by Blake Fussell
The answer to nearly any question can now be found through a Google search. The same advancements in technology and data access have made stop-loss insurance, including how it is obtained, much simpler and cost-effective to protect businesses from catastrophic events.
Stop-loss insurance, also known as excess insurance, has protected employers that self-fund employee benefit plans since its inception. Without it, a catastrophic event experienced by one employee could cause a significant financial loss for the entire business.
“Let’s say one of the employees has a child born through a neonatal birth and that child has complications for six months. That bill could be multiple millions of dollars,” said Leo Garneau of Ringmaster Technologies. “That could literally bankrupt that company. To avoid that situation, the company buys stop-loss.”
Automation is key.
Traditionally, the process of finding stop-loss insurance has been a tedious, manual process. But because of advancements in technology and data access, like the cloud-based products offered by Ringmaster Technologies, the process has been automated to provide more-specific lasers, which in turn has created better savings for employers.
Ringmaster has connected administrators with brokers and carriers, which has eliminated the need to manually solicit bids for stop-loss insurance. With Ringmaster services, data gets collected through the cloud-based system, with no need for manual entry.
“It gives the carrier an opportunity to market their services to a wider audience than they had before,” Garneau said. “It’s all automated now, which is a huge cost savings for the administrator, broker and the carrier. They all enjoy the same efficiencies.”
Technology feeds data.
Garneau said multiple entities have shared how this technology has provided the ability to make wiser decisions while offering more efficiency. Instead of manually entering reports and outsourcing data, brokers have enjoyed the automated, detailed process of Ringmaster.
The data provided by the Ringmaster system has also created more detailed and affordable premiums, as more-appropriate lasers can be applied to a policy. Since the system can find trends or specific risks within an employee group, lasers can be added so the entire group does not take the hit from that specific risk.
“The types of reports the system creates is significant because before, they all had to be entered manually,” Garneau said. “If a carrier was going to a broker client and give them a quarterly report, they’d have to create all the spreadsheets, PowerPoints and so on. With Ringmaster, an entire presentation can be printed off based on the database.”
Ringmaster has created three solutions to make the stop-loss insurance process smarter, easier and more-affordable; Smart-LinQ, an administration tool, Quote-LinQ, a quoting tool, and Ringmaster Rx, a pharmacy consulting platform.
Efficiency feeds information.
With the revolutionary efficiencies of Ringmaster systems, the traditional process of stop-loss insurance bidding could become less popular due to the manual labor and costs of data collection. Just as the internet has replaced formerly-relied-upon communication options, cloud-based bidding and administration could have the same effect on the stop-loss insurance industry.
“Think of Ringmaster as a pipe. It connects stakeholders on the employer’s side with the carriers. Ringmaster is agnostic in the connection,” Garneau said. “We don’t care who the policies go to, that’s up to the stakeholders. We just provide the system.”
More information on Ringmaster products can be found online at www.ringmastertech.com. You can also see reviews and marketing content for Ringmaster by searching them on The Granite List at www.thegranitelist.com