Choosing the right health insurance agent to provide small business employee benefits is essential. Employers need more than standalone health plans for their employees; they also need business consulting services, superb ancillary offerings to supplement core benefits, and HR administrative support.

Benefits brokers and health insurance agents bridge the gap between an expansive healthcare industry and an SMB. They assist businesses with information, guidance, and evaluation of insurance carriers, but how does a business owner evaluate health insurance agents or employee benefits brokers?

Significant cost savings are in store for SMB owners when they find the right benefits broker, especially one that partners with a professional employer organization (PEO). Many successful brokers are already partnered with top tiered PEOs.  Small business owners who are looking to connect with a PEO broker may have some questions and be looking for insights on how the relationship works. Below, you will find some helpful

Independent health insurance plans can be expensive and risky for employers. SMBs have unique challenges such as budget constraints and difficulty meeting group health insurance participation requirements. Partnering with a professional employer organization (PEO) broker is an ideal alternative to get better rates and current insights on regional benchmarking to ensure their benefits plans remain competitive.

When evaluating potential agents, these are a few helpful questions to ask:

• How can you and your PEO partner save me money on my core health insurance premiums?
• How can you protect my rates during annual open enrollment?
• What voluntary benefits can you offer my employees?
• How will you service my employees and their dependents when they have benefits questions?

When delving into these questions, employers and decision-makers should look for brokers who can walk them through the process of how their PEO partner is able to offer large group rates and voluntary benefits to small businesses.

Through a co-employment relationship, professional employer organizations can offer large group rates that small and medium-sized businesses can’t typically access on their own. PEOs leverage their collective buying power to negotiate better rates for benefits such as basic medical, dental, and vision as well as 401(k) plans, life insurance, and other high-value ancillary benefits. These resources help foster growth and scalability for small businesses at a lower cost.

A PEO broker should also explain how they analyze the unique benefits needs of individual businesses, including how they gather complete and accurate data to provide custom plan recommendations.

To do this, PEO brokers should facilitate a conversation about flexible offerings, such as ancillary benefits. The PEO partner will manage the heavy lifting for the SMB and the broker. They review the SMB’s needs to determine which voluntary benefits will contribute the most value to the overall employee benefits package.

From there, the professional employer organization will work with the SMB to provide a variety of employer and employee information sessions and materials to ensure that the benefits offerings and the advantages are understood.

After that, the benefits broker or health insurance agent will work with the SMB’s decision-makers to complete enrollment and assist with the integration of benefits. Agents should also be able to offer transparency for each product they recommend.

SMB owners should expect to see a range of terms, rates, and benefits for any health plans they consider for their business. This will help avoid miscommunication, confusion, and dissatisfaction down the road.

Highly skilled PEO brokers are equipped to do more with less. The broker-PEO partnership focuses on SMB cost efficiency, product breadth, and client service.

• Which PEOs do you partner with?
• What has your experience been with them?
• Do the PEOs you partner with provide additional support for your clients outside of what you can provide them?

Services provided by a professional employer organization can be transformative for small and medium-sized businesses. To ensure a partnership with the right agent and the right PEO, an SMB can benefit from some due diligence research.

Employee benefits brokers may be partnered with one or several PEOs. When discussing their PEO partners, make sure to ask about a few crucial signs that the PEO is trustworthy and can support the SMB.

First, decision-makers should find out whether the PEO is certified. IRS Certification means that the PEO meets the IRS’s background, experience, business location, financial reporting, tax compliance, and bonding requirements. A PEO without IRS Certification may not be the best option.

Next, SMBs should inquire about any other certifications and accreditations a PEO holds. Decision-makers may want to inquire about Employer Services Assurance Corporation (ESAC) accreditation and the Certificate Institute’s Worker’s Compensation Certification for peace of mind.

After discussing their PEO partners’ accreditations, qualified health insurance agents should be able to share examples of how they liaised with their client and their PEO partner to successfully build custom business health plans for the client. A positive experience between the broker and the PEO can be a sign that the SMB will also have a positive experience as well.

Workplace compliance is essential to the success of small and medium-sized businesses.

A PEO broker or health insurance agent can empower SMB owners with the support and confidence they need to meet and maintain compliance standards.

Helpful questions to ask benefits brokers:

• How is workplace compliance evaluated?
• How will you keep me updated on new and changing HR regulations and compliance?
• What other workplace compliance services and communications can I expect?

The best PEOs have in-house workplace compliance experts to ensure SMBs have a comprehensive and effective approach to staying apprised of and compliant with labor law changes. This can include a plan for disseminating physical materials such as compliance posters and certificates of insurance, a strong communications strategy to notify the SMB and their PEO broker of updates to state and federal regulations, or even simply being available and responsive when a business or their employee benefits broker has questions.

With these measures in place, the health insurance agent or benefits broker can connect with their SMB client to go over how shifting regulatory and compliance guidelines will impact their client’s small or medium-sized business. Additional PEO offerings such as payroll services also help with workplace compliance for the SMB. From administration to payroll tax filings and withholdings, the right PEO will stay on top of state and federal payroll regulations for the businesses.

As business owners explore questions to ask benefits brokers, they should be sure to also evaluate their potential agent’s ability to provide access to these crucial compliance resources.

This is where a PEO broker truly differentiates themselves from those who do not work with a PEO. A strong broker-PEO partnership can help SMBs access a vast array of low-cost employee benefits plans that enhance recruitment retention rates. Even better, they can put together custom benefits plans with their SMB client to make sure employees get the core and ancillary benefits they need and want. A happy workforce is the key to a successful business.

There are several areas in which a PEO can provide additional benefits for SMB clients and their employees. In addition to basic health, dental, and vision benefits, they look to the SMB owner for practical benefits that can help improve their quality of life inside and outside of the workplace.

Helpful questions to ask benefits brokers:

• What software or online tools can you offer that offer modern solutions for things like employee education and benefits administration?
• What voluntary or ancillary benefits can you offer to differentiate my business for job seekers?
• What other services can you provide to add value to our partnership?

Effective brokers stay on top of the latest tech and help their clients find what is genuinely useful. SMBs should look for a broker who is partnered with a PEO that utilizes digital platforms to increase day-to-day functionality, flexibility, and efficiency. Brokers can help their SMBs improve communication and automate data recording with secure web-based HR software applications.

In addition to day-to-day HR support, PEO brokers can provide a rich suite of high-quality ancillary benefits. A wide array of ancillary offerings give SMBs a competitive edge in talent acquisition, improves their current employees’ job satisfaction, and improve value perception for the company.

Additionally, PEO brokers can get their clients access to business services that will streamline operations and free up time for the SMB to focus on its core competencies.

By acting as an extension of an SMB’s HR team, here are a few examples of what PEOs can provide to SMBs on the broker’s behalf:

• Small business consulting services
• Payroll administration
• Webinars and continuing education to benefit both employers and employees
• Assistance in maintaining workplace compliance
• Retirement planning assistance
• Benefit strategy and plan recommendations
• Supplemental health insurance and voluntary benefits
• Wellness programs
• Support for employer, employee, and PEO broker

Brokers also play a critical role when it comes to helping decision-makers and their employees become well-informed healthcare consumers. One of a health insurance agent’s main responsibilities is helping employees choose the best benefits and get the best value for their client’s investment.

A broker should have the proper tools, practices, and resources to help SMBs save time and money during open enrollment. They should also be equipped to provide ongoing support to their SMB clients.

Helpful questions to ask benefits brokers:

• How can you streamline the open enrollment process?
• Does the PEO negotiate a new rate for renewal every year?

Effective open enrollment processes should include enrollment tracking and workplace compliance record-keeping. The ideal broker will prepare employees for open enrollment with educational resources that explain structures and processes. SMB clients should be able to rely on ongoing support from their benefits advisor and a support team from their PEO partner, even beyond open enrollment season.

During open enrollment, PEO brokers can give clients access to transparent, line-by-line pricing for health plans and other benefits, intuitive portals through which the broker and the SMB can work together to build benefits packages, and employee benefits portals, so the SMB client’s staff can easily manage or review their benefits online.

Benefits brokers in partnerships with professional employer organizations like PrestigePEO can help SMBs succeed. According to NAPEO, small and medium-sized businesses that work with a PEO see an average ROI of about 27% in cost savings. Additionally, their research found that SMBs connected with a PEO grow faster, have lower turnover, and are less likely to go out of business than SMBs that are not connected with a PEO.

Our professional employer resources help simplify open enrollment, daily operations, employee benefits service offerings, and various administrative responsibilities.

Top-Tier PEO Health Insurance Options

• Nationwide medical coverage through well-known insurance carriers
• HMO, EPO, PPO, POS, and HDHP plans
• Multiple plan options for dental and vision
• Extensive “in-network” options for physicians, specialists, and hospitals

Supplemental insurance plans

• Term life
• Whole life
• AD&D
• Short- and long-term disability
• Accident, critical illness, hospital
• EAP

In-demand ancillary benefits

• Identity and fraud protection
• Legal plans
• Pet insurance
• Home & auto
• Financial wellness programs
• PLUM benefits
• Commuter benefits

Concierge-level PEO Services

• Expert human resources consulting
• Payroll processing
• Small business HR management and administration
• Workplace Compliance assurance
• Risk management solutions
• Employee relations

PrestigePEO’s support teams, including HR business partners, benefits specialists, and more, become the point of contact for both the broker and the SMB owner. Our dedicated, in-house staff are available to the broker, SMB owner, and their employees to address concerns, resolve issues, and advocate for the client’s best interests.

To learn more about how PrestigePEO can help SMBs find the right employee benefits broker for their company, give us a call at 888-PEO-PEO1 or visit our contact page to send us a message.

In a recent survey, 60% of employees said employee benefits were extremely or very important when considering whether to stay with their current employer. This means that it is critical for business owners to get their employee benefits packages right. With few exceptions, SMBs only get one chance every year to lock in the benefits that make them competitive: annual enrollment.

More than ever, this is when benefits advisors become indispensable to their SMB clients. Annual enrollment is the time to help your clients find and select the most competitive employee benefits offerings and packages for the year ahead. It is crucial that employee benefits brokers and other insurance professionals seize this opportunity to show their clients that they’ve picked the right person to entrust with pivotal differentiators for their company.

During annual enrollment, benefits advisors can reinforce their value to their SMB clients with a diverse portfolio filled with the recruitment and retention benefits they can access with a PEO plan.

While managing multiple clients through one of the most stressful experiences of business ownership, benefits advisors can rely on their PEO partners to facilitate a smoother annual enrollment experience for their clients and worksite employees.

Let’s get into the most common pain points SMBs encounter during open enrollment season and how professional employer organizations can help their broker partners guide SMB owners.

A lack of clarity around the details of annual enrollment causes frustration for SMB owners and their employees. Which benefits are available? How can they use them? With so many plans, coverage potential, and carriers to choose from, it’s easy for anyone to feel lost.

There are plenty of pitfalls during annual enrollment that can result in communication failure. Plan changes may not be relayed effectively from SMB owners to their employees and people largely don’t understand or even remember all of the information they’re bombarded with during a single presentation. Worse, poorly executed emails or even verbal discussions can widen knowledge gaps.

Client and employee frustration is caused by a lack of clear, consistent communication about benefits plans and other considerations that come during annual enrollment season. A lack of understanding and the stress that come with all of this can be exacerbated by a lack of preparation for the season, incomplete or confusing communications, and other details that can be easy to overlook.

It’s no secret; many people struggle with benefits enrollment. Without expert support, most business owners have a bad user experience when trying to choose tiers, plans, and packages.

The complexity can feel endless. Every plan comes with its own set of terms, conditions, and limitations. These can include things like deductibles and copayments, out-of-pocket maximums, and varying coverage for prescription drugs.

The sheer volume of information can be overwhelming for business owners who are not specifically trained to understand the nuances of benefits plans. This, along with the fact that annual enrollment platforms are not always intuitive, can make it especially difficult for brokers or SMB owners to get support or find useful resources during annual enrollment seasons.

Managing a variety of options, understanding all the details of each, and selecting plans suitable for their business can be overwhelming for SMB clients.

The pressure on having a once-a-year opportunity to understand all options, decide which work best, educate employees, and still give the appropriate amount of time for employees to make their benefits selection can increase the chaos of annual enrollment. Even so, your client’s employees need diverse benefits offerings to meet their diverse needs.

One of the major hurdles SMB clients encounter during annual enrollment is the limited availability of enrollment options. Traditional insurance plans may offer a one-size-fits-most approach, leaving employers with few choices to tailor benefits to the needs of their workforce. This lack of flexibility can lead to frustration among employees who might need specialized coverage or additional benefits.

PEOs offer a unified HR solution for annual enrollment. Benefits advisors who partner with a professional employer organization are empowered to offer customized benefits solutions to their clients while also helping with workplace compliances concerns, changing regulatory considerations, and confidently connect SMB owners to a smart way to alleviate their administrative burdens.

PrestigePEO’s open enrollment resource center and year-round support for brokers, clients, and their employees simplify annual enrollment and day-to-day HR functions for everyone. Whether your clients are already partnered with a PEO and looking to transition to a new one, or new to the versatility of a professional employer organization, the relationship between a PEO, a benefits advisor, and an SMB owner makes annual enrollment better for everyone.

PrestigePEO, also known as The Broker’s PEO, has the plans, dedicated support, and expertise benefits advisors need to create an improved annual enrollment experience for their SMB clients Get in touch with us today to make sure your clients don’t dread their next annual enrollment season.

The PEO industry is growing every year. According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), there are 523 PEOs operating in the US right now. As PEOs gain popularity, benefits advisors have a lot of potential PEO partners to choose from. Many benefits consultants have found partnership with a broker-friendly PEO to be highly rewarding.

Broker–friendly PEOs create an ecosystem in which the broker, their clients, and the PEO can all succeed. Rather than exclusively selling directly to small businesses, these PEOs are built on a foundation that puts the broker partnership first. Because of the services and HR solutions they provide, partnering with a PEO can be a huge value add, both for the employee benefits advisor and their SMB client.

Even though broker-friendly PEOs do exist, misconceptions about the industry at large still give benefits consultants and employee benefit advisors pause. Let’s clear up some of the most common myths brokers tend to hear about PEOs.

This is a foundational value at PrestigePEO, which is why we never compromise on the measures we use to safeguard our broker partners:

• No broker of record letters (BORs)
• Broker partners are included in all PEO-SMB client communications
• Elevated renewal process: employee benefits consultants work directly with their clients to customize their benefits packages and choose service offerings
• Transparent pricing on proposals and quotes so the benefits broker can see what their clients are being charged, line by line
• PEO partnership enhances the benefits consultants’ portfolio so they can offer their SMB clients Fortune 500-level benefits at large group rates, plus additional benefits that keep clients competitive in the job market

Broker-friendly PEOs keep benefits consultants and employee benefits advisors actively involved throughout the lifetime of their client’s relationship with the PEO.

• Broker partners and their clients get dedicated human support with direct lines to their support team
• Some of the best PEOs also have greater reliability for renewal costs
• Broker partners have access to web-based HR software solutions that provide a smoother experience for benefits consultants and their clients during Open Enrollment season and specialized software that provides year-round support for benefits consultants, their clients, and their clients’ employees

Broker-friendly PEOs keep benefits consultants and employee benefits advisors actively involved throughout the lifetime of their client’s relationship with the PEO.

• Broker partners and their clients get dedicated human support with direct lines to their support team
• Some of the best PEOs also have greater reliability for renewal costs
• Broker partners have access to web-based HR software solutions that provide a smoother experience for benefits consultants and their clients during Open Enrollment season and specialized software that provides year-round support for benefits consultants, their clients, and their clients’ employees

It’s true that this is a large and growing industry, but no two PEOs are the same. Although brand and name recognition were once synonymous with dependability, employee benefits advisors now have to dig much deeper to get an accurate read on a professional employer organization they may be considering.

If you are brand-new to the PEO space, it can be hard to know which professional employer organizations can make or break your client relationships. Fortunately, those who are looking for an honest, responsible organization can look for several indicators that will help them identify a trustworthy PEO.

Not all PEOs compensate brokers the same way. Broker-friendly professional employer organizations, such as PrestigePEO, can have ways for benefits consultants to generate multiple revenue streams:

• Lifetime payouts on each case brought to the organization for as long as the client stays with the PEO
• Broker referrals (you refer another broker to the PEO)
• Commissions on service fees
• Commissions on individual product lines
• Broker incentive programs (click here to see what incentives PrestigePEO may be running for our broker partners!)

A trustworthy PEO partner can offer HR services and solutions that delight your SMB clients and support a good relationship with your client. One of PrestigePEO’s greatest differentiators from other professional employer organizations is that we truly operate in partnership with benefits consultants. We don’t only rely on our brokers to refer business to us; if we get a lead directly, we assign prospects to our broker partners so they can continue their own growth as well.

Some of the happiest brokers (and their clients!) are those that partner with a PEO.

To help debunk the misconception that all PEOs are the same, here are a few differentiating “green flags” to look for:

• What information is disclosed by the company on its website
  • Employee benefits and services for you, your clients, and their employees
  • Client retention rates
  • Industry qualifications
  • Industries served
• Reviews and/or references from clients

To be clear, it can be tricky to verify a PEO’s business transparency without personal experience. In most cases, it’s best to pick up the phone and have a conversation with a company representative. Speaking with a human gives you additional opportunities to gather more information that may not be included on the website.

PrestigePEO’s commitment to transparency extends beyond the basics for benefits consultants. Unlike many other PEOs, we are proud to offer our partners fully transparent pricing on each of our products and services. Our unbundled pricing allows brokers and their clients to see itemized costs—and cost savings—line by line. Additionally, our teams work with our broker partners to build custom quotes with the versatility SMB owners need.

Since many PEOs are privately held, another smart way to get a read on a professional employer organization’s differentiators is to do a little creative exploration.

Take some time to examine a PEO’s website for additional context around the company and the folks who power it. Beyond certifications and accreditations, here are a few items to get curious about while looking for a broker-friendly PEO:

• How long the company has been in business
• Why the business was founded
• Who leads the company and whether their background positions them to understand what is valuable to benefits consultants
• Whether the company provides broker-specific content, resources, and/or contact information

Additionally, you can take a look at additional online resources to get an impression of the company.

One of the easiest ways to quickly determine whether a professional employer organization might be a good partner is to find out which industry certifications and accreditations they hold. Benefits brokers will want to specifically focus on the accreditations and certifications that are held by those that meet the PEO industry’s highest standards.

1. IRS certification: Certified PEOs (CPEOs) have the distinction of meeting and maintaining the most rigorous government requirements for IRS-mandated certification requirements. A few of these include financial reporting, tax status, background, experience, and bonds calculated by federal tax liability.The IRS publishes a list of all Certified Professional Employer Organizations and the effective date of the certification. You can find PrestigePEO listed as “Prestige Employee Administrators.”
2. Employer Services Assurance Corporation (ESAC): ESAC accreditation is paramount in the industry. To date, only about 9% of PEOs have achieved this, PrestigePEO being among them. To receive ESAC accreditation, an organization must meet and maintain rigid financial, ethical, and operational standards. Accreditation provides established verification and financial assurance of all key areas of PEO reliability.
3. The Certificate Institute’s Worker’s Compensation Certification (CI): This confirms a PEO’s risk management program meets and maintains industry best practices to reduce work related accidents and exposures to control workers’ compensation losses.

PrestigePEO is among only 1% of PEOs to earn and maintain all three of these distinctions. To learn more, visit our accreditation page.

A common misconception about PEOs is that they merely act as staffing agencies, HR outsourcing, and nothing else. In actuality, PEOs serve as a full-service support partner to benefits consultants and their small and medium-sized business clients.

Recent Market Tracking Research found that more than half of decision-makers already outsource health insurance benefits, payroll administration, and 401(k) plans. Facilitating a relationship between your PEO partner and your client simplifies their existing outsourcing by offering single-source solutions and services.

The same survey found that business associates, peers, and trusted advisors are highly influential sources of information for to decision makers. As your client’s trusted advisor, this may mean you’ll have to do some myth debunking for your client as well.

NAPEO’s PEO Industry Footprint 2023 reported that 208,000 SMB owners are PEO clients. Through those partnerships, PEOs co-employ millions of workers, resulting in access to healthcare and other benefits for a workforce comprising roughly the same number of people employed by the four largest companies in the United States, combined.

These findings prove that your clients can indeed trust your Certified PEO partner to responsibly handle important business functions. The PEO industry has successfully assumed payroll administration duties and kept up with workplace compliance regulations for hundreds of thousands of businesses, not to mention benefits administration for millions of individuals.

Similarly, PrestigePEO can help your clients stay on-target with these and other critical functions. We assign dedicated teams of experts to accurately processes payroll and offer payroll tax guidance for your client’s remote and in-office employees.

This is why the certifications and accreditations detailed in this article should be non-negotiables for PEO partnership. Meeting the industry’s gold standard for ethics, fiscal responsibility, reporting, and independent auditing can give you and your clients peace of mind when entrusting the functions to a PEO. These are the drivers that give you a powerful tool to empower your clients for short and long-term prosperity.

With an exceptionally broad scope of services and solutions for critical business operations, PEOs cast a wide net of expertise that can positively impact your clients’ payroll administration, HR management, workplace compliance, risk management, and more.

Not only does PEO partnership pave a way to provide clients with day-to-day support, but it also creates opportunities for small and medium-sized business owners to broaden their employees’ benefits offerings.

PrestigePEO is mission-driven to meet all the industry’s highest standards in order to furnish benefits consultants and health insurance brokers with the best possible employee benefits and HR services. We nurture mutually beneficial relationships with our broker partners so they can do the same with their clientele.

Our dedicated teams are always available to support clients with employee payroll administration, benefits, and other critical HR functions. We also work with brokers to customize proposals to include the services their clients need and exclude anything they don’t.

Whether you are brand-new to the PEO space or interested in learning more about partnership with PrestigePEO, reach out!