Association Benefits

Since 1985, the Benefits Architect Group has been involved in creating and launching a number of Association group benefit programs across Canada and as such, several factors have emerged which we have found contributes to the long term financial success of these programs.

These are as follows:

1) Typically, most Association plans require you to take a preset benefit design. They may have different options but usually it means a member has to either give up an existing benefit or add something they don’t currently have. Most benefit plans have developed over time and for specific reasons, having to make changes in order to participate in the program is often seen as a barrier to entry.

The Benefits Architect Group program has no preset plan designs – we simply duplicate the existing plan.

2) Most Association plans will have standard rates for new entrants to the program. The down side to this is that new participants are attracted by rates that are significantly lower than their existing rates. Their rates are high for one main reason – they have poor claims experience! Once in the plan, their poor experience usually continues and eventually becomes a drain on the other members.

The Benefits Architect Group program looks at the claims experience for all new entrants and uses the information to properly set appropriate rates.

3) Most Association plans will renew the account as one big plan and assign an across the board premium increase. This rewards the participants with poor claims experience and penalizes the participants with good claims experience. Over time, the people with good experience leave the Association plan looking for better rates and the people with bad experience stay in causing the rates to increase significantly.

The Benefits Architect Group program renews each participant individually based on their own claims experience. In addition to the group volume savings, members with good claims experience are further rewarded.

These design features have allowed us to save members approximately 12% to 20% on their premiums with no change in benefits.

Based on an annual cost of $3,000 per employee, the savings would range as follows:
Group Size Annual Savings
10 Lives $ 3,600 – $ 6,000
20 Lives $ 7,200 – $12,000
30 Lives $10,800 – $18,000

We have found that these savings are usually significantly more that the cost of membership in the Association and thus act as a real “value added” reason to join the plan and stay.

We use the services of a Third Party Administrator (TPA) as most group benefit providers are reluctant to send billings directly to more than three or four different addresses. If they elect to do so, they will usually charge excessively for doing so.

A large number of the members of our Associations are Canadian subsidiaries of American parents. Over the years, we have found that the Benefits Architect Group Association program has been able to deliver a number of advantages to these subsidiaries as follows:

1. Premium savings of 12% to 20% based on volume discounts
2. Direct submission of Drug and Dental claims, no paperwork
3. Claim payments deposited directly to employee bank accounts
4. Claims paid in 2-3 working days
5. Other health providers may directly submit claims – e.g. hospitals
6. Bilingual customer service
7. Free French translation if required
8. Canadian 800 number for employee assistance
9. Canadian broker to get involved in service issues
10. Assistance with Canadian knowledge re Employment Standards and legal issues surrounding employee relationships and taxation.