West Des Moines, Iowa – March 20, 2013 – Employee benefits outsourcing partner Businessolver^® today announced the construction of a private employee benefits marketplace for Assurex Global, the world’s largest privately held commercial insurance, risk management and employee-benefits brokerage group. The Assurex Global Marketplace Platform uses Businessolver’s configurable model to provide the widest range of administrative flexibility available for employers, no matter what decision is made for their employees’ future benefits – both inside and outside of a private insurance exchange environment.

Assurex Global U.S. Partners developed their marketplace concept to support the employee benefits practice within their firms. “We want to ensure that Assurex Global Partners can offer a unique solution and continue to be an integral part of the employee benefit process,” said Jim Hackbarth, Assurex Global president and CEO.

The Assurex Global Marketplace Platform offers employers a distinct set of benefits that can help manage increasing benefits costs, maintain a competitive advantage in the battle for talent and provide tremendous flexibility in design options for employees. Among the key advantages are:

• Ability to choose a defined contribution or defined benefit strategy
• Prepackaged portfolio of medical and ancillary benefits for employers and their employees
• Supports health care reform recordkeeping responsibilities
• Single source administrative package
• Marketplace business data integration
• Flexible decision support tools that support consumer choice

“Assurex Global has established a strategy that offers employers options, but helps employees make complex decisions much easier,” said Jon Shanahan, Businessolver president and CEO. “Our configurable technology paired with one-on-one service support addresses the need of all employers and their employees.”

About Businessolver

Businessolver delivers online benefits administration services via Benefitsolver – its proprietary single source technology – to deliver a complete benefits solution to employers. Businessolver’s benefits outsourcing capabilities include health insurance exchange consulting and construction, benefits process consulting and engineering, and wellness consulting and integration. Businessolver provides a complete benefits point solution from a single piece of technology. Services include enrollment & eligibility, COBRA administration, Service Center, reconciled billing, life event management, communication fulfillment, eligibility verification, and voluntary benefits enrollment via web and telephone. For more information about Businessolver, visit www.businessolver.com.

About Assurex Global
Assurex Global is an exclusive partnership of the world’s premier independent insurance agents and brokers. With more than $28 billion in annual premium volume and more than 500 Partner offices, Columbus, Ohio-based Assurex Global is the world’s largest privately held commercial insurance, risk management and employee-benefits brokerage group. An international insurance powerhouse, Assurex Global combines the local expertise and global reach of international brokers on six continents.

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You may be wondering just how they aren’t so passive anymore. Well, think about your benefits plan. Are your elections becoming simpler or more complex? In the name of managing cost, everything from surcharges to wellness programs are adding to the standard enrollment – and ensuring that employees have to actively participate in the enrollment process each year. Here are a few new high points from the not-so-passive lesson plan that delivered traffic to our servers this OE:

• Health Risk Assessments: Employees have to log in to participate in their HRA. And log in they did.
• Surcharges: Did employees complete their HRA or need to certify they’re a non-smoker? Those activities drew even the passive enrollees.
• Wellness engagement: Employers had employees link to wellness programs through the platform – either to sign up or report info. We saw them engaged on our platform as well.
• Flex spending contributions: Flex contributions have been around – it’s fair to say they are the tenured member of this list. Employees were on our platform selecting contributions for the upcoming year.

If the 2013 OE season is beginning to teach us anything, it’s that benefits continue to change at an incredible pace.

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Healthcare reform is in full swing, with two years to go until the heftiest of legislation is enforced. Many organizations have opted to wait for the outcome of this year’s election. Not Businessolver. We know the stakes are high for our clients, and have stayed ahead of the curve implementing the latest requirements.

Businessolver has been working for more than a year on W-2 and Summary of Benefits and Coverage reporting to make sure we deliver more than what’s required and exceed our clients’ expectations. We strongly believe that part of our mission as a benefits administration partner is to help our clients navigate the often confusing requirements of the PPACA. Businessolver provides these enhancements as a value-add to our clients:

W-2 Reporting. Under this provision, employers must report the value of employer-sponsored health coverage on employee W-2 forms. Businessolver created a cumulative monthly report that aggregates this information. We have included dental and vision coverages in the W-2 reporting, even though it is not required. If our clients don’t want to include dental and vision in their reporting, they can filter them out.

SBC. Employers are required to provide participants a HHS-approved Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) explanation. We could have taken the easy route and simply posted our clients’ SBCs on our site. While we have posted the documents, we’ve also incorporated SBC information as part of the decision support tools the employee uses while enrolling. This creates a more meaningful experience and helps them make more educated choices. We have also included the required glossary of terms into the documents themselves, rather than as a separate attachment, making it easier for users to understand complex terminology.

Businessolver is already at work implementing changes required in 2013 and 2014.

This includes:

• Exchange Notification, which requires the employer to provide employees written notice informing them of the existence of an exchange and the employee’s eligibility for exchanges.
• Automatic Enrollment, where large employers will be required to automatically enroll employees in a plan.
• Coverage of Part-Time Employees, which requires employers to offer affordable coverage to employees who work more than 30 hours a week.

What are you doing to stay ahead of new requirements? If you’re looking for a partner that is focused on working with you to develop technological solutions and service to support it, then contact Businessolver today.

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Perhaps you’ve already had discussions with your CFO about your benefits and exchange strategy. If not, you may point them in the direction of another CFO article that identifies a few of the positives of private exchanges (including defined contribution and choice) as well as some of the early large-employer adopters. After all, a little education may go a long way for decisions that have such a global impact on your organization.

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Rising healthcare costs and healthcare reform have rocketed exchange models into the limelight as cost control and distribution strategies. (If you need a reminder, check here, here, and here. Plus, you can check out our thoughts here.) But have you stopped to think about what constitutes a successful exchange?
Businessolver has been supporting exchange models, or marketplaces as we define them, pretty much since we opened our doors. In fact, we support several distinctly different marketplace models for clients today: Packaged Model, Limited Carrier Model, Co-op Model, and Open Market Model. Those marketplaces are successful due input from consultants and brokers and 4 main factors:

Choice. With choice comes the ability to evaluate which product fits the specific needs of the individual, including cost, coverage and reach.

Consumerism. As consumers, we expect shopping for everything online – from electronics to benefits – to be educational, enriching and pain-free. The days of transaction-only benefits enrollment won’t suffice.

Defined Contribution. What employers get with defined contribution is simple: the ability to budget. Employees get to make their own choices and spread their benefit dollars as they see fit.
Single Solution. A solution through a single source partner like Businessolver supports all of the healthcare cost-controlling mechanisms: product choice, consumer support and budgetability through defined contribution.

Want to learn more about our marketplace models? Talk to your Businessolver representative about the models we currently have in place and our keys to successful marketplaces.

The post What Is Your Exchange Strategy? appeared first on Businessolver.

West Des Moines, Iowa – August 7, 2012

– Large employers can streamline the enrollment of all benefits thanks to the integration of advanced technology. Businessolver, a large employer benefits enrollment outsourcing partner, and the Employee Benefits marketing unit of Transamerica Life Insurance Company, have developed advanced connectivity between their technology platforms to make voluntary product enrollment simpler for employees.

Businessolver’s single-source technology, Benefitsolver™, allows employees to make all of their elections, from core options like medical insurance to voluntary options like critical illness insurance, within a single enrollment experience. Through LiveKinnect^SM, Businessolver’s advanced real-time, web service connection, clients can replace manual, offline evidence of insurability and enrollment processes with an easy and automated process within Benefitsolver.

“We are pleased to offer a level of integration through LiveKinnect that allows our clients’ employees the opportunity to effortlessly enroll in their core as well as voluntary benefit plans,” said Businessolver AVP of Alliances Jeff Mortland. “Our flexible integration strategy provides carriers like Transamerica, teamed up with brokers and consultants, the option to leverage our platform to provide ease of enrollment and grow their voluntary enrollments.”

“As health care reform expands the role of technology in the employee benefits space, this is a great opportunity for Transamerica to help streamline the enrollment process for our clients — and ultimately for employees,” said Brad Ridnour, senior vice president and national sales director of Transamerica Employee Benefits. “We are equally excited to team up with such an pioneering technology solutions company as Businessolver, and add another innovative benefit enrollment tool to our portfolio.”

About Businessolver

Businessolver delivers online benefits administration services via Benefitsolver – its proprietary single source technology – to deliver a complete benefits solution to employers ranging from 5,000 to 150,000 employees. Businessolver’s benefits outsourcing capabilities include health insurance exchange consulting and construction, benefits process consulting and engineering, wellness consulting and integration, and RFP consulting. Businessolver provides a complete benefits point solution from a single piece of technology. Services include enrollment & eligibility, COBRA administration, Service Center, reconciled billing, life event management, communication fulfillment, eligibility verification, and voluntary benefits enrollment via web and telephone. For more information about Businessolver, visit www.businessolver.com.

About Transamerica Employee Benefits

Transamerica companies have been helping people create better futures for over a century. Transamerica Employee Benefits is a marketing unit of Transamerica Life Insurance Company (Cedar Rapids, IA) that designs and markets voluntary group life and supplemental health insurance products. For more information, please visit www.transamericanemployeebenefits.com.

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Not so fast.

If you haven’t selected the right point solution, your job may actually become more time consuming, manual processes may actually increase, and you might need your IT department more than ever. How did that happen?

Many companies are turning away from Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) for benefits enrollment  in favor of the more targeted point solutions, but make the mistake of believing that all point solutions are alike. Point solutions, which are designed to solve a single problem within a system, are better at pinpointing processes than ERPs, but many leave a lot of the work on the table.

“Some point solutions actually create more manual processes than they alleviate,” said Loren Brockhouse, Vice President of North American Sales for Businessolver, a benefits outsourcing company in West Des Moines, Iowa. “In order to be successful as a point solution, your first strategy needs to be ‘how does the point solution integrate with my current technology?“ Brockhouse said.

Some companies spend millions of dollars on an ERP solution, or an incomplete point solution, and then they are told that they are responsible for providing data to their vendor, which means going back to their internal IT department. “They create new internal processes for themselves, Brockhouse said. “They have to manually rekey the intake file, so it’s really not saving them any steps.”

When you select Businessolver, the right point solution, you can look at us as a team player in your data integration strategy. “As your business partner, we are going to own the data movement,” Brockhouse said. “You will provide a report to us and we will work with it in any format that you give us.”  Other point solutions require clients to fit into their system.

Businessolver will import your payroll file with actual deductions and run a comparison against the deduction file generated in our system, Benefitsolver. Any discrepancies are then reviewed and brought to your attention for review and correction.

“We see it as our duty to write a payroll file that is import-ready into your system,” Brockhouse said. “Our competitors don’t do that.”

Businessolver’s point of difference doesn’t end there. Many of our competitors take their clients’ data, once imported into their solution, and send the files out for COBRA, dependent audits and other areas. “Numerous pipelines extend out from the benefits file,” said Ben Pasker, Director of Operations for Businessolver. This causes delays and data errors, Pasker said. Because COBRA, billing, dependent audits and other processes all come out of the same platform, Businessolver’s data stays clean.

“At Businessolver, it all circles back, to there’s more data integrity and no data delay,” Pasker said. “Our data is the benefits system of record.”

Not only does Businessolver take your data in your format, we also give you full access to see everything we do with it.  “Some point solutions can move your data around but you can’t see it,” Brockhouse said.

About Businessolver

Businessolver is a provider of online benefits administration services and benefit administration outsourcing services. Its web-based platform automates employers’ insurance benefit administration by consolidating multiple insurance carriers into a single platform and customizing the process to meet each employer’s unique enrollment requirements. In addition to Enrollment and Eligibility services, other Businessolver service offerings include: COBRA Services, Billing and Financial Reporting, Service Center, Benefit Advisory Services, Eligibility Verification and Fulfillment. Contact your Businessolver representative to learn more about why Businessolver is the best point solution for your benefit enrollment needs.

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Businessolver has established multi-tenant arrangements like trusts/associations and some reseller agreements that look and act like private exchanges complete with setup to support for multiple employers, functionality to recognize and assign eligibility, reconciled billing functionality and more. In essence, it’s not the technology that’s new.

What’s worth focusing on is how exchange technology must be deployed to support rising healthcare costs: provide choice for consumers, support of consumerism and application of defined contribution models.

Choice

Consumer choice is at the center of public and private exchanges. Technology must be able to help consumers clearly understand their product choices and evaluate their options. With choice comes the ability to evaluate which product fits the specific needs of the individual, including cost, coverage and reach. Choice equals power.

Consumerism

Of the trends that have affected exchanges and benefits technology the most, none may have a bigger impact than the spread of consumerism. Yes, we expect choice. But we also expect technology to help us simplify the process of choosing. As consumers, we expect shopping for everything online – from electronics to benefits – to be educational, enriching and pain-free. The days of transaction-only benefits enrollment won’t suffice.

Defined Contribution

Much like the exchange model, defined contribution is not a new idea. But rising benefits costs and economic challenges have provided the perfect environment to redefine the idea of defined contribution. What employers get with defined contribution is simple: the ability to budget. And when the model is paired with more complex exchange technology, employers have a way to administer defined contribution strategies without adding more human capital.

A Single Solution

What employers really need is a strategic business partner capable of pivoting quickly. Businessolver provides the technology and service backing to support all of the healthcare cost controlling mechanisms: product choice, consumer support and budgetability through defined contribution.

The post Healthcare Exchanges: What Is Old Is New Again appeared first on Businessolver.

Businessolver^®, a leading provider of web-based software applications for the health and benefits industry, today announces the real-time integration of its single-source benefits technology, Benefitsolver™, with health and wellness company Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM).  Benefitsolver is a web-based benefits enrollment and administration system that provides one-stop benefits management and fully automated EDI data exchange connectivity among employer groups, insurance carriers, TPAs, payroll vendors, HRIS systems and brokers. With a few clicks, employees can now seamlessly enroll in Humana’s insurance products from within Benefitsolver.

Benefitsolver allows employees to make all of their elections, from core options like medical insurance to voluntary options like critical illness insurance, within a single enrollment experience. Through LiveKinnect^SM, Businessolver’s advanced real-time, web service connection, clients can replace manual, offline evidence of insurability processes with an easy and automated process within Benefitsolver.

“We are pleased with the opportunity to offer a level of integration through LiveKinnect that allows our clients’ employees the opportunity to effortlessly enroll in their core as well as voluntary benefit plans,” said Businessolver AVP of Alliances Jeff Mortland. “Our flexible integration strategy provides carriers like Humana the option to leverage our platform to provide ease of enrollment and grow their voluntary enrollments.”

“We’re excited to expand our enrollment and ongoing benefit administration technology options to include Businessolver,” said TJ Gibb, Humana Vice President and National Practice Leader.  “Joining forces with leading edge technology companies such as Businessolver allows Humana to deliver seamless solutions to our customers.“

About Businessolver

Businessolver delivers online benefits administration services via Benefitsolver – its proprietary single source technology – to deliver a complete benefits solution to employers ranging from 5,000 to 150,000 employees. Businessolver’s benefits outsourcing capabilities include health insurance exchange consulting and construction, benefits process consulting and engineering, wellness consulting and integration, and RFP consulting. Businessolver provides a complete benefits point solution from a single piece of technology. Services include enrollment & eligibility, COBRA administration, Service Center, reconciled billing, life event management, communication fulfillment, eligibility verification, and voluntary benefits enrollment via web and telephone. For more information about Businessolver, visit www.businessolver.com.

About Humana

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, is a leading health care company that offers a wide range of insurance products and health and wellness services that incorporate an integrated approach to lifelong well-being. By leveraging the strengths of its core businesses, Humana believes it can better explore opportunities for existing and emerging adjacencies in health care that can further enhance wellness opportunities for the millions of people across the nation with whom the company has relationships.

More information regarding Humana is available to investors via the Investor Relations page of the company’s web site at www.humana.com, including copies of:

• Annual reports to stockholders
• Securities and Exchange Commission filings
• Most recent investor conference presentations
• Quarterly earnings news releases
• Replays of most recent earnings release conference calls
• Calendar of events (including upcoming earnings conference call dates and times, as well as planned interaction with research analysts and institutional investors)
• Corporate Governance information

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“The purpose of an independent audit is to verify that you’re meeting the objectives that you say you’re meeting,” said Ryan Keehn, Security and Compliance Officer at Businessolver. When this type of report is issued by an independent auditor, it takes the burden off our clients and their   internal auditors. “We provide this service to them,” Keehn said. However, if our clients wish to obtain their own audits of our systems, the doors are open for them to do that at any time. Businessolver’s SOC 1 was completed by McGladrey LLP, the fifth largest independent audit firm in the U.S.

The SOC 1 is a Report on Controls Placed in Operation and Tests of Operating Effectiveness for the period October 1, 2011 to March 31 2012.

On top of transparency, data security is also of highest priority at Businessolver. Our security measures in all areas go above and beyond what is required. We work with external auditors to produces several independent audit reports and security assessments periodically. These include quarterly Application Vulnerability Assessments and annual Network Penetration Testing.

All Personal Identification Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI) is encrypted in transit and at rest. All Businessolver desktops and laptops are encrypted, all file servers are encrypted, and the databases are encrypted using strong 256-bit encryption.

“The encryption at rest is a very important factor,” said Keehn. “Most companies don’t focus on this factor. They are only looking at encrypting their data in transit, and relying on their access controls to keep their data safe when sitting on the hard disk. At Businessolver we still have the access controls, but we are also encrypting the data on the drives so that if someone does walk off with a server, they still won’t be getting our customers’ data.”

Want to understand what key security measures you should look for in a benefits outsourcing partner? Contact your Businessolver representative to learn the questions you can ask to maintain compliance and protect your employees’ personal information.

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