Assurex Global Launches Employee-Benefits Marketplace Platform

Assurex Global has launched a new private marketplace employee benefits platform for employers to offer a wide-range of administrative flexibility and employee health benefit options.

“Employers have been struggling for years with ever-increasing medical costs,” said Assurex Global President and CEO Jim Hackbarth. “Healthcare reform requirements further complicate the decision-making process. This product not only helps employers budget for the future, it expands employee options, thereby allowing them to choose the best plan for themselves.”

The marketplace platform, in collaboration with employee-benefits outsourcing partner Businessolver, provides greater flexibility to employers, no matter what benefit decisions they make in response to new provisions of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, the company said. Those changes include the creation of insurance exchanges, which Hackbarth said have caused widespread confusion.

“Employers will need to decide how and where to direct employees in accessing medical benefits,” Hackbarth said. “Our product allows employers the flexibility to keep their current benefits program or choose from a wide variety of networks, plans and contribution strategies, including defined contribution strategies that limit employer costs.”

Among other things, the Assurex Global marketplace platform will offer employers:

• The ability to choose either a defined contribution or a defined benefits plan.
• A prepackaged set of medical and ancillary benefits for employers and their employees.
• Support for Affordable Care Act record-keeping responsibilities.
• A single-source administrative package.
• Marketplace business data integration.
• Support tools that make employee choice easier.

“There is nothing like this in the market today,” said Assurex Global Board Member and Oswald Companies CEO Robert Klonk. “Our platform gives employers and their employees maximum choice in designing a benefits plan that works for them.”

Assurex Global, the world’s largest privately held commercial insurance, risk management and employee-benefits brokerage group, expects to begin adding employers to the marketplace platform by the second quarter 2013.

Columbus, Ohio-based Assurex Global has more than $28 billion in annual premium volume and more than 500 partner offices on six continents.

Businessolver offers online benefits administration services via Benefitsolver — its proprietary single source technology.

Source: Assurex Global