Your client may use a benefits administration platform your firm licenses or have an arrangement with a technology vendor. Either way, when coverage is missing or a deduction looks wrong after OE, you may be the one they call.
Helping clients through benefits concerns comes with the territory. But if you’re regularly troubleshooting platform issues or chasing a vendor for answers, it’s worth looking at the support behind the technology.
Here are a few signs that you and your clients could benefit from a dedicated BenAdmin partner.
Your platform license comes with a troubleshooting job
When clients use a platform your firm licenses, you may find yourself investigating enrollment discrepancies or working with platform support to figure out why a change didn’t reach a carrier.
That work takes time and may require technical expertise you don’t use every day. If it’s becoming a regular part of your workload, consider whether a technology partner could handle ongoing administration and troubleshooting. Confirm how they would support your platform arrangement (or suggest new tech) and which responsibilities they would take on.
Support responds, but your client still needs help
An acknowledgment doesn’t do much for HR when an employee’s coverage is missing. Even confirmation that the election is in the platform leaves the underlying problem unresolved.
If clients keep turning to you after contacting support, ask where the process is breaking down. Their vendor should be able to investigate within its scope, explain what happens next, and keep the client informed. When you have to chase every update, you’re effectively managing the support request yourself.
Nobody owns the correction
Enrollment issues can involve the employer, BenAdmin vendor, payroll provider, and carrier. Without clear responsibilities, you can end up coordinating the exchange simply because nobody else has taken the lead.
Review how deduction changes reach payroll and who checks that they’ve been applied correctly. For carrier enrollment problems, confirm who investigates exceptions and follows up on outstanding records.
A vendor acting as a technology partner should be able to explain its role and coordinate with the other parties involved.
Your client expected less administrative work
An employer can have a BenAdmin platform and still spend hours moving information between systems or chasing corrections. If your client regularly asks for help with that work, their service arrangement may need another look.
Start with what’s causing the most difficulty. Time spent investigating carrier charges may point to a need for billing reconciliation, while frequent employee benefits questions may warrant a benefits service center.
The platform may still fit the client. The support surrounding it may need to change.
The same problems return every OE
An occasional discrepancy doesn’t necessarily call for a tech stack overhaul. Recurring issues, however, deserve a conversation about what caused them and what has been done to prevent them.
Use this year’s experience to identify where support is missing while the details are fresh. That gives you specific requirements to discuss with the current vendor or a prospective partner before another enrollment season.
Get the right support in place
You don’t have to wait for a client to ask for help evaluating their BenAdmin arrangement. If you’re repeatedly navigating technical issues or stepping in when support falls short, there’s already a reason to start the conversation.
At ebm, we work with brokers and their clients to implement and support best-of-breed benefits administration platforms, with additional services including carrier billing reconciliation and our benefits call center.
If these red flags sound familiar, let’s talk about where you and your clients need support and whether ebm could be the right fit: https://calendly.com/betterbenadmin/discovery
