S8E1 - ERISA Fiduciary Responsibilities and Liabilities

Well, fourth quarter is ramping up.

We're just about heading into fourth quarter here, which is obviously the busiest time for the health insurance industry with all of the renewals and everything, particularly on January 1.

Planned sponsors are getting ready to go out to bid, whether they're using their brokers or whether they're going direct or whatever they're doing.

Is this a good time for planned sponsors to start asking these questions of their service providers?

Well, you should always be asking these questions of your service provider.

So yes, this is a good time to start that process.

Depending on the size of your plan, depending on the complexity and how many service providers you have, in future years, you might want to start earlier in the year so that you can Get your ducks in a row, have those individual interviews, get the documentation, the request for documentation out and the documentation back in, and a little bit more time to evaluate.

But you shouldn't be entering into a contract with a service provider if you don't feel fully comfortable with the level of services, the type of services they're providing.

So it's always a good time to start asking those questions and to be making those assessments.

Yeah.

and to be planning for the future.

And look at the process you use this year.

If you weren't fully satisfied with the process this year, make a note of that.

And next year you can tweak your process differently, having used the experience that you developed today.

Personally, I like to do this kind of stuff, like asking for this type of data.

Myself personally, I like to do it off renewal because the vendors basically the insurance carriers and the TPAs and the PBMs, they're so busy during fourth quarter that they might ignore you and say, we're not going to complete this because we don't have time.

We have too much volume.

We can't deal with this.

So sometimes I think it's better to maybe do it off renewal because you can get better responses.

Because if you send this, if you have a formal process, if you have an RFP process or you have a questionnaire, that sort of thing, and you send it during your renewal, again, Eight out of 10 might ignore you.

They might not respond to that.

They'll give you their quotes, but they might not take the time to go through all the detail and provide you with the information.

So I personally think a better time to do it is off renewal because that way you can get people, your response will be better instead of two out of 10 actually responding to you.

You might get, if you send it out to five, TPAs, for example, you might get all five back because they're thinking, okay, well, their next renewal, they'll think of me.

You know what I mean? So personally, I think sometimes when you're doing data searching, that it's better actually to do off renewal, but that's just my personal opinion.

Well, fourth quarter is ramping up.

We're just about heading into fourth quarter here, which is obviously the busiest time for the health insurance industry with all of the renewals and everything, particularly on January 1.

Planned sponsors are getting ready to go out to bid, whether they're using their brokers or whether they're going direct or whatever they're doing.

Is this a good time for planned sponsors to start asking these questions of their service providers?

Well, you should always be asking these questions of your service provider.

So yes, this is a good time to start that process.

Depending on the size of your plan, depending on the complexity and how many service providers you have, in future years, you might want to start earlier in the year so that you can Get your ducks in a row, have those individual interviews, get the documentation, the request for documentation out and the documentation back in, and a little bit more time to evaluate.

But you shouldn't be entering into a contract with a service provider if you don't feel fully comfortable with the level of services, the type of services they're providing.

So it's always a good time to start asking those questions and to be making those assessments.

Yeah.

and to be planning for the future.

And look at the process you use this year.

If you weren't fully satisfied with the process this year, make a note of that.

And next year you can tweak your process differently, having used the experience that you developed today.

Personally, I like to do this kind of stuff, like asking for this type of data.

Myself personally, I like to do it off renewal because the vendors basically the insurance carriers and the TPAs and the PBMs, they're so busy during fourth quarter that they might ignore you and say, we're not going to complete this because we don't have time.

We have too much volume.

We can't deal with this.

So sometimes I think it's better to maybe do it off renewal because you can get better responses.

Because if you send this, if you have a formal process, if you have an RFP process or you have a questionnaire, that sort of thing, and you send it during your renewal, again, Eight out of 10 might ignore you.

They might not respond to that.

They'll give you their quotes, but they might not take the time to go through all the detail and provide you with the information.

So I personally think a better time to do it is off renewal because that way you can get people, your response will be better instead of two out of 10 actually responding to you.

You might get, if you send it out to five, TPAs, for example, you might get all five back because they're thinking, okay, well, their next renewal, they'll think of me.

You know what I mean? So personally, I think sometimes when you're doing data searching, that it's better actually to do off renewal, but that's just my personal opinion.