Benefit Plan Benchmarking

Registered Employee Benefits Consultant

Chartered Financial Consultant

Board Member of Pinellas Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors

Member of the National and the Florida Associations of Insurance & Financial Advisors

Member Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce [Member Governmental Affairs Committee]

Subscriber to the Ethics Agreements of The American College & NAIFA

Employee Benefit Plan Benchmarking

Critical Reading

for

CEO / HR Director / Benefit Manager / CFO

Benchmarking Background

For many years employee benefit plans provided by very large employers have used sophisticated benchmarking techniques to ensure that the plan is designed and operated in such a way as to attract and retain critical talent. Understanding what plan norms and what plan outliers predominate among the entities with which a firm competes for the same skilled labor base is a fundamental management function. Similarly, knowing for certain, and beyond anecdotally, what actually motivates, satisfies and evokes desired employee behavior internal to a plan is equally important. Peer entity analysis via extensive market research has been the basis for the majority of decision making pertaining to benchmarking. It is now available for mid-size and smaller employers.

Some Past Difficulties With Benchmarking

	Solid market research was often hard to come by.
	Query criteria for the analysis did not allow too much drilling down.
	Smaller employers often found true benchmarking to be: Too expensive to do at the required level of sophistication. Difficult to properly achieve when local anecdotal or other questionable data sources were used. Often replaced by broker and/or carrier representations regarding what peers in the local area were doing with their plans. Measured by exit interviews with key departing employees who described the “better” benefit plan of the new employer. Virtually no drilling down, with the query criteria remaining amorphous and relatively vague. More of a dependence on gut feeling than scientific analysis.

What We Can Now Do For You

No longer is benchmarking the sole province of the large employer. Mid-size and smaller employers who wish to do more than anecdotal benchmarking against peers can do so as well.

BBCG maintains a broker relationship with MetLife which has made its benchmarking tool available for us to use with our clients, and soon to be clients. More importantly, this robust tool is completely FREE to you. We can set up the peer analysis based on your line of work, your size, your geographic area, and many other defining variables. We can also customize the query criteria specifically to answer the questions that are most important to you. Electronic and/or hard copy reporting of results is available on-line. Response time for the tool is virtually instantaneous.

Please Contact Us to Begin the Benchmarking Process

Contact person: Robert W. Murphy , REBC, ChFC, CLU, RHU, MBA

Phone: (727) 510-7138

Email: rw_murphy@bocabenefits.com

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