As employee benefits specialists, Innovative Insurance will assist you in creating an effective strategy in managing your group insurance programs. Our goal is to enable you to react to marketplace changes and to optimize funding and cost sharing strategies.
Overall employee benefits spending, for the average employer, represents between 20% - 30% of payroll, or between $6,000 - $8,000 per employee per year. For many employers, these programs represent their second largest expense (after payroll). Now faced with fewer resources and increasing complexities in the marketplace, many organizations are challenged to manage their group insurance programs effectively.
For employees and their dependents, these benefits represent economic security and access to important services - particularly medical care. A benefit program can serve as a valuable tool to attract and retain key employees and will be critical to the company's bottom line success if it is:
- comprehensive
- communicated effectively
- serviced and managed properly
- cost effective
All employee benefit clients of Innovative Insurance are provided with our custom designed HR Support Center Tool. This program provides customers’ employees with all their specific benefit plan information online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As an employer, you are always looking for ways to save time and money. Innovative Insurance has been doing exactly that for clients with great reviews and results. Our HR Support Center directly affects the time your human resources department or office manager spends on a daily basis with employees regarding benefit issues. This program makes it easy for your employees to answer the majority of their benefit questions on their own. With a click of a mouse, employees have access to their benefit information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your password protected HR Support Center has a menu of all your group's available employee benefits with separate information screens for each plan. Included are current medical and/or dental provider directories, benefit summaries for each line of coverage as well as all pertaining forms. Please click the link below to view a demonstration of our HR Support Center:
HR SUPPORT CENTER - VIEW DEMO
Innovative Insurance also provides clients and potential clients with our online census form (located at the bottom of this page). This form may be printed, completed and faxed to 203-292-5906. Once this form has been received, you will be contacted promptly by one of our representatives to discuss available options in the group insurance marketplace.
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LIFE/AD&D
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MEDICAL
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DENTAL
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LONG TERM DISABILITY
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SHORT TERM DISABILITY
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SUPPLEMENTAL SHORT TERM DISABILITY
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VOLUNTARY PAYROLL DEDUCTION PLANS
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FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS
Group Term Life/AD&D is often the only life insurance many employees will carry. It is an inexpensive way to enhance your group's employee benefit program and help provide your employees with greater peace of mind. In today's competitive environment, many employers offer not only employer paid life insurance, but supplemental or voluntary group life insurance as well. This allows your employees to purchase additional amounts of coverage at attractive group rates through payroll deduction.
Medical and Prescription Drug Coverage is often the foundation for most employee benefits programs. Surveys have shown that it is often the most asked-for benefit by employees and prospective employees today. As health and prescription insurance premiums continue to rise annually at double digit increases, employer are looking for new and innovative solutions to better manage these costs. In many cases, employers are choosing to offer multiple plan design options to their employees with varying contribution schedules, while others have moved towards self-funded and partially self-funded benefit programs.
Dental Insurance is often requested by employees as well. In order to make your company stand out among the competition when recruiting new employees or to retaining existing ones, consider adding dental to your program today. Depending on the size of your company and the location(s) of your employees, plans can be designed on an employer paid or combination employer/employee paid basis.
Long Term Disability Insurance provides income for an employee who becomes disabled and is no longer able to work. While most employees are covered by the Social Security disability program, benefits can be hard to obtain and are generally restricted to people who are considered "totally" disabled and their disability has lasted at least 5 months. Most employees in New Jersey or New York have coverage through the state short-term disability plan (NY-DBL or NJ-TDB). However, this program only pays for a maximum of 26 weeks and cannot be extended. Therefore, many employers enhance this coverage by offering Group Long Term Disability insurance which continues to provide income in the event an individual's disability extends beyond the Short Term Disability Plan's benefit period.
Under NY & NJ law (and in several other states) there is a state mandated Short Term Disability Plan that employers must provide their employees. In some cases, it is possible, and may be more economical, to purchase this mandatory coverage through a private disability insurance carrier. Ask us for information about whether this option will work for your company.
Some employers feel that the benefits offered under the NY & NJ State Short Term Disability programs do not provide adequate short-term disability protection for their employees. One way employers address this problem is by offering a company paid Supplemental Short Term Disability plan. Depending on the size of your company, plans may also be designed to offer coverage on a voluntary or employee paid basis.
Many employers are also interested in providing Voluntary Coverages through payroll deduction as another way to enhance their employee benefit offerings. Popular Voluntary Programs offered by employers today can include vision, dental, life insurance, and supplemental disability insurance. Participation requirements vary and pricing is generally offered at more affordable group rates. We would be happy to provide you with additional information on volunary coverages upon request.
Employers also offer Section 125 Cafeteria Plans which include pre-tax premium contribution plans as well as Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) for unreimbursed medical expenses and/or dependent child care. Please consult our professional staff if you would like more information.
