Carrier Agnostic MEANS Carrier Agnostic – or Does It?
Agnostic. It’s a term that gets thrown around by parties on both sides of the fence.
Carriers say they are platform agnostic and platforms say they are carrier agnostic. In light of the announcements from yesterday it seems that “Carrier Agnostic” is becoming more important than ever before…this time for carriers. The more benefit administration platforms align directly with one carrier, the fewer independent options exist in the marketplace. As a carrier I would start to wonder, “How do we know if we are being portrayed in the best light with our clients and prospects? Will the carrier try to take over our lines of coverage? Is their decision support tool set-up to drive business to the ‘owner’ verses the other carriers on the exchange? Do we want them to have access to all our product details? Will the platform continue to support connection options with other carriers now that it’s owned by one? What about continued technology innovation and how that helps my customers?”
This will be interesting to watch from many different perspectives. Congrats to bswift – obviously a big decision by all parties involved and a great outcome for the company and its shareholders. We hope it works better for them than it has for others that have been purchased in our industry.
At Businessolver, as a privately held and financially independent company, we are able to respond with greater speed and agility to carrier requests and client needs. We don’t have to go through layers of red tape to get things done. When you become part of a bigger company you are going to lose some of that independence, it just happens. Businessolver is a technology-driven company committed to the reinvestment in R&D that is critical to supporting a variety of insurance carriers/products and our clients for the long-term. It isn’t a nice to have, it’s our business.
Do you want to bring more empathy into your benefits? Check out our 2018 State of Workplace Empathy E-book below.
