CloudAdvisors with Matt Lister | E276
Benchmarking and improving employee benefits.
On today's episode, Jason Pereira is going to talk to Matt Lister, CEO of CloudAdvisors. It is a company in the group benefits space, and one of the unique things they have done is they have built a benchmarking system that helps inform business owners as to basically how their plans stack up against competitors in the same space and helps advise around best practices and design. Service is free for employers. Paid by advisors and providers.
Episode Highlights:
01:04: Cloud advisors use the Canvas employee benefits marketplace. Matt explains how they show employers how their benefit plans stack up.
1.20: The number one reason why employers have benefits in the first place is to be competitive and what Matt has done is democratized access to benchmarking data.
02:23: Every advisor got their own limited pool of experience regarding different sectors, different types of companies.
03:26: Advisor has a limited view based on their experience and the industry or sector that they work. The employer generally has an even more limited view of based on their experience and you, you can just simply go around and ask some of your friends hey, does your company offer benefits?
04:58: Employers go through different stages where they don't need benefits perhaps when they very first started, they can't afford benefits and then they quickly start adding people and they get into a world where your benefits become table stakes. So, they become that checkbox.
05:12: You might have a small company with a few employees, and they all know each other. They can literally sit around the table, so in terms of attracting and retaining each other, it's a direct conversation with the individuals. Do you have an employee benefits plan and how strong is it or how up to date is it or what does it include?
06:35: Matt explains how their system has options for employers that have no coverage, they can get a sample plan.
07:17: Matt explains how their system intakes the benefits plan and breaks it down into hundreds of different variables that one can then compare by industry, region and group size.
08:17: Oftentimes the advisor does have the basis from experience and anecdotes to be able to say, here are the gaps in the program. But the data really tells a compelling story, and it gives the confidence the advisor to provide a better recommendation, but ultimately gives the confidence to the employer to make a more informed decision.
09:57: Matt explains how they developed the bar score, and it stands for benefits, action, retention, and it's like a credit score.
10:34: How that benefit plan stacks up overall, that is the first deliverable that Matt really focuses on with the advisor as well as the employer, is to answer that basic question. How is their plan stacked up? Are they in the bottom 50%? Are they in the top 10%, where are they?
14:15: With Covid, Matt has seen the geographical boundaries breakdown and even if you offer hybrid work, remote work, people are not drawing on labor from within driving distance of their office anymore, says Matt.
15:00: Matt explains how they have got a great benefits plan. They made sure that it's competitive within market and that kind of dissuades employees from looking, checking if the grass is greener on the other side type mentality.
16:42: Being more competitive, when we dig into the actual benchmarking, we typically organize it by benefits included versus not included on our intro report, says Matt.
17.14: Matt talks about the type is benchmark that they do. There are basically 2 types, he says.
18:14: There are employers that have like the lowest level of coverage possible on the left-hand Side and there might be employers on the right-hand side that have the highest level of coverage, the middle 50% range is what most people care about, says Matt.
19:41: Matt talks about the database that they have built and how they segregate problems and solutions.
21:18: Advisors have their preferred solutions. They have exclusive rates and all of that can be customized on that evaluation so that the employer gets excellent bottom line.
22:30: Matt says that they recognize that business owners are busy, and they have got businesses to run, and insurance is only a small component of that needs to be done efficiently and effectively and conveniently.
3 Key Points:
Matt talks about the big determinants, basically how benefits programs get structured in terms of, different industries or different careers, different development stages, what are the big factors implemented that should be impacting, and how a plan is designed.
Cloud Advisor has been in the marketplace coming up eight years and when they first developed the database, they had a very limited amount of data in it to perform the benchmark. Matt shares how they achieved about 15,000 employee benefit plans.
Matt talks about the client output and how they visualize the actual results.
Tweetable Quotes:
"We show them how their current programs stack up by industry, region group size as well as how they can improve their program." - Matt
"When I started in the industry, my dad had spent most of his career working for a public crown corporation with the incredibly robust union." - Matt
"We will connect not just with the vendor and the vendors; information will actually perform an instant quote and an instant proposal so that the employer has everything they need to." - Matt
Resources Mentioned: