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Topic: Enrollment

Namely Selects Ideon to Streamline Digital Employee Benefits Enrollment

Posted on by Ideon

Ideon’s APIs enhance Namely’s best-in-class enrollment experience through real-time connectivity with health insurers and ancillary benefits carriers

Ideon, the API platform powering digital experiences in health insurance and employee benefits, announced today that Namely, the leading HR software for mid-sized businesses, has integrated with Ideon’s API. The integration enables Namely to deliver a faster, more efficient benefits administration experience to its clients, across a broad spectrum of insurers.

In order to provide employees with modern features and a smooth enrollment journey, two-way data exchange with insurance carriers is a necessity for HR and benefits platforms. Building individual point-to-point integrations with hundreds of carriers is cost-prohibitive, resource-intensive, and, ultimately, unsustainable. With Ideon, Namely gains a seamless and scalable means to connect and exchange data with multiple insurers.

“The needs of our customers are at the core of everything we do at Namely,” said Namely CEO Larry Dunivan. “Our solution was designed to easily construct APIs that expand its functionality to ensure our clients have access to high quality data, real-time connectivity, and the latest employee engagement technologies. We’re excited to partner with Ideon, a leading platform provider that shares our vision of advancing the user experience and making worktech easier.”

HR and benefits platforms leverage Ideon’s APIs to enable multi-carrier functionality throughout the user journey, including plan quoting and decision support, group setup and member enrollment, member management, and renewals. Once a platform integrates with Ideon, it gains scalable connectivity to a comprehensive network of insurance carriers, including Kaiser Permanente, Beam, Aetna, Anthem, Blue Shield of California, Cigna, Guardian, Humana, MetLife, and Principal.

Namely serves as a single system of record for mid-market companies, a segment employing more than 50 million workers in the U.S. Namely integrates payroll, benefits, talent management, and other key business functions in a modern, intuitive platform that employees and employers love to use.

“The addition of Namely to the Ideon platform further affirms that industry-leading benefits administration software companies view our fast, seamless connections with insurance carriers as paramount to delivering a better digital enrollment experience,” said Michael W. Levin, Ideon’s co-founder and CEO.

About Ideon

Ideon is the way health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers connect with technology partners to deliver seamless consumer experiences at every stage of the member journey. Ideon is not the websites or apps one uses to choose a plan or find a doctor. It is the infrastructure, the ‘pipes,’ that simplify the complex exchange of quoting, enrollment, and eligibility data between carriers and the technology partners so that they can, in turn, deliver health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans everyday. Ideon’s APIs transmit billions of data points between InsurTechs and insurance carriers, powering an amazing benefits experience for all. Faster. Better. Awesomely. To learn more, please visit: www.ideonapi.com. 

About Namely

Combining intuitive HR technology and best-in-class service, Namely empowers mid-size companies to build better workplaces. Simplifying the complexities of recruiting, onboarding, time & attendance, performance management, benefits administration, compliance, payroll, and HR analytics, Namely offers an integrated platform that saves companies time and improves their employees’ experiences. Distinguished by a dedicated support model and enhanced service offerings, Namely delivers an all-in-one HR solution for today’s people teams. Learn more at Namely.com and follow us @NamelyHR.

Asked & Answered: What group benefits carriers should know about LDEx

Posted on by Ideon

If you’re in the group benefits industry, you’ve probably heard the term LDEx, i.e., LIMRA Data Exchange Standards. Whether you’re actively adapting your systems to accept LDEx-formatted enrollment data or have only seen the term in passing, there’s a lot happening around this opportunity and, of course, a lot for carriers to consider.

LDEx won’t immediately solve all of our industry’s data exchange challenges, but it’s a step in the right direction. MetLife, Guardian, Sun Life, Aflac, and other industry leaders are members of the LIMRA committee tasked with developing the LDEx, reflecting its transformative potential. Some carriers, however, have a myriad of questions. 

Ideon, also a committee member, created this primer to answer basic questions about the standards and offer suggestions for leveraging them with minimal effort and expense.

What is LDEx?

The LIMRA Data Exchange (LDEx) Standards® are a set of rules—for terminology, formatting, content, and delivery—that facilitate digital communication between benefits administration (BenAdmin) platforms and insurance carriers. They are meant to replace various ad-hoc formats, such as EDI 834, for transmitting data about employee enrollment and eligibility in group benefit plans.

What are the benefits of LDEx for carriers?

If implemented broadly, LDEx will substantially reduce the complexity and expense of receiving enrollment information from BenAdmin platforms. Without LDEx, carriers typically spend weeks to months setting up and testing variations of EDI connections for each new group they enroll. If the industry uses LDEx, there will be greater consistency and accuracy throughout the integration and testing process, reducing the resources carriers must allocate to adding and managing groups.

As industry adoption increases, carriers will be able to connect more easily to benefits platforms and other insurance technology providers, dramatically improving the user experience for members who want to manage their eligibility through those platforms. 

Ultimately, brokers, HR teams, and members will find that enrolling and modifying group benefits will be faster and more accurate. In today’s competitive environment, this is a business imperative for insurance carriers. Increasingly, brokers and BenAdmin platforms are steering their group clients to insurance carriers that make the enrollment experience as easy and automated as possible, across the software they use today.

Who created LDEx?

LDEx is sponsored by LIMRA, a non-profit consulting group and trade association that works primarily with the life insurance industry. The standards were developed by a steering committee composed of 40 executives from group benefits carriers and insurance technology companies. 

What capabilities does LDEx provide?

The initial standards, released in January 2020, covered a wide range of benefits, including dental, vision, disability, critical illness, and life products. More recently, it has been expanded to include medical plans, flexible spending and health reimbursement accounts, paid family leave, and employee assistance programs.

The LDEx standard covers information about benefit enrollment, eligibility, and member changes. It also allows carriers to communicate data issues and coverage confirmations back to the BenAdmin provider.

The standards are designed to communicate transactions using structured XML files, a flat file format that’s common in the insurance industry. There are also near-term plans for LDEx to support REST APIs, which would allow for faster processing and better, automated error checking.

LIMRA is working on additional standards to support electronic communication of benefit plan designs and quotes.

What must carriers do to use LDEx?

The standards can be downloaded for free from LIMRA. Carriers must modify their existing enrollment systems to accept data in the new formats—or they can use separate data transformation software to convert each LDEx file they receive into the format their system uses. 

How can carriers ease the burden of adopting LDEx?

Although LDEx will ultimately save time and money for carriers, adopting the standards can add development expenses for carriers already spreading limited technology resources across many priorities. Some carriers, however, are finding ways to adopt LDEx without devoting resources to development.

Ideon’s middleware solution enables carriers to accept LDEx files from numerous BenAdmins, with minimal development effort and capital costs, and no need to modify their current system and format. It’s not just a quick fix—it’s a long-term strategic move to enhance your connectivity with BenAdmins and set yourself up for scalability and adaptability in the future. Ideon radically reduces the time and effort needed to set up and administer group benefits, while delivering faster and more accurate information for employers and members. Reach out to us for more information.

Asked & Answered: What benefits administration platforms should know about LDEx

Posted on by Ideon

If you work for an HR or benefits administration (BenAdmin) platform, you might have heard the term LDEx, i.e., LIMRA Data Exchange Standards. Whether you’re actively adapting your systems to transmit LDEx-formatted enrollment data or have only seen the term in passing, there’s a lot happening around this opportunity and, of course, a lot for you to consider.

LDEx won’t immediately solve all of our industry’s data exchange challenges, but it’s a step in the right direction. ADP, Benefitfocus, benefitexpress, Businessolver, PlanSource, Selerix, Paycom, and other industry leaders are members of the LIMRA committee tasked with developing the LDEx, reflecting its transformative potential. Some BenAdmins, however, have a myriad of questions. 

Ideon, also a committee member, created this primer to answer basic questions about the standards and offer suggestions for leveraging them with minimal effort and expense.

What is LDEx?

The LIMRA Data Exchange (LDEx) Standards® are a set of rules—for terminology, formatting, content, and delivery—that facilitate digital communication between BenAdmin platforms and group benefits carriers. They are meant to replace various ad-hoc formats, such as EDI 834, for transmitting data about employee enrollment and eligibility in group benefit plans.

What are the advantages of LDEx for HR and benefits platforms?

If implemented broadly, LDEx will substantially reduce the complexity and expense of integrating with carrier systems and sending enrollment data in carrier-specific formats.

As BenAdmins know all too well, the lack of consistency has, traditionally, caused significant operational challenges and group-onboarding delays. BenAdmins typically spend weeks to months setting up and testing carrier connections. But if both carrier and BenAdmin platform use LDEx, there will be greater uniformity and accuracy throughout the integration and testing process, reducing the resources BenAdmins must allocate to adding and managing groups.

As industry adoption increases, BenAdmins will be able to connect and transmit data to carriers more efficiently. Ultimately, brokers, HR teams, and members will find that enrolling and modifying group benefits will be faster and more accurate if their BenAdmin uses LDEx. In today’s hyper-competitive environment, this is a business imperative: BenAdmins need to make the enrollment experience as easy and automated as possible, across as many insurance carriers and product lines as possible.

Who created LDEx?

LDEx is sponsored by LIMRA, a non-profit consulting group and trade association that works primarily with the life insurance industry. The standards were developed by a steering committee composed of 40 executives from group benefits carriers and BenAdmin platforms.

What capabilities does LDEx provide?

The initial standards, released in January 2020, covered a wide range of benefits, including dental, vision, disability, critical illness, and life products. More recently, it has been expanded to include medical plans, flexible spending and health reimbursement accounts, paid family leave, and employee assistance programs.

The LDEx standard is carrier-agnostic and covers information about benefits elections, coverage changes, terminations, non-coverage demographic changes, and eligibility management. It also allows carriers to communicate data issues and coverage confirmations back to the BenAdmin provider.

The standards are designed to communicate transactions using structured XML files, a flat file format that’s common in the insurance industry. There are also near-term plans for LDEx to support for REST APIs, which allow for faster processing and better, automated error checking.

LIMRA is working on extensions to support electronic communication of benefit plan designs and quotes.

What must benefits platforms do to use LDEx?

The standards can be downloaded for free from LIMRA. In general, BenAdmins can implement them the same way they would configure their systems for any other data exchange format.

It remains to be seen how much consistency there will be among carriers adopting the LDEx standard. One cautionary tale: EDI 834. This standard remains the status quo format for most medical plans, but over time carriers have developed their own variations, so BenAdmins have had to modify and test their data formats for each dialect of the standard. 

Will carriers do the same with LDEx? Time will tell. In the meantime, there are tactics BenAdmins can implement to leverage LDEx to the fullest extent possible while leaving room to adapt if necessary.

How can benefits platforms ease the burden of adopting LDEx?

Although LDEx will ultimately save time and money for BenAdmin platforms while enabling a smoother user experience, some remain hesitant. After all, wouldn’t adopting the standard require devoting significant resources to development and testing the format—while still building and maintaining the carrier connections?

Not quite.

Ideon’s middleware solution enables benefits administration platforms to send LDEx-formatted data to any carrier, regardless of whether the carrier is set up for LDEx. Ideon handles the translation into LDEx or whatever format is best for the carrier. It’s not just a quick fix—it’s a long-term strategic move to enhance your carrier connectivity and set yourself up for scalability and adaptability in the future. Ideon radically reduces the time and effort needed to set up and administer group benefits, while delivering faster and more accurate information for employers and members.

For more information, please reach out to us here or send us an email at sales@ideonapi.com

GoCo Selects Vericred to Bring Groundbreaking Automation to Small Group Benefits Enrollment

Posted on by Ideon
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
 
Vericred’s enrollment and member management API enables GoCo to reduce new employer group setup time from weeks to days while automating key functions for benefits administrators and HR teams

November 16, 2021 – Vericred, the API platform powering digital quote-to-card experiences in health insurance and benefits, today announced that GoCo, a leading provider of flexible software solutions for HR, benefits, and payroll, has selected Vericred’s enrollment and member management API to dramatically simplify and speed up small group benefits setup, enrollment, and administration. With the API integration, GoCo can now activate new groups for their employer customers substantially faster—within days instead of weeks—without manually forging individual connections between its platform and carriers to facilitate data exchange. 

Simplifying Benefits Administration  

GoCo is an all-in-one HR platform that streamlines time-consuming HR tasks, including benefits administration. With the integration of Vericred’s API, GoCo is, for the first time, automating previously manual employee benefits enrollment tasks for its small business customers. The move will save employers and brokers time and resources as they add or update benefits for employees. 

“Vericred’s enrollment and member management API has helped us unlock an unprecedented level of small group benefits automation previously available only to medium and large employers,” said Nir Leibovich, CEO of GoCo. “As a result, we’ve freed up internal resources, and made the enrollment process faster, easier, and better for employers, employees, and brokers. That is a huge competitive advantage for us during open enrollment periods and beyond.”

Connectivity for Seamless Data Exchange 

Vericred’s API enables GoCo’s platform to seamlessly connect to Vericred’s network of health insurance and employee benefits carriers, making the exchange of quoting, enrollment, and eligibility data between health insurance carriers, brokers, and GoCo instant. As a result, employee data is now automatically transferred to the carrier, removing manual data entry steps for the benefits administrator, and speeding up the path to enrollment for both the employee and employer. Additionally, any errors in the data are corrected before they even reach the carrier. 

“We are thrilled to be GoCo’s partner in blazing a new trail for the small group benefits industry and demonstrating the power that instant carrier connectivity can unleash,” said Michael W. Levin, CEO and co-founder of Vericred. “The GoCo platform is truly maximizing its integration with Vericred’s enrollment and member management API to deliver tangible value to its users.”

Vericred Powers Benefit Sync Dashboard  

GoCo’s Benefit Sync Dashboard puts the power into the hands of the HR and benefits administrators, giving them the tools to craft and automate their preferred workflows. By integrating with Vericred’s API, GoCo’s dashboard now provides users with end-to-end visibility into the entire enrollment transaction, including each stage of the transaction when it’s with the carrier.

About Vericred

Vericred is the way health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers connect with new technology partners to deliver seamless quote-to-card consumer experiences. We are not the websites or apps you use to choose a plan or find a doctor. We are the infrastructure. We are the ‘pipes’ that simplify the complex exchange of quoting, enrollment and eligibility data between carriers and the technology partners responsible for delivering health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans everyday. Our APIs transmit billions of data points between InsurTech and insurance carriers, powering digital distribution across the insurance industry. Come join the community of insurance geeks creating a seamless digital quote-to-card experience. Visit www.vericred.com.

About GoCo

GoCo.io is modern HR, benefits, and payroll, built with flexibility and ease of use in mind. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, GoCo’s mission is to automate manual HR tasks and empower HR to make work a better place.

Unlike other HRIS platforms, GoCo is built to be flexible enough to support existing processes, policies, and providers, so that SMBs don’t have to change the way they work just to adopt a modern HR system. For more information, visit www.goco.io.

Ahead of Open Enrollment, Decisely Selects Vericred to Power Fast, Scalable Digital Enrollment and Member Management

Posted on by Ideon

**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**

A long-time Vericred customer, Decisely completes integration with Vericred’s enrollment and member management API; gains critical connections to health insurance and employee benefits carriers for faster group activation

NEW YORK—November 02, 2021—Vericred, the API platform powering digital quote-to-card experiences in health insurance and benefits, today announced that HR and employee benefits platform Decisely has selected Vericred’s enrollment and member management API for a better, faster and more accurate digital enrollment experience. Decisely made the selection ahead of the busy 2021 fall open enrollment season to help it manage a dramatically increased volume of customer transactions in a short timeframe.

Decisely offers a suite of services for small and medium-sized businesses to manage critical HR functions, including employee benefits administration. By integrating Vericred’s API into its platform, Decisely gains instant connections to Vericred’s network of health insurance and employee benefits carriers for easy data exchange. This enables Decisely to quickly add new employer groups to its platform and complete the necessary transactions, from plan quoting to card delivery, in a matter of weeks. As a result, employers can provide a faster and more seamless benefits enrollment experience to their employees.

“Decisely has been a Vericred group rating API user for the past five years. Vericred has demonstrated the ability to manage large data sets consistently and reliably over time. This track record gives us confidence in their ability to manage enrollment transactions via their API as well,” said Richard Mann, COO of Decisely. “Decisely has experienced high double-digit growth for the past two years. Vericred will allow us to continue to scale and keep costs down.”

Reliable, two-way data exchange with multiple carriers is a technical necessity for HR and benefits platforms. However, building individual point-to-point integrations with a multitude of insurers is resource-intensive and cost-prohibitive. HR and benefits platforms like Decisely that integrate with Vericred’s APIs gain one-to-many carrier connectivity, making it faster to activate benefits for new employer groups than if they had forged individual connections with in-house resources.

“We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Decisely, and play a key role in their business as they grow and scale,” said Michael W. Levin, CEO and co-founder of Vericred. “By leveraging Vericred’s APIs, Decisely is making it easier and more cost effective to deliver the best possible experience to their own customers during open enrollment and throughout the year.”

About Vericred

Vericred is the way health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers connect with new technology partners to deliver seamless quote-to-card consumer experiences. We are not the websites or apps you use to choose a plan or find a doctor. We are the infrastructure. We are the ‘pipes’ that simplify the complex exchange of quoting, enrollment, and eligibility data between carriers and the technology partners responsible for delivering health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans everyday. Our APIs transmit billions of data points between InsurTech and insurance carriers, powering digital distribution across the insurance industry. Come join the community of insurance geeks creating a seamless digital quote-to-card experience. Visit www.vericred.com.

About Decisely

Decisely is an integrated technology solution to manage all your HR needs from recruitment to retirement, and everything in between. With over 150 years of combined experience, the leadership team has grown Decisely from a simple brokerage firm to a diverse team of licensed industry experts and technical support. The Decisely family is focused on providing the best benefits, HR, and compliance management service on the market. Learn more at www.decisely.com.

Seven ways benefit administration platforms can provide year-round value

Posted on by Zach Wallens

Most benefits administration (BenAdmin) platforms only have genuine access to employees during open enrollment. This small window of engagement is frustrating to BenAdmin leaders, but it need not be. That’s because they already have the building blocks necessary for creating year-round member interactions: existing relationships with employers and information about their employees. 

By smartly leveraging those relationships and that data, BenAdmin platforms can become a 24/7/365 gateway to the myriad of providers of health, retirement, and other programs an employer offers. Not only will that enhance the value BenAdmins deliver to employers, it will further differentiate them from their competition as well. 

Here is just a sampling of the enhanced services that can turn BenAdmin platforms into year-round destinations:

Centralized Portals for single point of access to HSA, FSA, HRA, 401k and other accounts. With these, employees can log onto a BenAdmin site or app and access to all of their health plans, retirement, and flexible spending information. 

Accumulators. A single up-to-date view of the important running totals from all member’s benefit plans, such as deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums, and flexible spending account (FSA) balances.

Provider Search. One interface to find any sort of provider. Since the BenAdmin knows the plans in which each employee is enrolled, it can limit the display of providers to those that are in-network.

Cost Estimator. A tool that enables a member to enter a procedure or drug and see their out-of-pocket cost under their plan. This tool could also let members compare their effective costs at different hospitals, using the price transparency disclosures that the federal government has mandated. 

Benefits Marketplace. A year-round array of voluntary benefits, programs and offers available through the employer such as gym memberships, pet insurance, identity protection, and student loan assistance. The most relevant offers can be surfaced when members get married, have children or experience other qualifying life events.

Healthcare Concierge. Many BenAdmin providers offer sophisticated decision support to help members select plans. This assistance can be extended year-round in regards to selecting providers, lowering costs, and even booking appointments. Concierge services can be offered via human support, automated bots, or in combination.

Wellness Programs.  There are myriad ways to offer members the information, support, and encouragement to make healthier choices about eating, exercising, stopping smoking, managing chronic conditions, and dealing with mental health. These can deploy tools including self-assessments, coaching, gamification, rewards, and integration with mobile devices. 

Concierge and wellness programs can involve significant investments in content and support staff. BenAdmin providers, accordingly, may look to partners for these services rather than building them in-house. But all the other services on this list are essentially extensions of the capabilities that BenAdmins already have—connecting data from benefit providers, employers, and employees. Still, by using this information to offer convenience, utility, and insights, BenAdmin providers can engage members and prove value to employers 12 months of the year.