Six things, done properly, for one kind of client.
We place group health, dental, vision, life and disability for employers. Everything below is what we do with them — cost, plan performance, risk and administration. If you are new to the idea, start with what health and benefits consulting covers.
The renewal is decided months before the letter arrives.
Reading the Plan Through the Year
Your plan analyst looks at claims as they develop, not in month eleven. A large claimant that surfaces in month four is a problem you can still plan around. The same claimant found at renewal is a number you absorb.
Modeling the Funding Decision
Fully insured, level-funded and self-funded with stop-loss, priced against your own experience rather than a brochure. The output is arithmetic you can take to a CFO, not a recommendation you have to trust.
Marketing the Plan Properly
A real market check means going to carriers early enough that they compete for the business. Late submissions get lazy quotes, and lazy quotes make the incumbent look reasonable.
Two- and Three-Year Planning
Plan changes staged over time land better with staff than a single painful year. We build the path rather than reacting to each renewal in isolation.
Self-funding is a decision made once and negotiated every year after.
Level-funded, self-funded and captive arrangements each move risk in a different direction. We model the real numbers before you commit, and manage the stop-loss relationship every year after, not just at the transition.
Funding Model Analysis
We run fully-insured, level-funded and self-funded numbers side by side against your actual claims history, not a generic industry ratio.
Datum — How We Run an Account
The five stages every CFH account runs through, every year, and why we reprice on a held census rather than quoting you a change in total premium.
Renewal & Funding Strategy
An increase is never one number. We take it apart into trend, your own claims and plan change, model the funding alternatives against your census, and work the renewal calendar backwards from the date it has to be signed.
Stop-Loss Negotiation
We review attachment points, contract-versus-paid basis and lasering language before you sign, and push back on renewal terms that quietly shift risk back to you.
Captive Evaluation
For groups where it fits, we evaluate group captive participation as a way to share risk without giving up the savings of self-funding.
Reference-Based Pricing
What it is, what the published results actually show, and an honest read on whether it fits your group. We advise on it case by case rather than selling it.
Pharmacy is the line item nobody negotiates until it is too late.
Rx trend now outpaces medical trend at almost every group we see, and most PBM contracts are written to make that hard to catch. We read the contract, not just the invoice. For the cash-price side, see our guide to GoodRx, Cost Plus Drugs, Amazon Pharmacy and TrumpRx.
Contract & Rebate Audits
We review PBM agreements for pass-through pricing, rebate guarantees and the clauses that quietly protect the PBM instead of you.
Specialty Drug Management
A handful of high-cost specialty claims can move a renewal more than plan design does. We track them and manage the carve-out conversation.
Formulary Strategy
We help you decide when a narrower formulary or a carve-out vendor actually saves money, instead of assuming bundled is simpler.
Most claims never get checked. That is where the waste hides.
Medical and pharmacy claims are paid on trust more often than most employers realize. Auditing them, and pushing for real network cost and quality data instead of a marketing brochure, is where a meaningful share of avoidable spend actually gets found.
Claims Auditing
We review paid claims for billing errors, duplicate payments and contract-rate mismatches, not just the aggregate loss ratio.
Network Cost & Quality Data
We push carriers and vendors for real cost and quality data by provider, instead of accepting a network’s reputation as the whole story.
Vendor Accountability
When an audit finds a pattern, we hold the vendor accountable for it — not just note it for next year’s renewal.
Claims audit and recovery in detail →
How an audit actually runs →
Direct contracting and centers of excellence →
Nobody gets praised for filing on time.
Everyone remembers the year it was late. We keep the calendar so it stays administration rather than a fire drill.
ACA Reporting
Employer mandate tracking, 1094-C and 1095-C, and the measurement periods underneath them. This is the one that arrives with penalties attached.
ERISA
Plan documents, summary plan descriptions, Form 5500 and the notice requirements that go with them. Most employers discover a gap here during an audit rather than before one.
COBRA and Eligibility
Notices, timelines and the eligibility files that quietly disagree with your payroll system until somebody’s claim is denied.
HIPAA Compliance
Privacy and security rules, business associate agreements, and the paper trail that has to exist before a breach, not after one.
Non-Discrimination Testing
Section 125 and self-funded plan testing that decides whether an executive’s benefit is still tax-favored or has quietly become taxable income.
Dependent Eligibility Verification
Confirming the spouses and children on your plan are still eligible to be there — the audit most employers skip until a carrier runs it for them.
Clients also reach CPAs and ERISA attorneys through us when a question needs more than a broker.
COBRA notices have specific deadlines. Missing one is not a technicality.
COBRA compliance is mostly about paperwork done on time — qualifying event notices, election windows, premium collection — and the penalties for getting it wrong land on the employer, not the administrator who missed the deadline.
Notice & Election Administration
We issue qualifying event notices, track election windows, and manage the paperwork on the calendar it actually requires.
Premium Billing & Collection
COBRA premium collection is handled so a lapsed payment does not turn into a coverage dispute months later, and we run direct billing for retirees and other continuants outside COBRA the same way.
State Mini-COBRA Coordination
Some states extend COBRA-style continuation rights beyond federal law, especially for smaller groups. We track which of yours do.
Sponsoring a health plan makes you a fiduciary, whether or not anyone told you that.
ERISA imposes real fiduciary duties on health plan sponsors, not just retirement plan sponsors — and most employers have never had that explained to them. We help you understand the obligation and build a record that shows you met it.
Fiduciary Process Review
We review how plan decisions get made and documented, and help build a process that would hold up under a Department of Labor inquiry.
Vendor & Contract Oversight
Fiduciary duty extends to overseeing the vendors you hire. We help evaluate whether fees and services are reasonable, and document that review.
CPA & Attorney Coordination
For questions that cross into legal or tax territory, we bring in the CPAs and attorneys available through us rather than guessing.
The network gets thin the moment you hire outside your home market.
A carrier that is strong in your home market is often thin where you just hired — and a plan that wins on a spreadsheet is the wrong plan if your people cannot reach a doctor on it. We are licensed in the states our clients hire into, with offices in Bloomfield Hills, Colorado Springs and Houston, so the question we answer at renewal is where your employees actually live and work rather than which state line they crossed.
Multi-State Populations
One plan, several states, and a network that does not cover your newest hires. It is a solvable problem, but only if someone is looking.
State-Level Requirements
Mandates and continuation rules differ by state and do not follow your headquarters.
Employees Abroad
Expatriate and local-national coverage for employers whose people are not all in the United States.
A defined contribution can replace a group plan — if it is set up correctly.
An Individual Coverage HRA lets an employer fund individual marketplace coverage instead of a group plan. It fits some employers well and badly hurts others, and the difference is almost entirely in how it is modeled and administered.
Fit Analysis
We model ICHRA against your current group plan with your own census, so the decision is based on your workforce, not a national average.
Class Design & Compliance
ICHRA rules require structuring employee classes correctly and meeting notice requirements — we handle both.
Employee Transition Support
Employees moving from a group plan to individual marketplace coverage need real guidance, not a one-time email. We provide it.
The system is only as good as the file it sends the carrier.
Choosing and Running the Platform
Enrollment systems are sold on the demo and judged on the eligibility file. A member of your team of five works on benefits technology specifically, because this is where plans break in practice.
Open Enrollment as a Project
Communications, sessions, and the follow-up for the people who did not open the email. Enrollment is the one moment a year when every employee forms an opinion about their benefits.
One Card, One Portal
Every pre-tax account — FSA, HRA, HSA and the rest — runs through a single benefits card and a single portal, so employees are not juggling five logins and three cards to use benefits they already have.
One Home Base for Your HR Team
Compliance documents, claims analytics, benchmarking data and census information kept in one place your HR team and your account team both use — not scattered across email threads and spreadsheet versions.
A flexible spending account only saves money if the paperwork behind it actually works.
Flexible spending and health reimbursement arrangements are simple in concept and easy to administer badly — missed substantiation deadlines and confusing runout periods are where most employee complaints start.
Plan Setup & Administration
We set up and administer FSA and HRA plans so substantiation, runout periods and forfeiture rules are handled correctly from day one, including Section 105 HRA arrangements for small-business and farm ownership structures.
Compliance Monitoring
Nondiscrimination testing and IRS substantiation rules are easy to get wrong. We track both so a routine plan does not become an audit risk.
Employee Support
Employees calling about a denied reimbursement reach someone who can actually explain the rule, not a ticket queue.
A high-deductible plan without HSA education is just a higher deductible.
Moving to a consumer-driven health plan can lower premium cost meaningfully, but only if employees understand how to use the HSA that comes with it. Most of the savings gets left on the table in the education gap.
CDHP Plan Design
We model high-deductible plan designs against your current plan so the tradeoff between premium and out-of-pocket cost is a real number, not a guess.
HSA Vendor Selection
We evaluate HSA custodians on fees and investment options, not just whichever one the medical carrier bundles in.
Employee Education
The savings in a CDHP come from employees actually using the HSA correctly. We build the education program that makes that happen.
When an employee’s claim is denied, someone has to make the call.
That is the part of this job employees actually see. Your account manager takes the carrier call so your HR team is not translating between a distressed employee and a claims department.
Denied Claims and Appeals
We take the file, find out what actually happened, and pursue it. Many denials are coding or eligibility, not coverage.
Billing Disputes
Carrier invoices disagree with enrollment more often than anyone expects. We reconcile rather than forward.
A Question at 2 AM
Employees ask benefits questions at inconvenient hours. The chat on our site takes the question any time, and a person from CFH answers it, live when we are in or the next business day when we are not.
Claims & Stop-Loss Reporting
Claims, pharmacy and stop-loss data pulled into one branded report instead of three separate carrier logins, with the high-cost outliers flagged before the renewal conversation instead of during it.
Employees do not read benefit guides. They ask questions.
Most of what employees need is not a claims dispute — it is a quick, correct answer about what is covered, before a small question turns into a bigger problem. That is different from claims advocacy, and it has to be available when employees actually have the question, not just during open enrollment.
Day-To-Day Coverage Questions
Employees get a straight answer about what is covered before a question becomes a claim, or a claim becomes a dispute.
24/7 Access
Support is not limited to business hours — employees can leave a question in the chat on our site at any hour, and we answer it live or the next business day.
Enrollment Support
Real-time help during open enrollment, when the volume of questions is highest and the deadline is least forgiving.
Not every benefit is medical. The paperwork still has to be right.
Commuter accounts, dependent care, education assistance, financial wellness and giving programs all run on the same pre-tax logic as an FSA — and break the same way when nobody owns the administration.
Commuter & Parking
Pre-tax transit and parking accounts set up and administered so the monthly limits and eligible expenses stay correct.
Dependent Care & Family Support
Dependent care FSAs and family or emergency assistance accounts, administered with the same discipline as a medical FSA.
Education, Giving & Financial Wellness
Tuition and education assistance, charitable-giving accounts, and financial wellness programs — specialty accounts that round out a total rewards package without adding headcount to run them.
Professional & Business Expense Accounts
Uniforms and work-required clothing, home-office setup, travel and meals, and professional development — reimbursement accounts administered with receipts and limits tracked, not an expense report nobody reconciles.
The people you most need to keep are covered by the same plan as everyone else.
Standard group coverage caps out well below what a senior leader or key employee actually needs, especially on life and disability. Executive benefits close that gap without restructuring the entire plan.
Supplemental Life & Disability
Coverage layered on top of the base plan for executives and other key employees whose income replacement needs exceed standard group limits.
Nonqualified Deferred Compensation
Structuring plans that let key employees defer income beyond qualified plan limits, coordinated with your CPA and legal counsel.
Key Person & Buy-Sell Funding
Insurance structured around a specific business need — protecting against the loss of a key employee or funding a buy-sell agreement between owners.
FMLA, state leave and short-term disability rarely run on the same calendar.
An employee out on leave can be touching three or four different clocks at once — federal FMLA, a state paid-leave law, short-term disability, and workers’ comp — and getting the coordination wrong creates real liability.
Leave Policy Design
Building a leave policy that actually coordinates FMLA, state-mandated leave and disability benefits, instead of three separate policies that quietly conflict.
Multi-State Leave Compliance
Tracking which of your states carry their own paid-leave mandates on top of federal law, so HR is not learning about a new obligation from an employee.
Disability Plan Coordination
Aligning short- and long-term disability plan design with your leave policy so an employee’s income does not have gaps between programs.
Benefits Continuation on Leave
Medical, dental and vision stay active and the employee’s share of premium is billed and collected while someone is out — the same discipline as retiree or COBRA billing, applied to an active leave instead of a departure.
Most employees have no idea what their benefits are actually worth.
Salary is the number an employee sees. Health coverage, employer HSA contributions, disability, life insurance and everything else in the package rarely gets added up anywhere — so employees systematically underestimate what they are actually paid.
Personalized Statements
We build a statement for each employee showing the real dollar value of salary plus every benefit, not just a plan summary.
Open Enrollment Integration
Delivered alongside open enrollment, so the value of the package is in front of employees at the exact moment they are deciding what to elect.
Retention Messaging
For employers competing on total package rather than base salary alone, this is the document that makes the comparison honest.
Benefits are one part of running a workforce. The questions do not stop there.
A policy that needs updating, a termination that needs to be handled correctly, a wage-and-hour question nobody in the building can answer with confidence — these land on the same desk as benefits, and most employers have nowhere reliable to take them.
Employee Handbooks & Policy
We build and update handbooks so policy keeps pace with changing state and federal employment law, not last decade’s version.
HR Compliance Audits
Wage-and-hour review, worker classification review and general HR practice audits, done before a regulator or a lawsuit finds the gap.
HR Support on Demand
A resource to call with the day-to-day HR questions that do not wait for the next renewal cycle.
Compliance Updates Before They Are Deadlines
Federal and state employment-law changes tracked and turned into plain-language guidance and ready-to-use policy language sized to your state and headcount, before a deadline turns into a scramble.
HR & Payroll Systems Consulting
We advise on HR information system and payroll system selection and implementation, not just the benefits-enrollment platform, so the technology decision gets made before a vendor contract is signed, not after.
Most companies set pay by instinct, not by data.
Benefits are half of total rewards. The other half — how pay decisions actually get made — is usually undocumented, inconsistent between managers, and disconnected from what the company is already spending on benefits.
Pay Philosophy & Structure
We help define how pay decisions get made and build salary ranges and structures tied to real market data, not guesswork.
Market Pricing & Benchmarking
Roles priced against real market data, so offers and raises are grounded in evidence rather than instinct.
Incentive Plan Design
Bonus and incentive plans structured to support retention, built alongside the benefits investment rather than separate from it.
Most benefits communication is timed to the calendar, not to the decision employees are actually making.
An open enrollment email that goes out the week the window opens is a deadline notice, not guidance — by then, most employees have already picked whichever plan took the least explaining.
Open Enrollment Messaging
A sequence timed to when the decision actually happens, not to when the portal opens, so the trade-offs are understood before they are made.
New-Hire & Life-Event Messaging
The specific decisions a new hire faces in the first weeks, and the qualifying-life-event windows employees rarely know exist until they are missed.
Plan-Change Explanations
When a renewal changes a deductible or a carrier, the explanation employees need is what it costs them, not what changed on a spec sheet.
“Are we competitive?” deserves a better answer than a national average.
Against Employers Like You
Our benchmarking survey covers nearly a thousand employers. Size, region and industry matter far more than a headline figure, and that is the comparison we build.
The Comparisons That Mean Something
Contribution strategy and out-of-pocket exposure tell you more about whether staff will value the plan than the premium does. Those are the numbers we lead with.
Data-Driven Population Insights
Claims and pharmacy analytics, gaps-in-care tracking and risk prediction, rolled into an executive dashboard so a benchmark number comes with the data behind it.
A Plan Score for the Renewal Meeting
Medical and ancillary coverage scored pillar-by-pillar against employers who match on size, industry and region, with the gaps actually driving cost called out before you decide what to change.
The benefits nobody budgets for are often the ones employees remember.
Dental, vision, life, disability and the rest of the voluntary lineup rarely move the renewal number, but they move retention. We treat them as part of the strategy, not an afterthought bolted onto open enrollment.
Core Ancillary Lines
Dental, vision, basic life and short- and long-term disability, placed and reviewed on the same schedule as medical, not forgotten between renewals.
Voluntary Worksite Benefits
Accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity and similar coverages, chosen for what your workforce actually values rather than a standard carrier bundle.
Enrollment Positioning
We help you decide what to make voluntary versus employer-paid, and how to present it so employees actually understand what they are getting.
Long-Term Care Insurance
A voluntary long-term care option, priced and enrolled alongside the rest of your ancillary lineup for employees who want to plan ahead.
A wellness program nobody uses is not a benefit. It is a line item.
Most wellbeing spend gets measured by whether a vendor was purchased, not by whether claims moved. We look at your population’s actual health data and build toward outcomes, not participation credits. For employers with one hundred to five hundred employees, it runs as a year-round health and cost strategy with a quarterly review.
Population Health Review
We look at your claims and biometric data, where available, to find out what is actually driving cost before recommending a program.
Program Selection
We vet wellbeing and disease-management vendors against your population, not a generic list, and say no to the ones that will not move the needle.
Engagement Strategy
A program only works if people use it. We help design the communication and incentive structure that gets it opened, not just purchased.
A PEO changes who your employees work for on paper. Choosing the wrong one changes what they actually get.
A professional employer organization can solve real problems for a growing employer — payroll, HR administration, sometimes lower-cost benefits. It can also lock you into a bundle that is expensive to leave. We help employers evaluate PEOs the way we evaluate any other funding decision.
PEO vs. Direct Comparison
We model what you would pay and get inside a PEO against staying direct with your own benefits program, on your actual numbers.
PEO Benefits Review
For employers already in a PEO, we review what the bundled benefits plan actually covers and how it compares to the open market.
Transition Planning
Moving into or out of a PEO has real timing and compliance implications. We plan the transition instead of leaving you to figure it out at renewal.
An employee turning 65 needs a decision made correctly, not a pamphlet.
The choice between staying on an employer plan, moving to Medicare, or coordinating both has real financial consequences and strict enrollment deadlines. Most employees are left to figure it out alone.
Medicare Coordination Guidance
We help employees and HR understand how group coverage interacts with Medicare Parts A, B and D, so nobody misses an enrollment window.
Retiree Benefits Strategy
For employers who offer retiree coverage, we help design and administer it as its own program, not an afterthought bolted onto active employee benefits.
COBRA-To-Medicare Transitions
We help departing employees understand whether COBRA or Medicare is the right next step, and when.
Some of your retirees under sixty-five already qualify for Medicare.
A person under sixty-five reaches Medicare through disability, and once they do, a retiree plan is the second payer for them. Finding those people is a discipline, not a lucky break.
Who Is Already Entitled
People who reached Medicare and whose claims are still being coordinated as though they had not. Reconciling entitlement data against the eligibility file is the fastest money in retiree benefits, because nothing has to be applied for.
Who Would Qualify And Does Not Know
Retirees who became seriously ill after they stopped working are often eligible for Social Security disability, and therefore Medicare, and have never pursued it because nothing in retirement prompts the question.
What It Is Worth To Them
Disability income they were entitled to and were not claiming, Medicare alongside the group plan, and protection of the retirement benefit they will draw later. This only works when it is worth having for the retiree, not just for the plan.
A retiree plan is not the active plan with older people on it.
Pre-Medicare and Medicare-eligible retirees are two different problems with two different rule sets. Running them as one plan is how a retiree promise ends up costing more than it was priced to.
Pre-Medicare Retirees
The under-sixty-five group can come out of the active plan and into a self-funded captive of its own, priced off Medicare rather than off a network discount. A retiree-only plan also sits outside the ACA market reforms, which is design freedom the active plan does not have.
Medicare-Eligible Retirees
Once Medicare pays first, your plan is the second payer, and it should be built that way. We place a fully insured group indemnity plan that supplements Medicare, with access to any provider or hospital that accepts Medicare.
The Liability You Carry
Public employers report retiree health under GASB 75; private employers accrue it. Eligibility, the Medicare cutoff, a defined-dollar subsidy and where the sponsorship role sits are the levers that move the number, and they are benefits decisions before they are actuarial ones.
A collectively bargained plan is governed by a trust, not by any one signatory employer.
A Taft-Hartley welfare fund is run by a joint labor-management board of trustees under the collective bargaining agreement, so an employer with both union and non-union roles is often coordinating two different benefit structures under one roof.
Contribution Schedule Review
Confirming the rate, the step-ups and the hours-bank eligibility rules being applied match what the current agreement actually says.
Delinquency Risk Review
Catching a gap between hours reported and hours worked before the trust does, since ERISA gives a delinquent fund the right to sue for it.
Non-Union Benefit Coordination
Structuring the benefits an employer sponsors directly for its non-union roles so eligibility and plan year do not collide with the trust’s own calendar.
Most employers do not leave over one bad year. They leave because the pattern never changes.
If more than one of these describes your last renewal, it is worth a conversation.
The Renewal Arrives in October
Your broker presents the increase as a finished fact, instead of something that was negotiated months earlier.
One Quote, One Carrier
You are shown a single option and told the market was checked. You never see what else was available.
Compliance Is Your Problem
ACA reporting, ERISA documents and 5500 filings land on HR with no support until something goes wrong.
You Hear From Them Once a Year
No mid-year claims review, no budget forecast, and no help when an employee cannot get a claim paid.
The broker changes. The plan, the network and the ID cards do not.
The Bench Behind Your Team
CPAs, attorneys and HR practitioners you can reach through us once you are a client, so a question that needs a lawyer gets one rather than an opinion.
We Show Our Work
You see every quote we received, what we asked for and what the carrier said back. No summary slide standing in for the data.
Nothing Changes for Your Employees
Your carriers, networks and ID cards stay exactly as they are. What changes is who negotiates on your behalf.
The reference material behind all of this is open, with no form in front of it.
Article library → · Benefits glossary → · Templates and checklists →
How the arrangement works, before anyone signs anything
Ten questions employers ask us about brokers, consultants and what working together actually looks like.
How does an employee benefits broker actually get paid?
Two ways, and you are entitled to know which one applies to you. Most group health business is commission-based: the carrier builds the commission into the premium and pays it to whoever is named as your broker. The alternative is a flat fee, agreed with you and either billed directly or offset against commission. Since the Consolidated Appropriations Act, brokers and consultants have had to disclose their compensation to the plan sponsor in writing. If you have never seen that disclosure, ask for it.
What is the difference between a broker, a consultant and a third-party administrator?
A broker places coverage. A consultant works the whole program – funding, plan design, compliance, administration and what the claims data says between renewals – and placing the coverage is one part of that. A third-party administrator is a different thing again: the company that processes claims, runs COBRA or administers an HRA. We are not a TPA. We find, vet and manage the ones our clients use, so the administrator answers to somebody on your side of the table.
Are we paying more by having a broker at all?
No. On a commission-based plan the commission sits in the rate whether or not anybody is named on it – drop your broker and name nobody, and the carrier keeps it. So the real question is not whether you are paying. It is what you are getting back for something you are paying regardless.
Two firms quoted us the same carriers. How do we choose between them?
That is the normal outcome, and it is the most useful thing to understand about this market. The carriers are the same, the filed rates are the same, and past a certain size the pricing turns on your own claims rather than on who asked for the quote. Proposals are rarely won or lost on the number. Compare what happens afterward: who does the work, how a denied claim gets handled in March, whether anyone is modeling next year before the letter arrives, and how many people know your plan.
What does a benefits consultant do between renewals?
Most of the job, if it is being done properly. Eligibility and payroll files that have to reconcile, a claim denied that should not have been, a mid-year plan change, compliance filings and notices that run on their own calendar, an employee who moved states, and the continuing read of your claims so the renewal conversation opens with evidence instead of a reaction. The renewal is where the work becomes visible. It is not where the work happens. See what a middle-market employer should expect from its broker, stage by stage.
When is it actually worth changing brokers?
Less often than a firm competing for your business will tell you. It is worth it when the service is genuinely failing – calls unanswered, filings missed, nobody explaining your own numbers to you – or when the work has outgrown whoever is doing it, which usually happens as you cross into claims-rated territory and no one is modeling funding. One disappointing renewal is not by itself a reason. If a renewal is fair, we will tell you it is fair. If you are weighing it, how to choose an employee benefits broker in Michigan sets out what to compare.
How much of this can our HR team keep doing themselves?
Plenty, and the right split depends on what your team wants back. Some clients keep enrollment and day-to-day employee questions in house and want us on funding, negotiation and compliance. Others want the questions to stop arriving at HR’s desk at all. Both arrangements work. The one that does not work is where nobody has said out loud which of the two you are in.
We have employees in more than one state. Does that change who we should work with?
Yes, and it is worth asking early rather than discovering it later. Multiple states means more than one insurance market, state continuation rules that differ from federal COBRA, and notice requirements that follow where the employee sits rather than where your office is. A firm licensed only in your own state can place the plan and then hand back the parts it cannot handle. Ask where a firm is licensed before it matters.
What happens in the first ninety days if we switch?
Documents and data first: current plan documents, rate history, claims experience where it exists, the eligibility file, and whatever is running your enrollment. Then a read of where the plan actually stands, which for a lot of employers is the first time anyone has laid their own numbers out in front of them. Nothing goes to market in that window unless your renewal date forces it. The point of the first ninety days is to understand what you have before anyone changes it.
Who actually works on our account?
A team, not one person. For proper coverage of an account we work in teams of five – an account executive, an account manager, a plan analyst, customer service and IT. The IT seat surprises people until the first eligibility file fails to reconcile against payroll. It also means that no one person being out is your problem.
Want this on your own numbers? Send us your renewal, or talk it through with someone first. No cost, no obligation.
General information about benefits brokerage and consulting, not legal or tax advice. Plan-specific questions belong with ERISA counsel, and we will bring them in.
Coverage lines and plan work, service by service.
Each page below explains one service in plain words, with the questions employers ask us most.
Life, dental and income protection
Plan design and your people
Employee Benefits Consulting in Bloomfield Hills That Puts You Back in Charge
Many employers get a renewal each year with a higher number and very little explanation. The broker sends a quote, HR signs it, and the same thing happens next year. Employee benefits consulting in Bloomfield Hills should give you a clear plan and a real say in the outcome.
We are CFH Insurance Consultants, an independent employee benefits consulting firm in business since 2007. No carrier owns us. Our office is on Woodward Avenue, and we serve employers across Michigan, from Birmingham and Troy to Southfield, Novi and Detroit.
Employee Benefits Consulting
Employee benefits consulting means an outside expert helps you choose, price and run your employee insurance. That covers medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans. It also covers the rules that come with them.
Here is how we help:
- Plan strategy. We look at what you offer, what it costs and what your people use. Then we suggest changes that fit your budget.
- Renewals. We read the renewal, question the increase and shop the market when it makes sense.
- Compliance. We help keep you ERISA compliant. ERISA is the federal law that sets rules for most employer health plans.
- Service. For proper coverage of an account we work in teams of 5: an account executive, an account manager, a plan analyst, customer service and IT.
Clients also get access to CPAs and ERISA attorneys through the firm. A chat assistant answers questions around the clock.
We work with small groups, mid-market companies and large corporate employers. The goal of employee benefits consulting in Bloomfield Hills stays the same: a plan your people value at a cost you can plan for.
What does an employee benefits consultant do for a small business?
For a small business, the biggest job is the renewal. In Michigan, small group means 50 or fewer employees. Your rates come from carrier filings, employee ages and ZIP codes. Your own claims do not set the price.
So the real choices are plan design and carrier. We compare options from carriers Michigan employers use, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Priority Health, Health Alliance Plan (HAP), UnitedHealthcare, Aetna and Cigna. We lay out the trade-offs in plain words.
Once you pass 50 employees, your own claims start to count. That opens new funding choices. It also brings new rules, like the ACA employer mandate at 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees.
How do I switch benefits brokers?
Switching is simpler than most people think. You sign one broker of record letter. Your carrier, plan, ID cards and rates stay the same. Your employees see no change.
Common questions
Is CFH tied to one insurance company?
No. We are independent, and no carrier owns us. That lets us compare the market for you.
When should we start on a January 1 renewal?
Start early. Most January 1 renewals arrive in October or November, and open enrollment is in the fall. Summer is a good time to start.
Do you work with employers outside Oakland County?
Yes. Our office is in Bloomfield Hills, but we serve employers across the whole state of Michigan.
Talk to us about employee benefits consulting in Bloomfield Hills
Send us your renewal or book a 30-minute call. We will tell you what we see and what we would do next. 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.
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Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
248.370.8853
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719.425.2649
Houston, TX 77084
281.404.5670