Employer Strategies

Whether plan sponsors like it or not, employees’ expectations of the health insurance purchasing process are being shaped by influences outside of their control.

Employers are taking a more engaging and firm approach to making sure employees take retirement saving seriously, making use of automatic enrollment and escalation, as well as personalized tools. And both employers and retirement plan providers are noting changes in the savings attitudes of employees.

Commentary: There are several key areas where an employer can experience savings from a wellness program, says Retrofit's Jeff Hyman. The CEO shares several ideas on how to get started, including which data sets are most worth measuring.

Employers looking to amplify their employees’ retirement prospects might look to the growing individual retirement account field, as involvement in employer-sponsored retirement plans remains largely unchanged.

In exclusive interviews, Mercer’s Julio Portalatin and the heads of several other top brokerages — Gallagher, Lockton, Higginbotham, Willis and Pacific Resources —speak with EBA about their strategies for sustained development and staying ahead of the competition.

The IRS has issued a notice, regulations and other guidance related to the ACA, including information on getting a hardship exemption from the individual mandate for health insurance coverage.

Commentary: Reference-based pricing is slowly catching on with self-insured companies, says AmWINS Group Benefits’ Sam Fleet.

With mental illness and substance abuse costing employers an estimated $100 billion annually in indirect costs alone, benefit decision-makers are seeing value in promoting employee assistance programs as a means to improve their workforce’s mental well-being.

Towers Watson has spent nearly a billion dollars of its own capital to build out its private exchange offering, OneExchange, through acquisitions. Jim Foreman, Towers Watson’s director of exchange solutions, shares how voluntary continues to grow in a private HIX marketplace and why more and more employers are expressing interest in the offerings.

HHS proposes making some significant changes to the ACA in 2016, including controversial new requirements for brokers and agents that some say put them at an unfair disadvantage.