Billing for voluntary benefits is all too often wrought with complication. As voluntary benefits brokers know all too well, a process that should be simple often becomes a headache for clients and brokers.
At Wellfleet Workplace, we’ve committed to making billing simpler. And the data proves our success — a 98-99% average monthly accuracy and timeliness rate for our client invoices.
In this blog, we’ll explore the reality of workplace benefits billing and show you how Wellfleet Workplace is taking steps to improve the billing process for brokers and clients.
The current state of billing across the industry
From the time the client/carrier relationship begins, many carriers struggle to meet the client’s billing needs. That’s because they take the approach of telling clients how they’ll be billed — rather than asking clients how they want to be billed.
When the billing process isn’t optimized and modern, clients feel the effects, doomed to spend their time fixing mistakes that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Billing can bring challenges, generally taking the form of untimely invoices or invoices with mistakes and outdated information. Offering a variety of choices that fit different unique needs is key to a proactive approach.
Events like marriage, having a baby, and staff changes trickle down to affect employees’ voluntary benefits. Unfortunately, when these changes aren’t processed through the carrier’s system promptly, downstream invoicing mistakes abound.
After a few months of manually reconciling invoices line by painstaking line to ensure the carrier is paid the correct amount, clients (and thus brokers) can get more than mildly frustrated.
There must be a better way to bill that’s simple, accurate, and timely.
That’s why we made it our mission at Wellfleet to improve the billing experience.
Our billing priorities
Now that we’ve considered the problems we see with workplace benefits billing, let’s dive into what we focus on when assessing the billing experience for our clients and partners. What are our top priorities?
First, we want our clients to experience a smooth billing process with minimal inconvenience. Employers are busy enough, and adding billing frustration to that is something we want to avoid.
So, what makes billing more convenient? Accuracy and timeliness are key, so we built digital processes to transfer data once we receive it. That’s because we don’t want our partners to experience delays in their process. Additionally, we keep bills easy to understand, and we identify the billing process that will be compatible with their internal processes.
Because brokers value their time and the satisfaction of their clients, we work to simplify and improve the billing process for clients so brokers can reap the rewards of happier clients.
Additionally, our commitment to timeliness has upstream and downstream effects, and we ensure prompt, reliable communication with brokers.
What are the five biggest workplace benefits carrier misconceptions? For one, brokers are not happy with many carriers’ technology. Learn more by reading the results of our broker survey.
Flexibility to choose the billing option that’s right for you
At Wellfleet, we provide flexible billing options for our customers. We meet you where you are; rather than the other way around.
“While some carriers tell you how they’ll bill you, we let you tell us what’s best for your organization,” said April Kelly, Head of Workplace Administration & Operations Strategy at Wellfleet.
We offer three base billing options, collaborating with clients to determine the right solution for their team.
For example, some clients may want to pay as deducted, while others may want a traditional itemized invoice, and others may want to do self-administration. We can set up any of these with our workplace benefits products.
To add even more personalization, clients can choose the frequency of payments, and they can even opt for autopay options if desired.
How technology advances our billing process
Wellfleet Workplace’s commitment to a better billing process is not merely an attitude. It’s backed by our results, which indicate that we consistently perform with a 98-99% average monthly accuracy and timeliness rate. That means we send our invoices on time and without any mistakes nearly every time.
At Wellfleet, we do things right the first time.
You may be wondering, what makes Wellfleet perform so well month after month, year after year?
We’re able to deliver on our clients’ expectations for several reasons — the most significant of which is our superior technology system.
Our single system moves data quickly and without errors, and our internal application programming interfaces (APIs) make our processes faster and more reliable.
For example, when clients notify us of changes in their personnel or benefits elections, we can process those changes in minutes. Whether they send the data via APIs or other methods of electronic data exchange, we can turn around files in any format very quickly. Our modern technology makes billing more efficient and accurate because changes are reflected quickly, which translates to a high percentage of correct invoices.
Our technology takes the questioning out of clients’ hands. They can trust that their invoices are correct because of the process we use. This means less time spent reconciling bills and more time spent on what really matters.
Curious about the power of APIs and how Wellfleet is improving the workplace benefits experience through APIs? Learn more in our whitepaper.
Learn more about Wellfleet Workplace
Wellfleet Workplace offers modern workplace benefits that are technology-forward, easy to use, and trustworthy. Whether clients need accident insurance, critical illness insurance, short term disability insurance, or hospital indemnity insurance, we have a solution.
Reach out to our team to learn more about creating a benefits solution that’s simple and tailored to each client’s needs.
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