BIP Summer 2024

Professional Development

The magic of client-centric insurance

regularly to evaluate and make decisions related to its plan. The majority of plans I work with do not, making them substantially more vulnerable to legal attack. Plan sponsors cannot transfer their responsibility as fiduciaries to outsiders — whether advisors, TPAs, or other solution providers. The responsibility is theirs alone. Thus, to meet those obligations, plan sponsors should consider creating a fiduciary committee to make critical decisions on behalf of the plan participants. This committee should operate under a formal corporate charter and meet regularly. Those meetings should be well documented so that if the decision-making process is ever questioned, the plan sponsor can defend it. A document repository should also be created. This ensures easy organization of plan documents, committee charters, committee meeting schedules, compliance calendars, proposed agenda items, and executive meeting summaries and transcriptions. One final and important point: Fiduciary duty applies to all plan sponsors, regardless of the plan’s size or funding status. While a small, fully insured plan’s only fiduciary decision might be selecting a fully insured carrier, the sponsor of a sizeable self funded plan might make hun dreds of large and small decisions in a given year. Either way, it is time for plans and their fiducia ries to leave the blind spot. Jennifer Spiegel Berman, JD, MBA, is a leading employee benefits attorney and compli ance consultant and CEO and co-founder of MZQ Consulting, LLC, a benefits compliance and ACA reporting firm.

When Erin Issac opened her agency about 18 months ago, the president of Joy Benefits in Frisco, Texas, was prepared to wear many hats — owner, salesperson, janitor. But what really invigorated her was the freedom of owning her own business, which allowed her to innovate like never before. During a recent BenefitsPro Broker Expo panel, she asked, “If you don’t have a sales goal and are not considering your commission, what would you do for your client if money didn’t matter?” “There are things I put in place that don’t make me money because it’s about the bigger picture of taking care of clients, building the relationship, doing something that matters to them at that moment, and the rest of it will come,” Issac said. Decades of focusing on the bigger picture has played a part in long-term client loyalty for Issac’s fellow co-panelist Nancy Giacolone, president of Olympic Crest Insurance in Gig Harbor, Washington. She’s had some clients for 35 years through two separate agencies and multiple generations. Key to maintaining those relationships is creating value that is not product-based and meeting each unique need as clients evolve. “I have worked with grandparents, parents, kids, and it’s because I didn’t treat the next generation the same way,” she said. “I listen to them and focus on their needs, priorities, and concerns. I don’t cling to what worked in the past for prior leadership.”

Nancy Giacolone,

left, and Erin Issac, center, with fellow co-panelists at their BenefitsPro Broker Expo session, Iron Sharpens Iron, where the group of experienced brokers shared tricks of the trade.

TIP: Plan sponsors cannot transfer their responsibility as fiduciaries to outsiders. The responsibility is theirs alone.

16 bip magazine Summer 2024