Bruce Shutan

These automatic retirement plan programs have been disrupting the industry with computerized investment formulas and low prices, but do they have an unfair advantage at the regulatory level?

Brokers who partner with Aflac can now offer their large employer clients nationwide another comprehensive open-enrollment option through an agreement with Liazon, which operates the private benefit exchange Bright Choices.

Broker-dealers are waiting to see whether the Department of Labor softens its stance on the best-interest standard in proposed fiduciary rules. If so, then it could quell industry threats to cut loose their smallest brokerage retirement client accounts.

Zenefits is back in the spotlight with news of slower than expected revenue growth. The company also this week announced it will offer a free payroll option. The announcement follows a months-long public dispute with payroll giant ADP.

Employee education is critical to health care cost management, says United Benefit Advisors’ Les McPhearson, who addresses rising plan costs in the company’s annual health plan survey.

While advances in medicine are helping more patients survive critical illnesses, nearly half of U.S. households have insufficient savings to cover a major medical condition.

Employers can play an influential role in shaping their benefit design so that it encourages employees to look at high-value providers and use tools that help make the health care decision-making process more transparent.

As public health insurance exchanges run by states or in partnership with the federal government edge toward financial self-sufficiency in 2016 as stipulated under the Affordable Care Act, adjustments are being made to achieve greater operational efficiencies for their third annual open-enrollment season and beyond.

A technical glitch with Vermont Health Connect dating back two years was finally corrected in a recent software upgrade, but it proved to be both time-consuming and costly for the state-based health insurance exchange described as “once-beleaguered.”

With nearly two dozen CO-OPs created under the Affordable Care Act continuing their financial struggles, attention is turning toward why they’re experiencing such difficulties.