Melissa A. Winn

Benefit brokers say employers are more and more looking toward financial wellness programs to assist employees saddled with increased health care costs.

EBA’s first-ever technology survey reveals where benefit agencies plan to invest their IT dollars.

A controversial ballot measure in California is getting national attention from the benefits industry. Here’s what it is and why it matters.

Although the ACA’s excise tax doesn’t go into effect until 2018, employers are already fearful — benefit advisers should be offering ideas and solutions to calm their fears.

Benefits firm WorkforceTactix and tech company Digital Health Innovations are using data analytics and an innovative health app to predict and prevent clients’ high-cost claims, increase transparency and rein in health care costs.

Walmart’s announcement this week that it will drop health care coverage for its part-time employees reiterates that employer-sponsored health care coverage is changing, and those benefit advisers who plan to remain relevant to clients must change, too.

How offering employers solutions to employee engagement can earn you an agent of record letter.

A panel of some of EBA’s Most Influential Women in Benefit Advising discuss how women are claiming a role in the benefits industry.

Targeting employee needs and purchasing preferences can boost engagement and enrollment with voluntary benefits. The way to personalize that message, experts say, is through the use of data analytics.

Health care reform has presented employers plenty of new challenges to grapple with when it comes to offering health care coverage, and, many say, has expanded the critical role of benefit advisers who heed the call.

With the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility reporting requirements for 2015 quickly approaching, benefit advisers should already be working with employer clients to implement benefit administration systems to ensure compliance with the law, industry experts say.

Adviser help is needed to encourage employers to adopt the FSA rollover allowance, which has demonstrated growth results for employee contributions and enrollment numbers.

How Christy Schwan, one of EBA's Most Influential Women in Benefit Advising, became an integral player in the benefits business and continues to pay it forward by mentoring up-and-coming advisers at her all-female benefit firm.

Saddled with the high cost of emerging specialty drugs, employers are looking to their benefit advisers for strategies to manage their medical plan’s drug spend.

CMS says small employers and their benefit advisers in select states will have early access to the ACA’s Small Business Health Options Program to test-drive the system, but not all are interested.

The IRS has released long-awaited draft instructions for the forms employers will use to comply with the ACA’s employer mandate, giving benefit advisers and their clients a glimpse of the work ahead for 2015 and how to begin preparing now.

Fed up over unpaid enrollment commissions, benefit advisers are suing the Nevada state exchange and its website contractor Xerox.

The Department of Labor is evaluating the use of brokerage windows in 401(k) plans and is offering employers, benefit advisers, and other stakeholders an opportunity to weigh in on the subject.

Employers and employees more than ever need the help of their trusted adviser to communicate in plain language the complexities of today’s health care landscape.

Employers say in 2015 they will continue to shift toward offering CDHPs, but many need adviser help to engage employees in better health care decisions and understand the benefits of a private exchange.