advertising and media agency employers.
Managed IT Services Provider
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for managed it services provider employers.
Management and Business Consulting Firm
Benefits planning, eligibility rules and cost control for management and business consulting firm employers.
Four sizes, four different problems.
Find your headcount. What changes at that size in this industry, and what we do about it.
One principal’s family can move the rate, and candidates still compare your plan to an employer with a benefits department.
What we do about it: Benchmarks the design against the firms you actually lose candidates to, and prices the market rather than renewing on a phone call.
The first year over fifty brings applicable-large-employer status and 1095-C reporting, and it usually arrives in the same year the firm started hiring outside the state.
What we do about it: Handles the threshold and the multi-state question as one problem, because they arrive together.
Claims are finally credible, and a professional workforce’s 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 instead of inside the medical renewal.
Multiple offices and a remote population mean the network map, not the plan design, is what most employees actually experience.
What we do about it: Tests network adequacy office by office and runs the carve-outs as one program on one renewal calendar.
The three things employers in this sector ask us first.
How does our plan compare to the firms we lose candidates to?
Against employers in your discipline and your markets, not a national average, a national average is not who is taking your candidates. We build the comparison from the firms your candidates actually weigh you against: deductible, out-of-pocket maximum, employer premium share and account funding, line by line. That is the comparison a candidate makes, so it is the one worth winning.
We hired in three states this year — what breaks?
Network adequacy usually breaks first, then the reporting. We check where the new employees actually live before the renewal rather than after the complaints. State continuation rules and paid leave programs also follow each new work location, and some states have their own coverage reporting. We map all of it at once, alongside the network test.
Is an HSA plan right for us, or just cheaper for us?
We model it on your own claims and contribution levels. At professional wage levels it often works, and we say so when it does not. The test is whether the premium saving, less what you put into the accounts, leaves employees better off in an ordinary year and not badly hurt in a bad one. Where it fails, a second lower-deductible option can close the gap. See HSA and consumer-driven plans.
Related Guides.
Law Firms
Partners, associates and staff on one plan.
Accounting and CPA Firms
Benefits through tax season and busy-season hours.
Engineering and Architecture Firms
Benefits for project-based design firms.
IT Services and Software Companies
Benefits for technology teams.
Marketing and Creative Agencies
Benefits for agencies with project-based teams.
Owners and Partners
Health coverage and tax treatment for owners and partners.
Early-Career Retention
Benefits that keep associates and junior staff.
ICHRA for Professional Services Firms
When a defined-contribution approach fits a firm.
Real Estate Brokerages and Title Companies
Benefits for brokerages with contractor agents.
Financial Advisory Firms
Benefits for advisory and wealth management firms.
Testing and Research Laboratories
Benefits for scientists and technicians on variable revenue.
Bookkeeping, Payroll and Tax Preparation
Benefits for seasonal peaks and specialist staff.
Growth-Stage Companies
Scaling the plan past the 50-employee line.
Photography, Translation, and Design Studio
Photography, translation, and design studios are small, creative businesses that mix staff employees with freelancers and project-based…
Environmental Consulting Firms
Environmental consultants combine field scientists, engineers and project managers whose travel and project cycles shape benefit needs.
Court Reporting and Legal Support Firms
Court reporters and legal-support firms run on freelance reporters, paralegals and small admin teams that follow the court calendar.
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. →