Life insurance can give your employees peace of mind and help them provide for their loved ones after they’re gone. There are two major types of life insurance offered: Term Life and Whole life. Each work to fill a specific need and can be selected based on what the employee wants their insurance to do for them. Term Life Insurance offers a predictable way to provide piece of mind for the employee and their family. It’s economical and can cover large needs at lower costs and can help protect loved ones from unpaid debt, secure children’s education and insure financial stability. Whole Life Insurance offers a lifelong protection for the employee and those who are dependents.
Life insurance can help an employee’s family with things like:
Paying medical and funeral bills
Replacing lost income
Paying off debts
Protecting retirement plans
Funding college expenses
Group Term Life Insurance
According to the 2010 Life Insurance Ownership Study conducted by the Life Insurance and Market Research Association (LIMRA), 35 million households in America, about one-third of the total number, have no life insurance protection whatsoever, and 58 million are under insured — the highest level ever measured.
As an employer, group term life insurance provides a convenient way for you to offer your employees easy-to-buy, affordable life insurance coverage.
Benefit Features:
Pierce Group currently administers group term life coverage for over 50 NC public sector clients
When an employee experiences a sudden covered accidental injury, accident insurance can help them offset unexpected medical expenses that aren’t covered by their medical insurance. Since benefits are paid directly, they can be used to cover things like co-pays and deductibles, making accident insurance a great complement to a high deductible health plan.
Unlike medical insurance, coverage can be entirely employee-paid, so you can offer more benefits without impacting your budget. Everyone wins:
Budget-friendly payroll deduction.
Payments are made directly to employees. Accident payments are based upon the type of covered accident, and employees can spend the money how they want.
Flexible coverage options. Employees can choose coverage for just themselves, or they can select family coverage for their spouse and children.
Guaranteed-issue coverage. Employees can get coverage without answering health questions, depending on the plan they choose.
Wellness benefit. Some plans offer a benefit for certain types of health screenings, so employees can be healthier and happier.
Medical Bridge insurance provides benefits to your employees to help pay for deductible and coinsurance costs, as well as everyday living expenses. With Medical Bridge, insurers don’t wait on any other insurance to first adjudicate a claim, which means timely claims administration and less hassle for employees.
Medical Bridge provides benefits for hospitalization, outpatient surgery, diagnostic tests, doctor’s office visits, emergency room visits, ambulance transportation and other expenses due to a covered accident or covered sickness.
Medical Bridge is available in several plan options so employers and their employees can choose the coverage that best meets their needs.
A Flexible Spending Account allows participants to set aside pre-tax money in a designated account that can be used to pay for health care expenses that are not typically covered by insurance. Employees can select the amount to contribute for the plan year and have access to the entire contribution amount on plan effective date. The money is then deducted from each paycheck on a pre-tax basis lowering taxable income. It also can be used for employee, spouse and dependents, you can use the debit card to pay for eligible expenses such as:
Deductibles
Copays
Prescriptions
Other out-of-pocket medical expenses
Dental expenses
Vision expenses
HSA
A Health Savings Account allows participants to have a savings account with tax advantages that can be used in combination with a High Deductible Health Plan. The funds in the HSA account are accumulated in order to be used for eligible medical expenses by the account holder.
By using untaxed dollars in an HSA to pay for deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, and some other expenses, employees may be able to lower their overall health care costs.
All of the money in an HSA (including any contributions deposited by the employer) is owned by the employee even if they leave their job, lose their qualifying coverage or retire. The money in an HSA never expires.
Our group presentations are supplemented by providing each employee a comprehensive benefit booklet which contains all the benefits available to employees. Pierce Group Benefits provides, free of charge, a customized benefit web-site and video that we build and maintain for each of our clients. Employees can access benefit information, claim forms, and provider directories all in one place. Many groups like to use these in new hire orientation meetings.
Pierce Group Benefits believes in communication and education and our team works with each client to create a long-term communication strategy that continues throughout the year; not just at open enrollment. We believe employees need to be communicated with on an ongoing basis to help them become better health care consumers and hopefully find ways to improve their mental and physical health for years to come.
During annual enrollment, our Benefit Counselors conduct group briefings at each worksite followed by individual enrollment sessions. During the group briefings we educate employees on each component of their benefit package, review health consumerism strategies for greater utilization and savings, and provide an overview of the enrollment procedures via an interactive presentation. During the individual enrollment sessions, we help employees evaluate benefits based on their needs. We provide each employee with a benefit statement illustrating the value of employer provided benefits as well as any employee contributions.
Pierce Group Benefits has designed its service model to benefit public sector employees. Our hands-on approach alleviates the benefits administration burdens from your Human Resources Department. We provide assistance with enrollment, new hire orientation, claims, compliance, and wellness throughout year. We pair these services with the best in technology to make things as effortless as possible.
Pierce Group Benefits has dedicated Account Executives that serves as the main point of contact for each of their assigned accounts for all levels of plan administrator customer service. Our account executives communicate with insurance carriers regularly and act as liaisons between clients and insurance companies, responding quickly to questions and requests. They are responsible for implementing the benefit communication strategy at open enrollment each year and also provide support with client wellness initiatives and help clients realize their wellness goals.
Our goal is to remove all administrative burdens relating to open enrollment from our clients. Our Account Executives will develop a communication plan based on your unique needs and will work directly with you and/or department heads to schedule and conduct open enrollment opportunities for all employees, taking shift workers and workflow into consideration to minimize any workday disruptions.
Pierce Group Benefits has invested in the IT staff and software to provide customized benefit administration solutions. Our enrollment software simplifies and automates the entire benefit administration process—all benefit enrollment activity and data is in one place, both core and voluntary benefits; and enrollment information is automatically transmitted to the insurance carriers. We provide a flexible system which accommodates your unique rules and requirements. We adapt to you, not the other way around.
Our internal programmers can easily tailor the software to accommodate almost any type of benefit plan in combination with any employer-specific business rules related to plan eligibility, coverage or cost. We configure the system for you, to work the way your organization works. We’ll build your implementation to handle your unique business rules, such as dual spouse coverage policies, domestic partner coverage, grandfathered eligibility groups, and any plan bundling or cross dependency requirements you may have.
Our process starts with a complete look at where your company has been, where it is today and where it wants to go tomorrow. Our experts will analyze claims data, and plan designs from your existing carriers along with industry performance data. While we assemble this data, we will be asking about your corporate goals, expectations and budget requirements. We’ll conduct employee surveys and analyze your demographics. From financial objectives to employee perceptions, we want to understand every aspect of your business where benefits are involved.
After taking a hard look at your past performance, present situation and future objectives, we will create a strategic benefit plan. We will share our industry trend projections with you and discuss how to best prepare today for changes that will affect your plans in the future.
Negotiation
Pierce Group Benefits has the ability to evaluate numerous plan options to find the best benefits for your organization. By maintaining strong relationships with numerous carriers we are able to provide solid, creative, cost effective proposals that meet your needs, not ours.
Yearly rate shopping is reactive – not proactive – and does little to impact real savings and build long-term value. Pierce Group Benefits works with our clients to create a plan that can produce immediate savings by eliminating waste and redundancies while building obtainable, long-term solutions year after year.
Claims Management
Our sophisticated analytics helps us dig deep into your real claims data, to isolate specific cost drivers that we can address with targeted solutions to help manage high health care costs. Altering plan design is one strategic solution we can implement after analyzing your data, but we take it one step further. With our plan modeler, we let you “test drive” potential changes, so you can see the impact of a change—before making any decisions. We can show you how your group’s health care claims compare to industry and regional norms, to identify cost and utilization disparities.
Data mining can provide plan sponsors insight into what is driving plans costs and through our plan management techniques, make effective changes through wellness or educational campaigns. This is an area where we excel. This process saves more money than any other strategy around plan management.
Protecting your income is vital and can be overlooked quite often. At Pierce Group, we work with North Carolina’s leading Disability Insurance carriers to make certain that your employees’ incomes are protected in the event of sickness or accident.
Disability Insurance Benefit Features:
Short Term Disabilty (STD) and Long Term Disability (LTD) plans can be purchased separately or built to work in conjunction with one another
Protect up to 70% of income in case of sickness, accident or pregnancy
Pays regardless of any other benefits including sick days or workers comp
Maternity benefits are covered the same as any other covered sickness
According to “Vision Care: Focusing on the Workplace Benefit,” published by The Vision Council in late 2008:
40 percent of Americans fear they cannot afford adequate vision treatment, while 63 percent said they would sign up for vision care coverage is given the opportunity, and two-thirds say they would be more willing to get an eye exam if they had some coverage.
Yet, only 17 percent of employers report offering vision insurance.
You may find it necessary to reduce or eliminate some components of their benefits package to meet budgetary constraints. But voluntary benefits, such as vision insurance, provide value to employees and have little or no added expense to you.
Vision Benefit Features:
Pierce Group currently administers vision coverage for over 63 NC public sector clients
Vision coverage offers an abundance of flexibility, allowing for numerous different funding and plan design options
As an employer, you are often faced with unique challenges when it comes to providing a truly comprehensive benefits package. Adding more benefits usually means making cuts in another. But as you, like many other employers, struggle to balance budgets in difficult economic times, dental benefits can provide a good return on investment, contributing to the oral and overall health of your employees.
After evaluating plan designs from numerous carriers, we recommend options to best fulfill your group’s needs. From there, you have the option to select the carrier of your choice to maximize your benefit offerings.
Dental Benefit Features:
Pierce Group currently administers dental coverage for over 53 NC public sector clients
Multiple plan design options to meet your budget constraints
ID cards and booklets mailed to the employees’ home address
Online billing and administration
List bills
Multiple billing frequencies
COBRA Administration included
Following is a quote from another school system that transitioned to Pierce Group Benefits in 2009:
“…with the latest work that Pierce Group has done with Wilkes County Schools I feel compelled to write a letter of praise to you, for you have figured a way to save our school system nearly $100,000 in our dental plan while maintaining a fine program for our employees.” – Stephen C Laws, Superintendent, Wilkes County Schools
Anyone can place your health coverage. But do they consider which benefits are most important to you? Your budget? How about your employees’ budgets?
No one knows your group like you do. We believe you should have the option and flexibility to be in control of your group’s health care plan. When you partner with Pierce Group Benefits, you get a team that combines your understanding of your group with our industry knowledge. From there, we shop the market according to your group’s needs and strategically develop a unique health insurance package that includes the benefits and cost savings that make the most sense.
Why Partner With Pierce Group For Your Health Coverage?
You get a fully staffed group with a thorough knowledge of the North Carolina insurance market, funding options and provider network availability
We take an analytical, strategic approach to designing health coverage to meet your needs and budget
We serve as an advocate for service and claims issues and offer creative solutions for your benefit administration obstacles
Managing constantly rising health care costs is a challenge. As partners, Pierce Group can help you explore and examine all of the options and find creative solutions.
How Do We Do It?
Follow a structured evaluation and recommendation process and look for opportunities to design better plans given your unique circumstances
Compare future benefits and prices from all the major carriers to find an optimal solution. The solution becomes the benchmark for success for future evaluations.
Help you manage your program for full effectiveness
Provide extensive account maintenance including semi-annual analytical review to measure the plan designs success
Consumer Driven Healthcare Plans (CDHP)
Use tax-advantaged saving and spending accounts to pay for qualified medical expenses
Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
At Pierce Group, we will identify the insurance plan that best fits your needs and pair that plan with a funding arrangement (HRA, HSA and/or FSA) that gives you and your employees the best value