The benefits nobody budgets for are often the ones employees remember.
Dental, vision, life, disability and the voluntary lineup rarely move the renewal number. They move retention, and they are where an employee’s day-to-day experience of the plan is formed. Treating them as an afterthought bolted onto open enrollment is how employers end up paying for coverage their staff do not understand and do not value.
Reviewed on the same schedule as medical, not forgotten between renewals.
Ancillary contracts drift. Rate guarantees expire quietly, plan maximums that were competitive a decade ago stay frozen, and nobody re-markets a line that only costs a few dollars per employee — which is exactly why the aggregate gets expensive.
Dental and Vision
Annual maximums, waiting periods, orthodontia, and whether the network actually contains the practices your employees already use. A dental plan is judged by whether the dentist down the road takes it. Before comparing premiums, we check the network against where your employees live and which dentists they already see. A cheaper plan that drops the family dentist costs more in goodwill than it saves.
Life and AD&D
Benefit schedules, guaranteed issue limits, age reductions and the evidence of insurability rules that decide whether an employee who elected more coverage is actually covered for it. Unprocessed evidence requirements are a common and expensive surprise at a death claim.
Short- and Long-Term Disability
Elimination periods, definitions of disability, offsets against other income, and pre-existing condition provisions. Whether premium is employer-paid or employee-paid also determines whether the benefit arrives taxable — a detail employees learn at the worst moment. The general rule: employer-paid premium means a taxable benefit, while premium the employee pays with after-tax dollars means a tax-free one. We read the definition of disability as closely as the price, since an own-occupation and an any-occupation definition can pay very differently on the same claim.
Chosen for what your workforce values, not for what bundles easily.
Accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity and similar coverages can be genuinely useful to a workforce carrying a high deductible — and genuinely wasteful sold to one that is not. The test is the plan they already have.
Fit Before Enrollment
Hospital indemnity makes sense against a four-thousand-dollar deductible and much less against a five-hundred-dollar one. We look at the exposure first and decide what is worth offering second. That means reading the medical plan’s deductible and out-of-pocket maximum, and the pay range of the people who would carry it, before any voluntary carrier presents. A product that rarely pays out against your plan design is a payroll deduction employees will eventually cancel.
Long-Term Care
Individual and group long-term care arrangements, including the hybrid designs now more common than traditional standalone coverage. Often the first benefit an older workforce asks for by name. Hybrid designs often pair a long-term care benefit with life insurance, so the premium is not lost if care is never needed. The questions to ask are whether coverage stays with the employee after they leave and whether premiums can rise after enrollment.
What to Make Employer-Paid
Deciding which lines are employer-paid and which are voluntary is a total rewards decision, not a procurement one. Paid lines signal; voluntary lines only work if they are explained. We start with the gaps that would hurt most if nobody enrolled, such as income protection, then look at what your competitors for talent offer before settling where the employer money goes. Everything else goes on the voluntary shelf, with materials that explain it.
The voluntary shelf is wider than most employers are shown.
Each of these can be offered on the same enrollment as medical, with deductions set up once and sent to payroll. Employee-paid lines cost the employer little beyond the setup, which is exactly why the choice of which ones to offer matters more than how many.
Accident Insurance
Pays a set amount after a covered injury, whatever the medical plan paid, so a high deductible does not land all at once. Benefits are paid to the employee, not the provider, and accident insurance is usually scheduled by injury type, such as a fracture or an emergency room visit. It suits active households with young children and adds little next to a plan that already has low copays. Check whether it covers off-the-job injuries only, since work injuries fall to workers’ compensation.
Critical Illness and Cancer
A lump sum on diagnosis of a covered condition, which employees can put toward the deductible, travel for treatment or lost income. The details that matter in critical illness coverage are which conditions are covered, whether a second diagnosis pays again, and whether a pre-existing condition exclusion applies early in coverage. Benefits go to the employee directly, so the money follows the household’s actual costs rather than the provider’s bill.
Hospital Indemnity
A fixed benefit for a covered hospital stay, most useful sitting alongside a high-deductible plan. It pays per admission or per day regardless of what the hospital charged, and the cash goes to the employee for the deductible, childcare or lost pay. Check whether observation stays and outpatient surgery count as a covered stay, since contracts differ, and that wording decides whether a short hospital visit pays anything at all.
Identity Protection
Credit monitoring and alerts when someone applies for credit in an employee’s name, with specialists who help restore it when fraud happens. The questions to ask are whether restoration is handled by a case manager doing the work or by a hotline giving instructions, and whether family members are included. It sits cleanly on an enrollment as an after-tax deduction and needs no coordination with the medical plan.
Legal Plans
Access to attorneys for wills, real estate, family matters and traffic issues, for a flat payroll deduction. The value of a legal plan depends on what is covered in full versus discounted: a will or a document review is usually included, while a contested matter may only earn a reduced hourly rate. We check the attorney network where your employees live, because a plan with no nearby participating attorney is a deduction with nothing behind it.
Pet Insurance and Pet Care Savings
Coverage or savings programs for veterinary bills, offered on the same enrollment as everything else. Pet insurance reimburses a share of vet bills after a deductible, while a savings program discounts care at participating clinics, and the two suit different households. We also check whether the policy stays with the employee after they leave, since that shapes how much employees value it.
Emergency Medical Transport
Membership programs for the ambulance costs a medical plan leaves behind, which matters most for ground ambulance, since federal balance-billing protections do not reach it. Ground ambulance bills can arrive out of network after a trip nobody chose, and the employee owes whatever the medical plan did not pay. We check how the program handles air transport, whether it covers dependents and whether it waives the balance or only reimburses it, since those terms decide what it is worth.
Telehealth and Care Navigation
Virtual visits and a navigation line that helps employees find in-network care, usually at a low cost per visit. Check whether a telehealth line is already built into the medical plan before buying a separate one, because paying twice for the same virtual visit is an easy overlap to miss. Navigation earns its place when it steers employees to lower-cost in-network providers, which is where its savings actually appear.
Mental Wellbeing
Counseling access and employee assistance programs, reviewed for how many sessions they actually cover before anyone calls them a benefit. An employee assistance program that offers a handful of sessions per issue is short-term counseling and referral, not ongoing treatment, and employees should know that before they need it. We compare what the EAP covers with the behavioral health benefits in the medical plan, so the two hand off to each other instead of overlapping.
GAP Plans
Supplemental GAP coverage pays part of what employees owe after the medical plan pays — deductible, copays and coinsurance. It is how an employer moves to a higher deductible without leaving its lowest-paid people exposed. The design question is HSA eligibility: a GAP plan that pays before the deductible is met can disqualify HSA contributions. See HSAs and consumer-driven plans.
Fixed and Limited Medical Indemnity
Pays set dollar amounts per hospital day, visit or procedure, whatever the actual bill. It is not major medical and never a substitute for it, but paired with a minimum essential coverage plan it gives hourly workforces meaningful protection at a price they will take. See MEC and minimum value plans.
Fertility and Family-Forming
Fertility treatment, egg freezing, adoption and surrogacy support, offered alongside the medical plan through a specialist program. It is a recruiting benefit first, and its value sits in the care navigation and clinic quality behind it, not only in the dollar maximum.
A lineup that was designed rather than accumulated.
A Contract Inventory
Every ancillary line with its rate guarantee, renewal date and current terms in one place, so nothing renews by silence. The inventory also records participation requirements and the notice each carrier needs before a change, so a line can be re-marketed in time rather than discovered after it renewed. It becomes the working list we review with you ahead of each medical renewal.
A Market Check on the Lines Worth Checking
Re-marketed where the market has moved and left alone where it has not, with the reasoning stated either way. Moving a small line has its own cost: new cards, a new enrollment and sometimes new evidence of insurability for employees who elected extra life coverage. We weigh that disruption against the saving, and if staying put is the better answer we say so and show the numbers behind it.
Enrollment Materials That Explain It
Coverage employees can describe is coverage employees value. The rest is a deduction they resent. We write plain-language summaries for each line that say what it pays, when it pays and who it suits, with an example employees can picture. Managers and HR get the same material, so questions during enrollment get the same answer every time, and employees can call us for help choosing coverage.
What employers ask about the non-medical lines.
Why do dental and vision rarely get reviewed?
Because they are small next to medical, so they renew quietly for years. That is exactly why they drift — the rates were set against a workforce that has since changed. The fix is simple: review them alongside medical, when the census and enrollment data are already in hand, and re-market them only where the rates or plan terms no longer fit the people on the plan.
Which lines should the employer pay for?
Usually the ones employees underestimate. Disability is the coverage most people assume they have and most often do not, which makes it a better use of employer dollars than a line employees would buy for themselves. Employer-paid disability also enrolls everyone, which avoids the selection that pushes up pricing when only the people expecting to use a benefit buy it. Basic life is another common employer-paid line, with voluntary coverage layered on top.
Should these renew on the same schedule as medical?
It makes the program far easier to judge. Lines on separate dates get reviewed separately, which means nobody ever sees the total cost of the package in one place. Aligned dates also let carriers quote the lines together, and some may price a package more favorably than lines bought separately. Off-cycle lines can be brought onto the medical date at their next renewal, sometimes with a short bridging term.
Voluntary benefits in Bloomfield Hills that fill the gaps in your health plan
Health plans have deductibles. A surprise hospital bill can hit an employee hard. Employers want to help, but a richer medical plan costs more every year. Voluntary benefits in Bloomfield Hills give employees more protection without adding much to your bill.
We are an independent employee benefits consulting firm, in business since 2007, with an office on Woodward Avenue. We work with employers in Troy, Southfield, Auburn Hills and across Michigan.
Voluntary Benefits
Voluntary benefits are plans employees choose to buy through work. They pay through payroll deduction, often at group rates. Ancillary benefits are the plans that sit beside medical, such as dental, vision, life and disability. Employers often pay for some or all of those.
Voluntary lines we place include:
- Critical illness: a lump-sum payment when an employee is diagnosed with a covered illness
- Hospital indemnity: a set payment for a covered hospital stay
- Accident: payments for covered injuries, like a broken arm
- Supplemental life: extra life coverage beyond what you provide
- Pet insurance: help with vet bills for dogs and cats
- Identity protection: monitoring and help after identity theft
- Legal plans: access to lawyers for things like wills
- Telehealth: doctor visits by phone or video
We help you pick lines that fit your people, compare carriers and set up enrollment and payroll deductions. Michigan has no state disability program. Short-term disability through work may be the main income protection your employees have.
Do voluntary benefits cost the employer anything?
Usually very little. Employees pay the premiums. Your costs are mostly time: setup, enrollment and payroll deductions.
Some carriers need a minimum number of employees to enroll. We check those rules before you announce anything. We also fold voluntary plans into your regular open enrollment in the fall, so employees see everything at once.
Are voluntary benefits paid pre-tax?
Some can be. Lines like accident and hospital indemnity can often be paid pre-tax through a Section 125 plan. That is the IRS rule that lets employees pay certain premiums before taxes. The choice can change how benefits are taxed later, so it needs care.
Others, such as pet insurance, identity protection and legal plans, are usually paid after tax. One more rule: employer-paid group term life above $50,000 is taxable to the employee.
Common questions
Can a small company offer voluntary benefits?
Often, yes. Carriers set their own minimums, and we check them for your group. Very small groups may see a narrower product list, or guaranteed issue limits lower than a larger group would get, particularly on supplemental life. Many voluntary lines can also be offered where there is no group medical plan, which makes them a practical first step for a company not yet ready to sponsor health coverage.
Do we have to change our medical carrier?
No. Voluntary plans can come from a different carrier than your medical plan. That lets each line be chosen on its own merits rather than bundled with medical. The trade-off is administration: more carriers means more bills and more deduction codes, so we weigh that against the better product before recommending a split. A bundling discount from the medical carrier is worth pricing, but it should not decide the lineup on its own.
When can we add them?
Open enrollment is the easiest time. We will help you plan ahead of your renewal. Adding lines at open enrollment gives employees one decision window and is when guaranteed issue amounts are typically offered without health questions. Adding mid-year is possible with some carriers, but it means a separate enrollment and can bring evidence of insurability for life coverage, so we plan new lines a few months before the renewal date.
Talk to us about voluntary benefits in Bloomfield Hills
Send us your renewal or book a 30-minute call. We will suggest a short list of lines that fit your team. Visit us at 41000 Woodward Avenue, Suite 350 East, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304, or call 248.370.8853.
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. →