The group health insurance plan you provide to your employees is essential to attracting and retaining a high quality workforce. Bryant Wharton can help you to meet the challenge of selecting an affordable employee benefits plan that meets your budget as well as the needs of your employees.

We work with all of the national and regional carriers to identify the option that best matches each of our clients’ objectives. We navigate our clients through the negotiation process each year to ensure they get the best possible rates during renewal and conduct a market analysis to ensure plans remain competitive.

We were early adopters of Consumer Driven Health Plans and we can help your organization determine the plan features that are right for you.

Dental

We work with a variety of dental plan carriers and we are experts when it comes to finding cost effective solutions including PPO and DHMO alternatives. We can customize a plan that your employees will appreciate with valuable enhancements including adult orthodontics, implants, and oral cancer screenings. Our account team conducts a network pricing analysis regularly and we often negotiate extended rate guarantees for our clients that lower their dental benefit costs.

Life and AD&D

We will help you determine the right mix of core and voluntary life benefits for your company by evaluating basic and voluntary options including enhanced accidental death and dismemberment benefits, and smoker and non-smoker based plans.

Short and Long-Term Disability

Fifty percent of home foreclosures are blamed on the loss of income related to a disability. Selecting the right disability program can help you to provide employees with the income protection they need at an affordable rate. We evaluate each of our client's strategic goals and workforce demographics to develop custom plan designs that integrate with other in-force programs including sick days and/or paid time off. We also help our clients to navigate tax implications related to disability insurance that are critical to consider in d eveloping a total rewards strategy.

Vision

Bryant Wharton can help you select and customize employer-sponsored and voluntary vision insurance plans for your employees. These plans can be used to supplement annual eye exam coverage or we offer discount plans that are typically packaged with medical insurance plans.

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a counseling service for employees and their eligible dependents that may be experiencing personal or work place problems. EAPs can also help managers to deal with employee performance and productivity issues by giving them a resource that will counsel employees with personal issues that are affecting job performance such as: marital problems, financial problems, substance abuse, etc. EAP programs are effective at increasing productivity, reducing absenteeism and increasing employee satisfaction.

Whether you want to take advantage of a free EAP program through one of your existing group insurance carriers, or offer a more robust employer paid program, we can help you to identify a program that meets your needs and is within your budget.

Most plan sponsors agree that the traditional model for purchasing health care is in need of change. Companies with 1,000 or fewer employees paid their employees on average almost $22,000 in benefits in addition to wages according to the Chamber of Commerce's Employee Benefits Study 2007.

Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs) aim to better manage health care cost trends by:

• Encouraging employees to be better consumers of health care
• Promoting health and wellness
• Rewarding employees for making smart decisions about their health care

We can help you to design and implement the program that is right for you. Our capabilities include:

• Health and Wellness Promotion
• High-Deductible Health Plans
• Health Reimbursement Arrangements
• Health Savings Accounts
• Limited Purpose Flexible Spending Accounts

Bryant Wharton can help you to make sure that your employees have access to all of the opportunities available to use tax free dollars to pay for expenses. We can help you to establish Health Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts which allow employees to pay for eligible out-of-pocket health care and dependent care expenses with pre-tax dollars. By using pre-tax dollars, employees get an immediate discount on qualifying expenses. FSAs are usually funded through voluntary salary reduction elections made during open enrollment or at the time of another qualifying event. FSAs can be set up so employees can access their accounts using convenient debit cards at the point-of purchase.

Some features of a health flexible spending account include:

• Employer contributions are excluded from your gross income.
• No employment or federal income taxes are deducted from the contributions.
• Withdrawals may be tax free if used for qualified medical expenses.
• Funds can be used for medical expenses even if the employee has not yet placed the funds in the account.
• Funds qualify for the use-it-or-lose-it provision.

If you offer a Health Reimbursement Arrangement or a Health Savings Account, we can help you to establish a Limited Purpose Flexible Spending Account that coordinates with those types of plans and can cover certain qualified expenses.

Bryant Wharton will help you to understand the benefits of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in designing an affordable employee benefits program and help you to determine if implementing Health Savings Accounts should be a component of your High-Deduc tible Health Program.

Anyone can contribute to a Health Savings Account if they have are exclusively enrolled in a federally qualified High-Deductible Plan and have no other first-dollar medical coverage. Contributions to a Health Savings Account may be made by either the employer or the employee, or both, subject to certain total annual contribution limits. Employees age 55 and older can make additional make-up contributions, similar to 401(k) plan allowances.

Money in an HSA can be used to pay for any qualified medical expense permitted under the federal tax law, including most medical care and services, and dental and vision care. HSA funds can even be used for prescriptions drugs and certain over-the-counter drugs including aspirin. Employees own the funds accumulated in an HSA whether they are employee or employer contributions and they are portable should the employee terminate employment.

The benefits of an HSA are:

• Affordability – You should be able to lower your health insurance premiums by offering high deductible health insurance programs.
• Savings – Your employees can save the money in their account for future medical expenses and the account is interest bearing, so funds will appreciate over time.
• Accountability – Your employees become more educated and more cost-conscious consumers of health care as they see how their decision-making process impacts the amount of money in their account.
• Tax Savings – Funds contributed to the account are not subject to employment or social security taxes.

Our retirement plan services practice helps employers with their retirement savings programs in the following areas:

• Plan Design and Implementation – A critical aspect of every qualified or non-qualified retirement plan is proper design. Through proper design employers can maximize the effectiveness of a plan and ensure that the plan runs as efficiently as possible. We work with our clients through each step of the design process to make plan administration simple and effective.
• Education and Communication – The success or failure of a company-sponsored retirement plan stems from one factor: participation. Our communication tools help employees to understand the benefits of participation and promote a high level of employee participation, which increases the probability that the plan will pass government testing and serve as an employee retention tool.
• Vendor Analysis and Comparison – A critical fiduciary duty is to periodically compare the current plan provider with other providers in the marketplace. We provide a vendor analysis and comparison as needed, and recommend a plan review at least once every four years.
• Investment Selection and Review Process – As a member of National Retirement Partners we help our clients select investments for plans and provide ongoing investment review to minimize the fiduciary risks associated with qualified retirement plans.
• Total Cost Analysis – As the retirement plan market has grown, it has become even more challenging to keep an eye on costs. Our review process ensures that our clients understand all fees associated with running a company-sponsored program. As a result, we are able to provide the most cost-effective solutions available in the marketplace.