Benefex’s Corporate Benefits department is integral to our organisation’s success, and they can also be hugely influential on the success of your employee benefits scheme!
I recently joined Benefex Financial Solutions – the broking arm of Benefex, also known as the ‘Corporate Benefits’ team – and like many people, I had some questions – Who are they? What do they do? Well, what better way to introduce them than from the perspective of a team member herself? In a nutshell, we are Benefex’s very own in-house broking team, dealing with a wide range of Healthcare and Group Risk benefits for Benefex’s clients. We are the intermediary between our clients and their insurers or benefits providers.
The team is split into two sections: Tailored benefits, and our own suite of Marketplace benefits. The employee benefits themselves fall into three main categories: Leisure & Lifestyle, Health & Wellbeing, Financial & Protection.
Let’s start with how the team works:
Tailored benefits – The tailored benefits team look after a selection of benefits called ‘Insurance Contracts’, which are broken down into Group Risk benefits and Healthcare benefits. These are the kind of benefits which are tailored to fit around your organisation and its employees – like group income protection, life insurance, healthcare cash plan and PMI.
Marketplace benefits – Our Marketplace team oversee all the ‘Goods & Services’ benefits. This mostly includes lifestyle and leisure benefits like gym memberships, restaurant cards, retail discounts, cycle-to-work, childcare vouchers and more! The Marketplace lets Benefex clients pick ‘off the shelf’ benefits which are all pre-prepared so they can be chosen and slotted into your benefits scheme easily.
Let’s broke it down…
Our main responsibility in Corporate Benefits is to ensure quality, safety and reliability for all the benefits we act as brokers for. It’s our role to guarantee that when Clients and their employees start enrolment, their experience is exceptional and their data is secure. To do this, there are four main pillars to our services:
- Market Reviews: We work hard looking at Market Reviews to ensure we’re getting the best deals for our clients. This stage of renewals is where our highly knowledgeable consultants can aid with their expertise. Ultimately, they will find out exactly what our client’s requirements are, and then negotiate with providers to try and save money and get the best terms for clients. We have well established relationships within the market, and proactively monitor the products available to ensure we negotiate the best possible deals for our clients.
- Renewals: We undertake an annual enrolment review, which makes sure our clients continue to receive value, and their employees are provided with a continuity of cover. We ensure that each client goes through their Annual Enrolment period and employees are covered under all benefits.
- Underwriting: Each month, we review any employees with high benefits, and we check to see whether medical underwriting is required. This means that if an employee benefit goes above the free cover limit the employee will need to complete a medical questionnaire to start the process. The free cover limit is simply the maximum benefit an employee can be covered for without any underwriting. Once underwritten, the insurer makes a decision on how to proceed.
- Claims: If our clients have any employees who need to claim for a benefit - whether it be Group Income Protection or Critical Illness - we are here to assist and make the process as easy as we can.
The Corporate Benefits team isn’t just a repository of invaluable technical expertise in the taxation of benefits, structure of solutions and more; we also offer pensions guidance and pensions governance. But, what’s more – we help our clients make significant cost savings.
Steve Crick, Corporate Benefits Director:
“Corporate Benefits provides broking services to a number of Benefex clients, meaning that a fully-integrated platform & broking solution is in place. For those clients, we have successfully in negotiated terms with providers which have reduced the cost of benefits for some companies by as much as 30%, as well as offering their employees a better product.”
The team also looks to get ahead of market trends so that our clients can remain agile and exceed their employees’ expectations in an ever-evolving workplace. Plus, our services work perfectly alongside Benefex’s OneHub platform; whether our clients opt for tailored benefits, marketplace benefits, or a mixture, their employees can access all the information they need through OneHub.
So, now you’ve had a snippet into the life of Benefex’s very own in-house broking team, what are you waiting for? Take a look at our brochure to see the full range of benefits on offer.
