Should you go with a broker for group health insurance?

It is often said that when you want to attract the best talent on the market you can’t offer them just money. While money is certainly a major motivator when it comes to moving positions, there are other motivators including soft benefits that drive many to move jobs. One of the increasingly demanded ‘soft benefits’ is the offering of health insurance to employees. Let’s face it, the cost of care is not exactly cheap in the city especially if you go to private clinics or hospitals, and having a group health insurance plan in Hong Kong will be greatly appreciated by your employees.

Beyond that, it is widely known that offering health insurance plans to employees can help reduce employee absenteeism and lowered productivity due to being sick. Many companies know this and do in fact offer some form of health insurance to their employees. Other companies are starting to realize this and are looking to introduce a plan for their employees. The question is, what are your options when looking for a new plan for your employees?

How do companies find health insurance?

Historically speaking, there are two ways companies have employed when looking for health insurance for their employees:

1. Look for it themselves – This first option is pretty self-explanatory: You or someone in your company spends the time researching group insurers online and via other sources, then reaches out to the insurer to learn more about policies and ultimately decides on an insurer that they believe will be the best.  
2. Work with a broker – This option is also pretty self-explanatory: You talk with a broker who works with you to identify, secure, and manage your health insurance.

While both options will inevitably result in the same conclusion: With your employees covered, this is really just the beginning of the process. Next comes educating your employees on the plan, managing claims, ensuring that the plan is being used by your employees properly, and ultimately deciding whether to renew or find another plan close to the end of your contract.

Many business owners, managers, and HR teams find this to be a time-consuming process especially when they do it themselves. It can be made even worse when you change plans each year or need to work with insurers to minimize premium increases. This is where an insurance broker like Pacific Prime Hong Kong can help.

What benefits do health insurance brokers offer?

There are many benefits to working with a health insurance broker like Pacific Prime Hong Kong, especially if you are part of a business who is looking to secure health insurance for your employees. The top five include:

1. Brokers are impartial – The best insurance brokers in the business strive to offer impartial service meaning that there is no preference given to specific insurers, instead all plans are considered equal and selected based on their relevance to your needs.  
2. Brokers offer plans from a variety of insurers – Brokers will offer plans from a variety of insurers which means that there is a larger number of plans to select from.
3. Brokers can help you find the best price – Brokers who work with a variety of insurers are often able to help you negotiate better rates for your group plan.
4. Brokers offer extended services – What we mean by this is that many brokers will offer services that go beyond simply helping you to find the best insurance for your employees. Pacific Prime, for example, creates member portals which contain plan information and documents for all employees, assigns a management team to each company to help ensure the plan is working, and even conducts educational seminars on the plan to ensure that your employees are aware of what is and isn’t covered.
5. Brokers can help manage your plan – Beyond offering extended services, brokers can also help ensure that your plan is managed effectively. This means that claims submitted are reviewed and paid back promptly, and when it comes time to renew, the process of searching for a new plan (if recommended) is taken care of.

In short, a good broker will help ensure that you select not only the best insurance coverage for your employees but will also work to help manage the plan ensuring your company gets the most value out of it.

Should I go with Pacific Prime for my group’s health insurance?

Pacific Prime Hong Kong strives to offer all of the above-listed benefits and more, and as such we are pleased to announce that we have recently been recognized by our peers and partners. For example, we were recently named a finalist in Best Corporate Insurance Provider category of the HR Vendors of the Year awards, put on by Human Resources.

It is honors like these that highlight the service Pacific Prime offers to businesses. If you would like to learn more about how Pacific Prime Hong Kong can help your company find a health insurance solution, contact us today.  

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Jess Lindeman

Content Strategist at Pacific Prime Hong Kong

Jessica Lindeman is a Content Strategist at Pacific Prime. She comes to work every day living and breathing the motto of "simplifying insurance", and injects her unbridled enthusiasm for health and insurance related topics into every article and piece of content she creates for Pacific Prime.

When she's not typing away on her keyboard, she's reading poetry, fueling her insatiable wanderlust, getting her coffee fix, and perpetually browsing animal Instagram accounts.

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