No matter what your industry, if you have employees we can help you.
Industry is not what makes a benefits program hard. These six moments are, and they arrive the same way in a machine shop, a medical practice and a logistics yard.
The hard parts are the same whatever you make.
An employer with fifty people has the same four problems whether those people are welders, nurses or accountants.
Eligibility Is Eligibility
Who is full time, when they become eligible, what happens when hours drop, and whether the file that says so actually reached the carrier. None of that changes by industry.
The renewal math does not care what you make
Claims, trend, pooling and contribution strategy behave the same way across industries. What changes is the shape of your population, and that is an input, not a different kind of analysis.
Compliance Is Federal
The mandate, 1094-C and 1095-C reporting, ERISA, COBRA and Form 5500 apply by headcount and plan structure. No industry is exempt from the parts that bite.
Where Industry Does Change Things
Variable-hour and seasonal workforces, several sites on different shifts, high turnover, and collectively bargained arrangements. These change the administration, not the analysis, which is exactly the part we take on.
What We Have Not Seen, We Can Read
A plan document, a claims report and a renewal letter say the same things in any sector. We would rather read yours than assume your industry tells us what is in it.
The Test Is Whether You Have Employees
Two or two thousand, one location or twelve, first plan or twentieth renewal. If you offer benefits to people, there is a version of this work for you.
Headquartered outside the United States? →
Where industry does change things, this is what changes.
We name sectors the way the benefits filing data names them, so whatever your industry code says you are, there is a page here that speaks it. These four carry most of the Michigan market. All twenty are listed underneath.
Manufacturing
Shift work, variable hours, and a plan designed for people who have an inbox.
Health Care and Social Assistance
A budget committed a year before the renewal arrived.
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
Benefits are a recruiting instrument here, and usually priced as an afterthought.
Finance and Insurance
Every other decision this size is documented. This one is renewed on a phone call.
Two sub-sectors go deeper than their parent: mortgage lending → — more than twenty-five lenders, every one of them between fifty and a thousand employees. A second sits under manufacturing: aerospace and defense →, where government contracting changes what the plan has to survive.
- Accommodation and Food Services
- Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services
- Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting
- Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation
- Construction
- Educational Services
- Finance and Insurance
- Health Care and Social Assistance
- Information
- Management of Companies and Enterprises
- Manufacturing
- Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction
- Other Services (except Public Administration)
- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
- Public Administration
- Real Estate and Rental and Leasing
- Retail Trade
- Transportation and Warehousing
- Utilities
- Wholesale Trade
What is actually happening when an employer calls us.
Offering Benefits for the First Time
No history, no benchmark, no idea what is normal. The first plan you offer becomes the expectation your staff hold you to for years, so the design matters more than the price does in year one.
We build the budget around the plan rather than the other way around, set a contribution strategy that still works when rates move, and put the compliance floor in place from day one. It applies whether or not anyone mentions it.
A Renewal That Came Back in Double Digits
Before you accept it or move the whole plan, someone should be able to tell you which part is your own claims, which part is trend, and which part is still negotiable.
The honest answer depends on your size. Below fifty you are community-rated, so the increase is not about your claims at all. At fifty and above it is, and that is where the negotiation actually lives.
Just Crossed Fifty Employees
The employer mandate applies, 1094-C and 1095-C reporting starts, and funding options that were closed to you open up. Most service models do not change to match.
Your rating basis changes too. Carriers move you from community-rated to claims-rated, and they will routinely ask for claims experience and the last three renewals before they quote. Sending that up front is the difference between a quote and a wait.
Growing Across State Lines
One carrier, several states, and a network that thins out the moment your people cross a border. Then state-level requirements start stacking on top of the federal ones.
We are licensed well beyond Michigan, with offices in Michigan, Colorado and Texas, so a second location does not have to mean a second broker.
An HR Team of One
Everything lands on the same desk. The billing mismatch, the denied claim, the eligibility file that did not transmit, and open enrollment on top of the actual job.
For proper coverage of an account we work in service teams of five, and the claims and billing work comes to us rather than to you.
Changing Carriers Mid-Stream
Mid-year moves are where the details bite: deductible and out-of-pocket credit, ID cards that arrive late, eligibility files that have to be rebuilt, and COBRA participants who cannot be left behind.
We run the transition as a project with dates attached, so the first time an employee notices the change is not at a pharmacy counter.
Same questions, different answers at every size.
Where you sit on the size curve changes the rules, the rating basis and the options that are open to you.
2 to 50 Employees
Community-rated, no employer mandate, and in Michigan no continuation obligation at all below twenty employees.
51 to 249 Employees
Claims-rated, the mandate and reporting in force, and level funding becomes worth modeling.
250 to 999 Employees
Self-funding, stop-loss structure and pharmacy strategy start to drive the number.
1,000+ Employees
Governance, fiduciary process and vendor accountability matter as much as the rate does.
You do not need a problem to get a second opinion.
Plenty of the employers we work with were not in trouble. They simply had not had anyone look at the whole program in a few years.
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A Plan Nobody Has Questioned
Renewals get accepted because they are “only” single digits. Three of those in a row is a different number than it looked like each year.
A Benchmark You Can Use
What carriers in this market are actually doing at renewal, at your size, so the number in front of you has something to sit against.
Whether any of this describes you
Ten questions about fit, from employers working out whether their situation is the ordinary one.
Our industry is not on your list. Does that matter?
Very little. The list exists because people look for themselves in it, not because the work changes that much. Eligibility, the renewal math, compliance dates and the administration underneath them behave the same way in a machine shop and a medical practice. Where industry genuinely changes something – workforce shape, turnover, how people are scheduled – it shows up in the design, and we would rather ask about that than assume it from a sector name.
Do you work with public sector employers?
Yes, and the differences there are real ones. Public employers work to procurement rules and board or council approval cycles, often carry collectively bargained populations, and report retiree obligations under accounting standards that private employers do not. The plan work is recognizable; the calendar and the approval path around it are not, and pretending otherwise is how a timeline slips.
Do you work with nonprofits?
Yes. The benefits questions are largely the same, with two practical differences worth naming: budgets are frequently tied to grant or funding cycles that do not align with the plan year, and the workforce often mixes full-time staff, part-time staff and people whose funding source changes mid-year. Both make eligibility and contribution strategy more consequential than the headcount alone suggests.
We are several entities under common ownership. How does that work?
It is worth settling early, because the answer may not be the one the org chart implies. Related companies can be treated as a single employer for some benefits purposes, which affects large-employer determination, reporting and testing even where the entities run independently and have separate plans. Getting that read right is usually a conversation with counsel or your accountants rather than a benefits question, and it is one of the few things genuinely worth doing before anything else.
We are a professional practice with owner-employees. Is anything different?
Yes, mostly around who counts and how contributions are treated. How owners are compensated affects whether and how they participate, and the tax treatment of benefit dollars is not uniform across every ownership structure. The plan design questions are ordinary; the questions about the owners are not, and they are worth asking before a renewal rather than at tax time.
We do not have an HR person. Is that a problem?
No, and it is more common at the smaller end than people assume. What matters is that someone is accountable for the things that have dates attached – notices, filings, eligibility changes – and that the work does not simply sit with whoever happens to answer the phone. Where there is no HR function, more of that administration sits with us by arrangement, which should be agreed explicitly rather than assumed.
Benefits are handled by our finance team rather than HR. Does that change anything?
It changes the conversation more than the work. Finance-led benefits decisions tend to be stronger on cost modeling and weaker on what a plan change feels like at the pharmacy counter in January, and the reverse is true when HR leads alone. The useful arrangement has both in the room for the decisions that carry an employee consequence, even when only one of them owns the budget.
We have employees on work visas or working outside the United States. Can you help?
Those are two separate questions. Visa-holding employees working in the US are generally eligible for your plan on the same terms as anyone else, subject to how your eligibility rules are written. People physically working outside the US are a different problem, because a domestic plan’s network does not follow them and the right answer usually involves separate arrangements. Tell us which situation you are in and we will tell you whether it is straightforward.
Our headcount swings a lot year to year. What does that change?
Mostly the things that are measured on a lookback rather than today. Large-employer status is determined on the prior year, participation requirements are tested against who is eligible at a point in time, and a plan priced on one census behaves differently on another. Employers with real volatility benefit from deciding the measurement approach deliberately rather than discovering it after a year that went one way or the other.
How do we know whether we are actually a fit?
The honest test is whether the questions above sound like your situation. We work with employers who want the benefits program looked at properly rather than renewed, and that is worth more to some organizations than others. A first conversation costs nothing and is the cheapest way to find out – and if the answer is that your current arrangement is fine, that is a legitimate outcome and we will say so.
Not sure which of these you are? Send us your renewal, or talk it through with someone first. No cost, no obligation.
General information about employer benefits programs, not legal or tax advice. Plan-specific questions belong with ERISA counsel, and we will bring them in.
Law firms → · Auto dealerships → · Medical and dental practices →
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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