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Voluntary Benefits
A comprehensive voluntary benefits program is no longer a “nice-to-have” it is an integral “must-have” component of any organizations Health & Welfare strategy
Voluntary Benefits Consulting
In today’s economic climate, many HR and benefit executives are seeking ways to reduce the overall cost of their health plans while shoring up coverage for their employees. Many of these leaders are turning towards a comprehensive voluntary benefits program to achieve their objectives.
Many organizations enlist the aid of some of the nations largest and best known consulting practices to achieve optimum efficiency of their health & welfare benefits plan. These consultants work with organizations to help craft a multi-year, long term health & welfare strategy. Help shop and select appropriate benefits and negotiate underwriting and pricing with carriers.
However, the same organizations do not research voluntary benefit products and their potential impact on their benefits plan with the same exhaustive analysis they would investigating core health & welfare benefit products.
Voluntary benefits are not a simple commodity product and should not be obtained merely on price alone. As voluntary products are becoming more important to organizations and more complex, they require a specialty consultant with the same depth of knowledge you would enlist for help analyzing and selecting your health & welfare products.
Winston Financial has developed a unique approach to help organizations to achieve a comprehensive voluntary benefits strategy which when properly integrated with the health & welfare offering provide a “Best-In-Class” overall benefits solution for your organization.
As a nationally recognized leader of implementing voluntary benefit programs for more than twenty four years, Winston has developed a process to achieve the optimum voluntary program within your organization. Our ISP approach is defined as three simple steps:
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Identify – Winston consultants work with your team to assess needs and formulates an multi-year program which compliments your overall benefits strategy |
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Select – Our team of consultants will create and execute a voluntary RFP for carriers, enrollment providers and TPA’s |
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Provide – Once the process is complete Winston provides the support for workplace access to the new voluntary benefits, provides an integrated communications strategy and provides the technology to implement the administration and vendor management of your voluntary program |
Winston will work in conjunction with your health & welfare consultant to construct a long term, multi-year voluntary benefits program which will provide your organization with:
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The additional specialty benefit products your employees are asking for |
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These specialty benefit products as guaranteed issue or discounted rates |
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Specialty products which fill gaps in existing benefit programs |
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Worry free enrollment options and an effective billing plan |
As the healthcare landscape changes and the need for organizations to continue to find ways to improve their overall benefits offering, it is becoming more critical to address your voluntary benefits with the same thorough process as you apply to you health & welfare strategy. Winston’s unique approach to voluntary benefits program design can help your organization; continue reading below to find out how.
Voluntary Insurance Program
As a provider of voluntary insurance programs for more than twenty years, Winston recognized early-on the challenges organizations were facing putting together the best blend of voluntary benefits products for diverse employee groups with very different requirements.
The creation and introduction of Winston’s Voluntary Insurance Program – VIP in 1991, succinctly addressed and solved many of the issues organizations faced implementing a comprehensive voluntary benefits program.
VIP is Winston’s proven solution for implementing a successful voluntary program in organizations of any size. VIP was created with the aim of providing an open architecture, consolidated administration platform facilitating the enrollment of multiple voluntary benefits from multiple insurance carriers.
Under Winston’s VIP Plan, organizations now have the flexibility to select and implement the very best voluntary products without the difficulty of managing multiple carrier enrollment systems and multiple carriers billing and reconciliation processes. Under the VIP Plan umbrella, your organization can select any product from any carrier, and communicate, enroll and administer your voluntary program using a single integrated solution.
Winston’s VIP approach provides your organization with;
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A multi-point approach to voluntary benefit communications that will educate employees, drive engagement and reinforce a cohesive benefit program message |
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A three-point convenient approach for enrollment which drives participation |
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Click – EBS; proprietary on-line solution for education and enrollment |
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Call – Benefits-On-Demand center field questions and enroll benefits |
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Connect – Licensed counselors provide on-site enrollment support |
Our Technology EBS – Employee Benefits Solution is a single sign-on voluntary benefits solution which provides employee self-service and administrative support for the Voluntary Insurance Program. The Solution can help employees make voluntary benefit choices with a powerful decision support engine, provide each employee with a view of benefits only they are eligible to participate in and enable hr and benefit professionals to easily administer the entire VIP Plan through a single platform for all their voluntary program needs.
The high-touch support of the Voluntary Insurance Program is provided by our award winning Benefits-On-Demand Call Center where our team of full time, licensed benefit counselors can provide answers to benefit questions as well as assist an employee with benefit changes and elections. For each employer groups participating in the VIP Plan a dedicated group of call center representatives are specifically trained on their eligibility requirements and complete benefits Plan.
In Q1, 2011, Winston’s VIP Plan surpassed 500,000 participants in the United States.
If you are considering reinforcing your voluntary benefits offering but are not sure the best course of action is to accomplish your objective, Contact us to schedule a complementary voluntary benefits analysis for your organization to determine how we can help you improve your overall benefits program with Winston’s Voluntary Insurance Program. If the administrative challenges of managing multiple voluntary benefits carriers are adding to your already full workload, continue reading below to find out how we can help.
Voluntary Benefits Administration Solution
The foundation and a key component for the success of Winston’s Voluntary Insurance Program is in the underlying carrier billing and reconciliation administration solution WAVEPointe®.
WAVEPointe® is the culmination of Winston’s pioneering efforts which began in 1990 to develop a technical solution which would automate the complex interchange of premium files for voluntary benefits among multiple carriers, thereby substantially reducing the administrative burden across several organizational sectors including Benefits Administration, Information Technology and Risk Management/HR.
The WAVEPointe® Solution establishes secure, bi-directional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interfaces between the enrollment solution and an organizations HRIS/Payroll system providing seamless premium accounting and reconciliation services across Carriers, TPA’s and other 3rd party providers. An organization can transmit, monitor and manage the enrollment, eligibility and participation of the benefits program electronically and confidently, verified by over twenty robust reports which are generated automatically upon each billing cycle or payroll period.
Today our WAVEPointe™ Solution for vendor management can help streamline
and automate several critical administration processes within an organization by:
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Creating a single secure electronic interface connection to all carriers |
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Automatically providing eligibility/participation files via this interface |
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Automatically executing participation file audits |
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Managing dependent and beneficiary information |
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Confirming the “advise-to-pay” report of plan participant data through
each billing cycle reconciles with the invoice from your group benefit vendor |
Utilizing Winston’s Voluntary Benefits Administration Solution, will provide your organization with:
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Payroll deduction administration for your voluntary program |
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Premium billing reconciliation, accounting and reporting |
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Consolidated (single-slot) or multi-slot billing technology |
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Direct debit/ACH/credit card billing options |
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Missed deduction administration |
If your organization is facing administrative challenges implementing a successful voluntary program, our voluntary benefits administration solutions can help lighten the administrative workload for your organization.
We invite to you to employ the navigation menu on the right for a more in-depth exploration of related solutions offered along with Winston’s Voluntary Benefits program.
Contact us to schedule a complementary voluntary benefits administration workflow analysis for your organization to determine how we can help you reduce the cost and improve the operational efficiency of your voluntary benefits program.
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