Punter Southall Health and Protection Consulting has launched a risk management platform to help employers ensure their employees are covered by the life assurance and group income protection benefits they offer.
For example, it will notify an employer if any of its employees exceed age limits written into their insurance policies. Some insurers place minimum and/or maximum age limits on their cover.
The platform, called Gladis (the name of the ‘virtually perfect’ professional female behind the platform’s design concept (pictured)), can also help employers identify any employees with reduced cover, such as an employee who has opted out of the organisation’s pension scheme.
But these notifications rely on accurate employee data being input into Gladis, which is one of the processes Punter Southall Health and Protection Consulting works on with employers at the outset of platform implentation.
Twenty employers with a total of 10,000 employees between them took part in a pilot launch of the platform in 2012.
Gladis is free for employers that use the employee benefits adviser as their healthcare benefits broker. It is aimed at employers with a minimum of 25 employees and no more than 30 subsidiaries.
John Dean, a director at the employee benefits consultancy, said the platform can help employers slash between 5% and 8% off their annual health insurance premiums.
He added: “Of all the data that Gladis has been using in the pilots, 15.6% have substantial data errors, which would have caused the claim to be disputed or not paid at all.
“It’s like online banking. If you log on to online banking, you’re actually doing what the bank used to do for you, so you’re taking work off them. When [employers] start doing self-service [with Gladis], we get higher-quality data and they take on some of the responsibilities, which would have sat with us, so we’re not in a position where we need to charge any [employers] for the service.”
Future development plans for the platform include employee access to enable them to adjust their own insurance cover.