Supporting clients during the carrier selection process
As clients navigate the carrier selection process, brokers and consultants should consider ways to help guide and ease them through each step.
For any employer, the process of changing to a new health benefits carrier can be fraught with complexity, and often anxiety. Questions can swirl around how a potential switch could impact their operations and their employees. Employers can wonder whether disrupting the status quo is really worth it, in terms of a better benefits experience and potential cost savings.
That’s where the role of a broker or consultant comes in — to help their clients understand the tradeoffs and enable a successful and smooth Request for Proposal (RFP) process. This includes everything from preparing the RFP to evaluating and negotiating the options, and implementing a change management plan once the selection has been made.
Preparing the RFP
Each employer and workforce is unique, so it’s important to start by understanding the client’s needs. This can involve getting aligned on their benefits goals and budget, looking back at past performance and understanding what’s worked and what hasn’t from the client’s perspective and based on employee feedback.
A well-designed RFP is in tune with an employer’s goals for making a carrier switch, which means working with the client to ensure that the issued document incorporates clear objectives and offers detailed criteria for evaluations. In other words, the RFP should make clear what the client is looking for. One way to do this, for example, is to include specific questions that elicit detailed responses from potential carriers.
Once the RFP is finalized, brokers and consultants can add value by engaging a range of carriers to receive and respond to the request, and relaying client expectations. They can also set deadlines for submitting responses to the employer. Because most employers change carriers infrequently, the client is likely to be unfamiliar with common timelines and processes for responding to an RFP.
Evaluating and negotiating
Once insurers’ RFP responses are in hand, a broker or consultant plays a key role in evaluating proposals and negotiating a specific agreement.
The evaluation process can include presenting different options proposed by carriers, explaining significant differences in covered services, provider networks and costs, such as deductibles and coinsurance. A scoring system can help the comparison process.
At this point in the RFP process, a broker or consultant can help an employer identify strong proposals and narrow them down to a few finalists. The narrowing process may involve negotiation, another key intermediary role brokers and consultants may play. With the client’s needs and goals top of mind, they may identify areas for potential improvement and then help to secure better terms.
Their expertise and experience in the field may also enable them to offer insights that don’t typically show up in a spreadsheet or RFP responses, such as the level of service or support a carrier provides, the ease of working with them or nuances that may not accurately reflect the value a carrier can deliver compared to competitors.
Supporting selection
The final stage of the RFP process is making a carrier selection. For brokers and consultants, this can involve presenting the top final proposals to the client and working with leaders of the business to detail the pros and cons of each proposal to make an informed decision. Given that costs are always an important factor in switching carriers, decision-makers will likely be looking for data detailing potential fixed and variable costs associated with each option.
The client may want to include employees in the decision-making process as well, with a goal of building workforce buy-in for change. A broker or consultant could help the business hold focus groups or conduct surveys to gather feedback about potential different coverage or employee experience options.
Once a carrier selection has been made, the broker or consultant’s job isn’t necessarily over. He or she may assist the transition to a new carrier, ensuring regulatory compliance, plan implementation monitoring and a smooth onboarding process.
By offering employers the right knowledge and know-how, brokers and consultants can make an often complex change management process smoother and more successful.
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