Tech

Jiff CEO Derek Newell discusses the role data analytics plays in reducing health care costs as well as the company’s relationship with benefit brokers.

It’s increasingly clear that employers must deliver a consumer-grade experience to employees on many levels, including benefits communication.

While the HR tech platform Zenefits offers a solution that addresses certain employer pain points, it also asks employers to dump their current broker. A new tech solution promises the same benefits without asking employers to sever their current broker relationship.

Commentary: Specific innovations in benefits administration software are paving the way and supplying the technological framework to a future primarily based in cyberspace rather than buildings filled with people.

The federal health insurance marketplace may have issued subsides to persons not eligible to receive them during the first open enrollment period, a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General has found.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton a $202 million contract to be the marketplace system integrator, or general contractor, which includes the federally-facilitated health insurance marketplace, parts of the state-run marketplaces and more.

Commentary: Brokers across the country have horror stories of Zenefits stealing their clients. So, columnist Nelson Griswold asks, what can a broker or adviser do to defend his book from Zenefits?

Connecticut’s AccessHealthCT is poised to become the nation’s first state-run marketplace that will be financially self-sustaining in 2016 when federal grants end for these online marketplaces as stipulated under the Affordable Care Act.

Commentary: The health care cost crisis needs to be addressed now. Enter applied predictive analytics.

With its streamlined technology platform and no fee business model, Zenefits has created quite a stir in the benefits industry. Should brokers be scared or should they be thanking Zenefits for pushing the envelope?