March 2018

Polar Plunge for Special Olympics of Nevada

Whitney, Senior Relationship Manager and her daughter, Molly took a dip in the frigid waters of Lake Tahoe for the 5th Annual Polar Plunge benefiting Northern CA and Northern NV Special Olympics.

Did we mention it was cold? It was 21 degrees outside, with 41-degree water temps, when Whitney & Molly took the plunge.

Decisely is a proud sponsor of the St. Patrick’s Day themed event, which raised over $161,000, surpassing its goal!!

Great job Whitney & Molly. Thank you for supporting such a great cause, stay warm!!

Decisely named a TAG Top 40 Innovative Technology Company

Technology Association of Georgia Honors 40 Companies for Innovation

and Contributions to the State’s Technology Community

ATLANTA (February 21, 2018) – The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), the state’s leading association dedicated to the promotion and economic advancement of Georgia’s technology industry, today announced Decisely as one of its Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia. TAG will recognize this prestigious group at The Summit 2018 on March 20^th and 21^st, 2018, at the Cobb Galleria Centre.

TAG’S Top 40 Awards recognize Georgia-based technology companies for their innovation, financial impact, and their efforts at spreading awareness of Georgia’s technology initiatives throughout the U.S. and globally.

“The 2018 Top 40 finalists are an elite group of innovators who represent the very best of Georgia’s Technology community,” said Larry Williams, president & CEO of TAG. “The 2018 Top 40 finalists are shining examples of what makes our State such a hotbed for technology and we applaud them for standing out as leaders in Georgia’s technology community.”

This year’s Top 40 were selected from among over 100 applications submitted by companies from across Georgia. Companies selected for the “Top 40” will be showcased in an exhibition at The Summit 2018.

“This year’s Top 40 was more competitive than ever,” said Dennis Zakas, managing partner of Zakas & Leonard, LLP and chairperson of the Top 40 Selection Committee. “In our quest to showcase the most innovative companies in Georgia, we had to make hard decisions, resulting in the exclusion of numerous deserving companies, many of which had been recognized as a Top 10 company in the past. The companies that we selected this year are truly outstanding.”

The Summit 2018 is expected to draw a crowd of more than 1,500 C-level executives, entrepreneurs, technology professionals and academia to celebrate and recognize Georgia’s technology community. In addition to presentations from some of the top technology influencers in the nation, the newest member of the Technology Hall of Fame of Georgia will be inducted.

For more information about TAG and The Summit and to register for the event, visit http://www.tagsummit.com/ Follow the conversation on Twitter through #TAGSUMMIT.

About The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG)

TAG is the leading technology industry association in the state, serving more than 30,000 members through regional chapters in Metro Atlanta, Athens, Augusta, Columbus, Macon/Middle Georgia, and Savannah. TAG’s mission is to educate, promote, and unite Georgia’s technology community to foster an innovative and connected marketplace that stimulates and enhances a tech-based economy.

Additionally, the TAG Education Collaborative (TAG’s charitable arm) focuses on helping science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education initiatives thrive.

For more information visit the TAG website at www.tagonline.org or TAG’s community website at http://www.hubga.com To learn about the TAG-Ed Collaborative visit http://www.tagedonline.org/

Turning small business broker attrition into an opportunity

By Kevin Dunn, CEO Decisely

“Our producer is retiring. We have to talk about how we allocate her book.”

That statement is an all-too-familiar one for leadership at many brokerages around the country today. As the industry faces consolidation and turnover on a massive scale, attrition is happening more frequently and agencies are being forced to make some difficult decisions. The challenge is particularly acute for brokerages with a large percentage of small company books of business.

It’s no secret that the economics of small business benefits puts financial pressures on a brokerage. Many brokerages service a mix of business that looks something like this: 30 percent small business, 50 percent mid-market, and 20 percent large business. But the mid-to-large size clients often drive the majority of a firm’s revenue and cash profits. At best, the smaller clients return a slim, single digit margin, and end up pulling down the firm’s bottom line.

This is because as a commission-based business, it’s nearly impossible to return a solid profit on clients with less than 50 lives. They generally require the same service intensity of a 100-life group, but with only one-fifth the revenue. Some individual employee benefits clients might be profitable, but overall, small group business with expanded HR service needs and a technology experience expectation effectively blows the profit and loss formula.

Despite this, many brokerages continue to service small business clients, as they are often a producer’s income hedge and perceived lottery ticket in the hopes they’ll grow into larger, more profitable clients one day. But what happens when the producer servicing those small business clients leave an agency? Is it business (and margins) as usual, or is it an opportunity to transfer the portfolio and reallocate client services to focus on more revenue-generating work?

Some forward leaning agencies are learning that they can deliver a higher standard of client service and contribute to the bottom line by monetizing their small book of business. They are monetizing small business clients using a short-term outsourced partner that will pay cash for the book and provide a return of the business to the broker at a predetermined threshold, effectively freeing up time and resources to newer, mid-sized or larger clients. This approach provides a roadmap for managing broker attrition and delivering better service to your clients for the long-term.

Below are three approaches brokerages can take to more effectively determine how to manage their small business book of business — either as part of a proactive exercise or because broker departures force a decision.

Assess the performance of your overall portfolio. Understand tenure over time and evaluate how many and which companies are more likely to grow and become larger, more profitable pieces of business. How many of your accounts have been a 10-15 employee firm for the last five years? Are your smaller clients likely to follow that path, or is there a strategic relationship for keeping them as firm accounts?
Assess your small business clients’ appetite for change. Many small businesses today are comfortable with modern tech and app-based tools, so a transition to an online platform with client dedicated relationship managers via phone could be a natural fit for them.
If you can transition the bulk of your small business clients to a technology based solution, then you must next chart the best course to market. This requires an evaluation of the cost versus benefits of building a technology in-house or utilizing available SaaS technology platforms. A custom-built solution is great for accommodating the unique nature of your business and staff. But it can also be expensive — both to develop and sustain — and take longer to roll out. There are enough outsourced platforms on the market today that you will likely find one that suits your firm’s needs, whether outsourcing servicing, market quoting or selling the book. If you are able to sell your small business book, be sure to consider sale to a firm that provides a path back to you in case that book grows to the next Google.

At the end of day, it’s possible to turn broker attrition into an agency opportunity. By playing your cards right, you can use that moment in time to transform the underperforming majority of your client mix into a more sustainable and growth oriented portfolio that will improve overall margins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: As the CEO of Decisely, Kevin Dunn is building Decisely as the new standard in the benefits technology and brokerage insurance space. Decisely is a trusted advisor and turnkey SaaS technology for small business in the U.S. Kevin joined Decisely from Mercer, where he created and implemented the strategy and marketing for Mercer Health & Benefits private exchange technology. Kevin has over 20 years of experience in e-commerce and online distribution. He has co-created two start-ups within Fortune 100 companies and built the award winning Delta.com. Learn more at decisely.com.

Originally published at benefits pro on January 5, 2018.

How to break into the Association Health Plan market (AHP)

By Kevin Dunn CEO, Decisely

Small business owners have limited options when attempting to provide affordable healthcare benefits for their employees. Roughly 11 million small business employees do not have access to employer-sponsored benefits. In fact, employer-sponsored benefits for small business has dropped by 25% since 2010.

One reason is because the benefits cost per employee for small business is generally much higher than for larger companies. It’s also a much more complicated, time-consuming effort for small businesses to source and deliver benefits to employees. As a result, many small businesses are forced to offer only bare bones or no benefits plan at all; leaving workers to find coverage on the individual market or through state and federal exchanges.

But small businesses often want to offer affordable benefits to their employees. Not only does it help with employee retention, but they realize it’s the right thing to do. Fortunately, there is an effort underway at the Labor Department that could throw a lifeline to these small businesses and their employees.

Currently, ERISA allows groups of business with “common business interests,” such as an industry or a franchise group, to come together under strict guidelines to form collective benefits sourcing programs. A rule change proposed by the Department of Labor would broaden this definition of “commonality-of-interest” to allow small businesses to band together using less stringent industry, geographic, or professional interests, to form association health plans.

This change would mean that much wider groups of small businesses, franchises, smaller associations, and even sole proprietors could qualify for collective sourcing of benefits through an AHP. There are tremendous benefits to this approach:

Economies of scale of collective purchasing will make employer-sponsored benefits affordable for many more small businesses, reducing the number of uninsured. Typically, health benefits group purchasing can deliver 10%-30% savings compared to individual small employer purchasing, amounting to hundreds and thousands of dollars of savings per employee. An AHP can bring access to broader benefits and services normally available only to larger businesses, including wellness and disease management programs. Access to group benefits can aid in higher retention employees for small businesses, a critical driver of the U.S. economy. Sourcing through an AHP can reduce administrative overhead for small businesses, allowing them to focus on their core business. Instead of being a broker’s smallest client, participating in an AHP give small businesses greater access to professional management, consulting, oversight and advocacy normally available only to large businesses with professional staffs and resources.

For benefits brokers, associations and franchises, this rule change is an opportunity wrapped in a challenge. Before small businesses can unlock the benefits of AHPs, they first need to navigate a complex administrative, governance and sourcing process. These small businesses, association and franchisee members are going to turn to their trusted advisors, industry and franchise organizations for help understanding this new and industry-changing opportunity.

Brokers, association, and franchise leadership must begin preparing now to meet these questions with specific, proven recommendations on how to quickly take advantage of this emerging opportunity to create real value for their client’s members and franchisees.

Fortunately, a proven playbook already exists for how best to deliver these association style benefits. This playbook will simply need to expand to a broader qualified set of small business over time as the DOL regulations are released toward the end of 2018 or early 2019.

Turnkey Solution

Today, an AHP or trust can be sponsored by a group member association and deliver real benefits to its members. The AHP or trust’s role is to aggregate (and oversee) member needs to secure coverage on behalf of its members. The AHP contracts with a broker specializing in small business and program management to create a benefits portfolio for the members, negotiate with insurers on its behalf, and provide program management, enrollment, benefits administration, and ongoing member support. The goal is a turnkey solution for the collective sourcing of small business benefits.

An AHP can be set up using three different structures for medical and other benefits:

Fully insured medical: This is the easiest plan to administer and communicate. It requires no initial capital reserves and does not share risk among the members. Instead, the insurer takes on all financial risk with little or no financial outlay from the AHP at startup.
Self-funded medical: Insurers prefer this approach because it requires the AHP to fund some initial capital or financial reserves for self-funded claims. This means the association assumes a collective financial risk for providing health care benefits to its members through an earmarked fund to pay claims across all participating members, funded by premium contributions to the AHP or Trust. The advantage to the AHP is group-wide savings if the collective group has good claims experience over time. The downside is it requires some up-front capital or reserves to be set aside by the association and its members.
Hybrid medical: Also called a minimum premium program, this approach blends risk for all parties and allows dividends or gain sharing for members based on good loss performance.

In general, the timeline from contracting with a program creator/administrator, through insurer negotiations, to the final launch of any group purchasing plan is six to nine months. First, associations must formalize their intended structure, including the formation of an AHP, if one does not already exist. A qualified ERISA attorney should guide this formation process to ensure proper compliance and governance.

Next, the association should consider sourcing an external program manager to help collect the appropriate data for underwriting AHP members, develop the benefits offering, negotiate with insurers, and initiate the marketing and administration of the AHP program. Once this plan is finalized, the program administrator can begin activating the strategies, tactics and program administration required by AHP member, including call centers, website, reporting, enrollment, and administration. At this point, the new AHP is ready for launch for members and employees.

Ultimately, the DOL’s loosened regulations on AHPs will expand the universe of small businesses and employees that can secure employer-sponsored benefits. This access enables small businesses to save money for their company and their employees, broaden access to better coverage and benefit options, and keep their employees happy and healthy. With a more stable and higher performing workplace, employers and employees alike can focus on the business’s growth and long-term success.

Brokers, associations, and franchises have an important role to play in this equation and should begin preparing now to be a resource and eventual facilitator for their small business clients and members in the days ahead.

Kevin Dunn is CEO of Decisely, a platform that supports benefits, HR resources, and technology for small businesses in the U.S.

Originally published at Employee Benefit Adviser on February 12, 2018.

Prepare Now for Association Health Plan (AHP) Rule Changes

By Kevin Dunn CEO, Decisely

Small business owners and HR teams know that a competitive benefits program can be a difference maker when recruiting top new hires or attempting to retain homegrown talent. But limited resources often leave small businesses frustrated and fighting for attention from advisors or cobbling together their own plans. Fortunately, a proposed rule modification for Association Health Plans (AHPs) is about to completely reverse this dynamic.

Traditionally, small businesses have few options when it comes to providing affordable healthcare benefits for their employees. The cost per employee is prohibitive – especially compared to larger organizations – and managing these benefits can be more complicated and time consuming.

As a result, employer-sponsored benefits for small businesses have dropped by 25% since 2010, and a recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted that roughly 11 million small business employees do not have access to employer-sponsored benefits. This leaves many workers to source coverage for themselves on the individual market or through state and federal exchanges.

Fortunately, there is an effort underway at the Labor Department that could throw a lifeline to small businesses and their employees. By changing the definition of “common business interests” in the current Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and broadening its applications, the government is loosening restrictions on who can pursue collective benefits sourcing programs. An amended rule would make it possible for more small businesses, franchises and small associations with less stringent industry, geographic or professional affiliations to form an AHP.

For these businesses, the benefits would be tremendous. Employer-sponsored benefits will now be within their reach because health benefits that are group purchased can typically deliver 10-30% savings compared to individual small employer purchasing. It will also widen the pool of available benefits to employers and employees, and can reduce their administrative overhead. Instead of being the small client for a broker, forming an AHP will make them a much bigger fish with access to greater professional management, consulting, oversight and advocacy resources.

These new plans can then return the competitive advantage to some businesses and organizations. As Jack Calabrese from our AHP client, NAPA Insurance Center explained: “Offering benefits gives our NAPA owners a competitive edge when trying to hire and hold on to great employees. The NAPA Insurance Center helps our owners offer benefits to their employee at lower rates than the owners could source themselves.”

Small business owners and HR managers should begin preparing now to maximize these advantages and to take advantage of the rule change as soon as possible. Fortunately, a proven playbook already exists for how best to deliver these association style benefits. This playbook will need to expand to a broader qualified set of small business over time as the Department of Labor regulations are released towards the end of 2018 or early 2019.

Today, an AHP or Trust can be sponsored by a group member association and overseen by members of this organization. The AHP’s job is to aggregate and manage member needs to secure coverage on behalf of its members. The AHP often contracts with a broker specializing in small business and program management to create a benefits portfolio for the members, negotiate with insurers on its behalf, and provide program management. The goal is a turnkey solution for the collective sourcing of small business benefits.

An AHP can be set up using three different structures for medical and other benefits:

Fully Insured Medical: This is the easiest plan to administer and communicate. It requires no initial capital reserves and does not share risk among the members. Instead, the insurer takes on all risk with little or no financial outlay from the AHP at startup.
Self-Funded Medical: Insurers prefer this approach because it requires the AHP to fund some initial capital or financial reserves. This means the association assumes a collective financial risk for providing health care benefits to its members through an earmarked fund to pay claims. The advantage to the AHP is group-wide savings if the collective group has good claims experience over time.
Hybrid Medical: Also called a Minimum Premium Program, this approach blends risk for all parties and allows dividends or gain sharing for members based on good loss performance.

We have found that more than 90% of our association customers at Decisely opt for Self-Funded Medical plans because even though it brings with it some upfront costs, the potential savings over time are much greater. That cost-benefit calculation will vary for associations, so members should be thoughtful about their choice.

In general, benefits leaders should plan for roughly 6 months from contracting with a program creator/administrator, through insurer negotiations, to the final launch of any group purchasing plan. This will include formalizing the association’s intended structure, including the formation of an AHP if one does not already exist. A qualified ERISA attorney can guide this formation process to ensure proper compliance and governance.

Next, the association should consider sourcing an external program manager to help collect the appropriate data for underwriting AHP members, develop the benefits offering, negotiate with insurers, and initiate the marketing and administration of the AHP program. Once this plan is finalized, the program administrator can begin activating the strategies, tactics and program management required by AHP members, including call centers, website, reporting, enrollment, and administration. At this point, the new AHP is ready for launch for members and employees.

Ultimately, broader requirements of existing regulations will expand the universe of employers that can offer company-sponsored benefits plans. Small business, franchise, and association benefits teams should be planning now to ensure they are leading this wave of change and making the most of the AHP opportunity.

As the CEO of Decisely, Kevin Dunn is building Decisely as the new standard in the benefits technology and brokerage insurance space. Decisely is a trusted advisor and turnkey SaaS technology for small business in the US. Kevin joined Decisely from Mercer, where he created and implemented the strategy and marketing for Mercer Health & Benefits private exchange technology. He graduated with a B.B.A. in economics and a MBA from Georgia State University. Kevin also serves on the board of directors at Innovative Student Loans Solutions, a private equity backed firm in Cleveland, Ohio.

Originally published at HR Daily Advisor on March 1, 2018.

The Best Ways To Beat Your Competition

Henry Ford once said, “Competition is the keen cutting edge of business.” With nearly 30 million small businesses across the country, you need to know how to stand apart from the crowd. Regardless of your industry, knowing your competition allows you to improve your strategy and encourages you to become more innovative. Keep reading to learn the top three ways to keep your company ahead of the rest.

Compare strengths and weaknesses.

Maybe your competitor just closed a large round of funding. What do they do with the money? They release an improved product. How do you respond? Not necessarily by releasing a new product. Think about other aspects of your business and how you can influence consumer buying decisions. Perhaps you stand out with improved customer service, increased transparency with the public, or extended warranties. Know both your own company’s and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Position your strengths against their weaknesses.

Keep your eyes and ears open.

The internet has given customers more power now than ever. They can review your company, research other solutions, compare costs, or rant or rave on social media. Paying attention to what your target audience is saying is crucial. Whether you’re directly responding via social media or just monitoring chatter, you are showing that you care about both current and prospective customers. Some ways to listen to your audience: set up an alert any time your business is mentioned on the web (Google Alerts is free), send out customer surveys, and monitor industry trends.

Don’t underestimate the importance of analytics.

Think about the entrepreneurs who appear on Shark Tank. The “sharks” rarely invest in a business if the business owner doesn’t understand their numbers. Know how much it costs to acquire a customer, and how much each customer is worth to your business (Average Customer Value – ACV). Understand your marketing costs, product costs, and number of new customers.

In an extremely competitive marketplace, every move your business makes is important. Decisely cares about the success of your business, which is why we make your life easier with great service and great tech (so you can focus on other things, like your competition). Whether big or small, any advantage that lets you stay ahead ensures the ongoing success of your company.