SPECIAL EDITION: Elite Partners Series – featuring The Hartford
We are very proud of our Elite Partnerships with Carriers and Vendors that incorporate technology into all they do. This series features each of our Elite Partners, who offer savings and efficiencies for your technology and communication needs.
This week’s featured partner is The Hartford. Our series hosts, Therese Tomasek & Holli Brummett, sat down with Jamie Shuford to discuss The Hartford’s tech know-how, company developments, and market wins.
BTR:
What is The Hartford’s Claim to fame?
The Hartford:
The Hartford is a leader in property and casualty insurance, group benefits, and mutual funds. We have over 200 years’ experience helping clients manage their financial risk. What sets us apart is our people, our process, and our technology. We focus on providing superior service to HR and benefits professionals by offering a dedicated team to support data connectivity technologies.
BTR:
How is The Hartford using technology to lead the market with their offerings?
The Hartford:
We continue to expand and invest in our integrations and partnerships with technology providers in the market. Our #1 goal is to deliver an enhanced administrator experience and a smooth enrollment experience for employees. The Hartford has flexibility to connect with just about any vendor in the market and is continually formalizing partnerships with key technology leaders. When our clients choose one of our technology partners, they get a streamlined implementation, a dedicated service team, and a clear path for service issue escalations – not to mention, a system that is optimized for the employee’s enrollment experience.
BTR:
Tell us about your roadmap – is The Hartford expanding integration opportunities?
The Hartford:
Yes! We believe there is always opportunity to expand integrations. We also believe that education about the types of integration is important too. The Hartford recognizes that integrations are not “one-size-fits-all” so we leverage a mixture of EDI, API, and reverse files to facilitate a real time data exchange.
Regarding our roadmap, The Hartford is adopting LIMRA standard APIs. We currently have APIs built with a number of partners that are ready and working wonderfully. We are also building point-to-point solutions to accommodate different needs. Our main objective with technology is to solve for common pain points around things like Evidence of Insurability (EOI) – we aim to reduce manual effort and headaches for our customers.
BTR:
What types of market trends are you seeing with HR technology?
The Hartford:
We are seeing a lot of turn-over with payroll, HCM, and benefits administration technologies on the buyer’s side. Employers who are moving to a new technology are looking for carriers who not only integrate with their solution, but also provide an enhanced digital experience. Benefits and technology decisions are now being evaluated at the same time, whereas, in the past, these decisions were done independently. The Hartford believes its important to support employers and employees through these transitions by offering products and services that support their solution.
Our recent Future of Benefits Pulse Survey indicates that inflation is going to continue to impact benefits selections in the coming plan year. 40% of U.S. workers say inflation will make them scale back the benefits they choose during open enrollment and 48% of workers say inflation is making it hard to pay for their benefits. The Hartford sees employers doubling down on their benefits communications strategy to empower their employees to make smart decisions and manage their financial risk.
BTR:
What do you recommend for employers looking to improve their benefits communication strategy?
The Hartford:
Employers can offer a variety of tools to reach their workforce – emails, 1-on-1 counselors, webinars, educational videos, and decision support tools. The Hartford supports employers leaning on partners like BTR and iBenefit Communication to execute their communication strategies and support their employees.
We are also seeing technology vendor partners invest in their engagement and decision tools to increase their effectiveness and ROI. We recommend to our clients to enable these tools, especially when they are available at no cost. The Hartford also provides decision and pre-enrollment communications support to customers as well.
The Hartford believes that education shouldn’t stop after Open Enrollment. Product placement in the enrollment workflow coupled with targeted education can increase employee participation and understanding about how the products work together. For Example, our best practice is to place the Hospital Indemnity and Critical Illness directly after the Medical choices in the enrollment workflow and include content about how the plans supplement each other.
In summary, all that we are doing is to create the best experience for our customers for all points of engagement with The Hartford.
BTR appreciates our partnership with our Elite Partners. Be sure to check out our other partners on our website. If you’d like more information about savings and efficiencies offered through our Elite Partners, please email BTRProjects@bentechre.com.
