A small northeastern university upgraded its voluntary benefits package with a better plan at a better price through BeneRe, and now it’s projected to receive $33,000 in dividends to reinvest back into employee wellness.

Key Takeaways

• HR professionals are trying everything to give themselves a competitive edge in today’s tense job market, including enhancing benefits packages
• A small northeastern university wanted to maximize its investment in voluntary benefits to free up budget to offer an employer-paid hospital indemnity plan to employees
• BeneRe lowered their costs, improved their plan, and set them up to receive $33,000 in first-year dividends to reinvest back into employee wellness plans

Today’s labor market is tense, and employers are having a very hard time hiring and retaining employees. HR departments are thinking of new ways to improve employee satisfaction, including improving benefits plans and wellness packages. Voluntary benefits can help give employers an edge, as these perks are offered on top of health insurance plans and provide significant financial relief in the event of an accident, hospitalization, or illness.

BeneRe helped a highly respected university in the Northeast improve their voluntary benefits offerings with a better price and a better plan. Because BeneRe reinsures all of its plans and redistributes the proceeds to participating members, the University is also projected to see tens of thousands of dollars in dividends that it can use to keep improving benefits for its employees.

Let’s dig deeper into the challenges this university faced and how BeneRe helped them develop a better approach to benefits.

Issues facing higher education HR executives

It’s no secret that higher education institutions are facing serious financial pressure. No school has the luxury of too much in the way of capital, so they’re always looking for ways to save. 

This northeastern university is fairly small with about 1,000 employees. They did have a benefits plan in place prior to working with BeneRe from working with a consultant, but they didn’t really know where their investments were going.

The school was already committed to supporting its employees with voluntary benefits plans. Organization leaders wanted to be able to support workers for any type of hospitalization, whether a positive reason like maternity care or a negative reason like an accident or serious illness. They decided to take the pressure off and make hospital indemnity an employer-paid benefit. But they also wanted to make sure they were investing in the right plan that would fully maximize their investment and provide the best benefits possible for their employees.

Most employers make benefits like these completely employee-paid, so the school wanted to set itself apart significantly by covering hospital indemnity for its employees.

A consultant for the university decided to allow BeneRe to come in and do an analysis of the institution’s existing voluntary benefits. It was immediately clear that BeneRe could add the missing layer of transparency and provide more win-win scenarios for the school and for its employees.

The benefits of going with BeneRe

With BeneRe, the school added employer-paid hospital indemnity with dividends of $33,000. When they’re already spending $150,000 on coverage, getting that chunk back to reinvest can make a big impact on employee engagement and retention. Those dividends are reinvested directly into the employee program, whether in benefits technology, consulting services in support of the plan, or wellness. 

BeneRe also helped develop a communication strategy to help employees understand the value of these new benefits and built out the technology for enrollment. These benefits for the University HR team were all part of the BeneRe program.

The BeneRe plan also gave the school’s existing voluntary benefits plan these upgrades:

• All pre-existing conditions were waived
• Hospital confinement benefits were added
• Quarterly financial reporting provided greater transparency

The university chose BeneRe because of the plan’s design, the dividends, the cost savings, and potential enhancements to their benefits packages. These enhancements could be specialized coverage, pricing transparency, a decision-support tool for the benefits admin system, and more. Because the employer is making the investment on behalf of employees, they’re laser-focused on maximizing benefits and every dollar they’re spending on coverage.

Another way to assess the benefits here is to consider the per-employee-per-month (PEPM) dividends. For this university, we can take $33,000 in dividends, divide it by 1,000 (the number of employees), and then 12 months. We would get $2.75 PEPM as a projected dividend. While $33,000 may not seem like that much for the university, when you look at it from a PEPM perspective, there’s a lot HR can do for employees on the individual level with those dividends.

The dividends must be spent on benefits for employees, so it’s the perfect situation for an HR staff who already wants to create the best environment possible for employees, especially in today’s tough hiring and retention climate. 

Additionally, part of HR’s role is ensuring they can validate that they’re getting the best deal possible for employees. With voluntary benefits, many insurance companies don’t want to share the math behind the numbers, so it’s not always clear how good of an investment it is. 

With BeneRe, organizations have complete visibility into their voluntary benefits investments and performance, and they can get a lot of money back to further help their employees.

Why BeneRe is different

BeneRe was able to take this university’s existing benefits program, conduct an analysis, and offer them a better plan at a better price. Couple those benefits with the impact of the dividend that comes back around for employee investment, and it just makes sense to go with BeneRe. Everything in our plans is verifiable and transparent.

BeneRe offers a group captive insurance plan for accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity coverage. We pre-negotiate expenses and ensure our clients have total financial transparency. All of the underwriting profits are distributed to participating members.

Reach out for a complimentary financial analysis of in-force programs, and you’ll be surprised by the results and benefits you can activate with BeneRe.