Two Complimentary Tools
The CEO's Fiduciary Checklist & the Broker Accountability Checklist
If your company sponsors a U.S. health plan, federal law makes the plan sponsor a fiduciary — a duty that cannot be delegated to a broker or to HR. One checklist documents that you met it. The other tells you who your broker actually works for.
Inside the checklist
Know whose money it is
Who the named fiduciary actually is, committee minutes, the ERISA fidelity bond, and why fiduciary liability cover is not the same thing.
Follow the money
Written broker and consultant compensation disclosures, Form 5500 comparison, benchmarking, rebates, spread pricing and percent-of-charge hospital contracts.
Own your data
Whether the plan receives its own complete claims data, who reviews it, and the public negotiated rates at the hospitals your employees use.
Run the plan by the book
Plan documents and SPD, Form 5500, gag-clause attestation, RxDC reporting, parity analysis, appeals and vendor monitoring.
Act like it's your money
Real renewal alternatives, an explanation of your own increase from your own claims, and one fiduciary file that holds all of it.
The second tool
Broker Accountability Checklist
Fifteen questions that reveal who your broker really works for — total compensation, who pays them, whether they will accept fiduciary status in writing, Form 5500 consistency, hospital rates as a percentage of Medicare, claims-data ownership, stop-loss placement and pharmacy rebates. Each question comes with the answer you should expect, plus the red flags to listen for.
Count your empty boxes. Each one is a question a Department of Labor investigator or a plaintiff's attorney already knows how to ask.