Your Documentation Needs
What is required from an Employer Standpoint when offering Group Benefit Plans?
This page is dedicated to providing you a list of items and requirements that you will need to keep in good order while offering a Group Benefits Plan. These documents are a must in order to stay compliant with the DOL, ERISA and many other Laws.
But first, please do not stress over what you may need. There is help for everything listed here, and generally we, as a Broker will provide you your Employer Mandated Documentation and Employee Support at no cost to you.
So...
As an Employer, you will be the administrator for the plans you offer, it is really important to have help with the following:
Here is a list of support items you will want from your Broker;
- Enrollment Support is generally a must, it can be challenging to communicate multiple plan offerings to even 5 employees, let alone 500.
- Renewal Assistance and Tracking are also a time consuming burden, if you can receive assistance from an Insurance Firm, you will be able to shift many, many hours of work into their hands.
- Employment Communication Documents and Notifications are required Annually per employee, if you have this managed through your HR that is great. If not, or your HR lifting power is limited, try allowing your Broker to help.
- Get a list of the Employees you will need to offer coverage too, the law is very specific for the most part as to who must be offered coverage. Generally anyone that works over 30 hours weekly on average. But you can offer to Part Time Employees.
- Managing your Employees Data is an additional burden the you would be well off to shift. You as the Employer do not want to know about any Medical Condition of your Employee (That Knowledge could be a breach of HIPAA or PHI Information). If possible, use a TPA or a Broker to manage communication for the "will my coverage honor this..."
Here are a couple of independent companies that provide services that can manage the above information. If you choose to not utilize a Insurance Brokerage Firm that will help, then please check these companies out. They are not free, but neither is non-compliance to Federal and State Law.
At Dreiling Insurance, we seek to provide you as many tools as we can justify at no cost to you. If you prefer to manage these necessary services your selves, please use the providing links above.
If you would prefer to speak with us, please call 310-503-0281, or submit a Contact Us Request Form here.
Here are the general requirements and Laws an Employer must stay compliant;
- ERISA Law will be your first stop for Compliance, you will want your Wrap Documents Annually
- F.Y.I., your Wrap Documents spell out who is eligible, what plans are offered, and who to contact. That is the extremely short version of what is in there. Generally they may be around 40 pages or so.
- You will also need any Plan Material Modification to be amended in your Wrap Docs called SMM's
- You Need to distribute these documents to each employee
- You need to keep accessible and distribute your SBC's, or your Summary of Benefits and Coverage for the plans you offer.
- Employee Notifications are important, there is a large list of notifications required by law to distribute and record to your Employees
- Your DOL notice of Exchange should be given to your employees and recorded.
- Please remember, some of these requirements are irrespective to whether or not you have a Group Insurance or Wellness Benefits Plan. So please make sure these are addressed, if you have no plan, get a copy of the DOL Model Notice and find which Employee Notifications you are responsible for.
- You are also required to have an Employee Handbook.
Again, aside from us here are a few sites than can aid in gathering this information. We provide many of these services to our clients at no charge to them, so if you prefer to have help through us you just need to call us or fill out a Contact Us Form.
Again, many of these requirements are expected from you, even if you do not offer coverage. If you do offer coverage, or you are considering offering coverage, please give us a call... We want to Help, and we really want to make sure you can rest assured that you are taking the right steps in protecting your Business, and your Employees.
If you are going to run your own quotes or request us to explore options for you, we encourage you to read "Finding Plans available to you". This page and well site was built for those that want to be educated before making any decision, so please go over this link and reach out to us if you have any questions.
Again please Click Here to View how to Quote for your Business.