Brokers Encouraged To Help Employers Shift To Exchanges

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – It’s a bitter pill for a lot of employee benefits brokers, but shifting their clients’ workers to a health insurance exchange may be the right option now that Obamacare appears here to stay.

That was the message Thursday at a presentation at the 2014 Benefits Selling Expo by Scott Mardis, a senior business development consultant at BenefitVault. The Philadelphia-based firm has developed payment technology that allows people to have their insurance premiums deducted from their paycheck and paid directly to carriers.

“The politics (regarding Obamacare) don’t matter any longer,” Mardis told the audience. “This law is here, at least for now. So the question is how do we drive additional revenue in this day and age?”

Projections suggest that, by 2025, fewer than 20 percent of workers will receive employer-sponsored coverage.

That trend, Mardis said, will be fueled by a growing awareness of the government subsidies available to people whose incomes qualify them for the aid.

Rather than allowing their clients to make the move without them, or, worse yet, allowing a competing broker to steal away the business, Mardis said brokers should take a lead role in making the transition happen.

“If you don’t have this conversation with your client, someone else will,” Mardis said.

Worksite enrollment firms can help make the move, he said, while inviting a voluntary broker into the deal can mean a cut of additional revenue for the benefits broker.

And, finally, a payment solution provider like BenefitVault can help resolve the question of how employees are going to pay their monthly premiums.

“I’m not saying you have to shift all of your group business,” Mardis told brokers. “But there’s a lot of opportunity now to find new business. In the end, you can lower employer costs while maintaining your commissions.”