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Total Rewards & Employee Benefits

Our Strategy for Effective Benefit Planning

By Newfront | Published February 20, 2019

In the current job market, attracting top talent can be just as competitive as attracting clients – attractive and comprehensive benefit plans are often a deciding factor for potential team members. Newfront’s strategy for benefit planning combines data analysis, relationship-building, and program management to develop plans that work best for our clients. Today, we’ll share the steps we take to ensure that benefit planning is effective, affordable, and tailor-made to fit the needs of each company we work with.

Benefit Objectives and Benchmarking

To develop a truly competitive benefits package, you need to know how your current plan stacks up to peers in your industry and identify your goals.

• Benchmark your current benefit plan against competitors.
• Understand your employee profile, phases of life, career aspirations, commuting patterns and what your team thinks about their current benefits.
• Review business plans to forecast headcount growth and budget for benefit costs.
• Establish specific yet realistic strategic and financial objectives for benefit planning.

Innovative Benefit Plan Design

At Newfront, we believe that employee benefit plans should go beyond just health care and look at the whole picture to understand the needs of your employees and purpose of your offered benefits.

• Match benefit objectives with a specific purpose for each benefit offered.
• Balance the tradeoffs between cost and convenient network access.
• Link with retirement plans and other financial incentives.
• Develop reliable multi-year benefit cost models to support business growth planning.

We help tell a compelling story about your business, your teams, and your growth goals to get the most accurate rates for your benefit packages.

• Package your plan for insurance underwriters, to price the risks appropriately.
• Negotiate pricing with selected carriers and vendors.
• Offer global coverage and services through our partnership with the Worldwide Broker Network, wherever in the world you have employees.
• Review carrier and vendor contracts to validate that contractual language accurately reflects the coverage and services you decided to purchase.

Renewal Cycle Management

We help our clients stay up-to-date on changes to their plan so that they can remain confident that they’re being proactive about their plan management.

• Structure cost models which reflect changes made during carrier negotiations and placement, headcount growth, new domestic locations and international expansion.
• Manage third party vendor relationships on your behalf.
• Model new contribution strategies.
• Establish pre-renewal timelines, taking into account your budgeting and planning cycles.

Newfront will work with you to plan a comprehensive benefit plan that contains costs while considering the unique needs of your employees.

The Author

Newfront

Newfront is a modern brokerage transforming the risk management, business insurance, total rewards, and retirement services space through the combination of elite expertise and cutting-edge technology. Specializing in more than 20 industries and headquartered in San Francisco, Newfront has offices nationwide and is home to more than 800 employees serving organizations across the United States and globally.

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