We’ve been doing employee benefits for small employers for over 30 years.
Your Guide to Employee Benefits
In changing times, trust AC Forrest to help you understand your options and select the best employee benefits for your organization.
Group Health Insurance
For most small businesses, group health insurance is the foundation of the employee benefits program. It’s also easily the most expensive part, and can put a strain on your budget.
As an independent broker, AC Forrest works with many different insurance providers. So we’re in a position to help you survey your options and find the best fit for your team and your budget. We work with groups with as few as 2 employees, and some that are much larger than that!
We can help you explore options like these:
- Traditional (“Obamacare-compliant”) health plans
- HSA-qualified plans (“Health Savings Accounts”)
- Gap plans
- Partially self-funded plans
- Dual-option plans (give your employees a choice)
Group Dental Insurance
Dental insurance is a popular employee benefit because most employees will actually use it!
Most people know they’re going to visit the dentist a couple times each year for routine care, and that other issues sometimes come up. For this reason, group dental insurance will help an employer build goodwill with his/her team.
And group dental is far more affordable and more simple to manage than a health insurance plan.
Group dental rates also tend to be more affordable than individual plans, so you really are helping out your employees and their families. This is a win-win!
Get Started!Supplemental Benefits
The term “supplemental benefits” covers a variety of coverage options that you can offer to your employees. Most of these can be offered on an employer-paid basis (you pay 50-100% of the cost) or as “voluntary benefits” (the employees pay the cost via payroll deduction).
Get Started!Popular supplemental plans include:
Group Life Insurance
You can provide group life insurance to your employees at a pretty affordable rate. Typically this is “guarantee issue” life insurance, meaning that each eligible employee is guaranteed to get a plan regardless of risk factors. The amounts can range from $10,000 to as high as $100,000 (most groups opt for $25,000 or $50,000). The fact is, many of your employees don’t have (or can’t even get) life insurance, so providing it is a real service to them.
Telemedicine and freshbenies
Access to telemedicine can save your employees time and money (and help them avoid missing work for routine medical appointments). It’s a foundational piece of freshbenies, a supplemental employee benefit package that provides employees with a suite of very helpful services at a very low price.
Accident insurance
Accident insurance can help your employees cover medical and other expenses if they’re injured in an accident (even away from work).
Short- and/or Long-Term Disability Insurance
Most people cannot afford to miss work for very long. Disability insurance provides income protection for your employees when they have to miss work. Short-term disability insurance is a popular way to provide and manage maternity benefits too.
Learn more about disability insurance.
Group Vision Insurance
Vision insurance is very inexpensive to offer your employees. While it’s usually bundled together with dental insurance, you can purchase a stand-alone vision insurance plan if you prefer.
Critical Illness Insurance
Critical illness insurance will help your employees with the financial burdens that often accompany difficult medical events like cancer, heart attack, and stroke. You can get cancer-specific plans or a more robust critical illness insurance policy.
Next Steps: How to Get Started on Your Employee Benefits Plan
Why not take a look at what we can put together for your organization?
We’ll be happy to talk with you and run some numbers to see what the options look like. There’s no cost or obligation on your part.
Here’s the process:
- Contact us (you can use the form below).
- We’ll schedule a short phone call to help us understand your needs and situation.
- You’ll need to provide us with a census of full-time employees that includes date of birth and zip code (and include info on any dependents who will be covered).
- We’ll run some quotes.
- We’ll have another meeting (phone call, web conference, face to face, or simply an email dialogue – you pick!) to go over the options and our recommendations.
- You decide to move forward (or not).
We can do this at any time of the year, regardless of when your current coverage renews.
Ready to get started? What do you have to lose? Let’s talk:
The 2020 Health Insurance Guide for Small Business
We’ve put together a short, free resource designed to help small businesses understand some options they can consider in putting together an employee benefits plan. It also includes a case study that illustrates how we helped one of our clients save more than $46,000 without compromising benefits.
Check out the 2019 Health Insurance Guide for Small Business
