How can USI help our organization improve our control of health benefit costs?
Organizations considering migrating from a fully insured plan to a self-funded plan may want to consider a group captive. A group captive is a shared risk pooling mechanism that takes on risk traditionally assumed by the insurance carrier.
Group captives generally offer savings of 5% to 10% when compared with fully insured plans. Some captives may secure an additional 1% to 2% reduction in costs beyond a traditional partially self-funded contract through preferred pricing and "no laser" or "rate cap" provisions on stop-loss coverage.
We’ve estimated the financial impact for you. Feel free to update the assumptions.
- Increased claims transparency, reduces state premium taxes, and enhances your ability to cover any state mandated benefits
- Lower monthly fixed costs for plan administration and stop-loss insurance
- Cash flow advantage in early months allows employers to hold their own claims reserves for IBNR
USI helps clients evaluate their readiness for group captive programs and identifies programs that fit their needs. We continuously evaluate captive program terms and conditions, including collateral requirements, termination provisions, eligibility requirements, historical performance, and financial stability.
The collective nature of a captive arrangement can expose employers to risks outside their own company profile, which can be positive or negative. When captives perform well, employers share in dividends (return of captive premium). If a captive performs poorly, the cost of continuing to participate in the captive increases.
Captives can provide viable alternatives for smaller employers (50-200 employees) that may not be available independently.
I’d like to explore further how USI can help our organization evaluate the feasibilty of captive management solutions.
In order to determine whether a captive program is a good fit for your organization, USI will need a few pieces of information, including a copy of your current plan design and a claims history report for the past few years.