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Case Study of Conner Insurance: A Performance Lab for Outstanding Benefit Programs

A performance lab for outstanding benefit programs. Forecasted renewal increases, healthcare inflation, and employee satisfaction have been trending topics for many employers and HR departments recently. Whether those topics center around a lack of transparency from insurance companies, little control over costs, or representing a unique workforce, navigating the health insurance landscape is a challenge that many businesses share.

Making changes or modifications to your employee benefits program may take time but can be a significant investment. A plan customized to meet the needs of your workforce can unlock doors to inflationary challenges and work towards significantly improving employee satisfaction.

Conner Insurance is one example of a company that decided to make a difference by opting to change our approach to health insurance..

WHO IS CONNER INSURANCE?

Located in Indiana, Conner Insurance is a family-owned business that provides insurance (employee benefits, commercial, and personal insurance) to employers and individuals across the country. We are a family-owned business that has been in operation for more than 70 years, taking pride in a culture of integrity, grace and selflessness. Our mission at Conner Insurance is to build relationships, solve problems, serve people and pursue excellence — maintaining healthy relationships and delivering a supportive culture.

“The Conner team is great to work with. They are knowledgeable, provide solid advice and are a favorable partnership. They are the perfect extension to our team.”
Samantha Contreras
Life Science Innovations

With our knowledge and expertise, we were able to take a deep dive into our own benefits program to discover ways to improve employee satisfaction and benefits deliverable while lowering costs.

THE CHALLENGES

Our key concerns were similar to many of our clients: rising healthcare costs, lack of transparency and flexibility within the current plan, and worsening benefits over time.. Due to the way a traditional plan is structured—premiums are paid to the insurance company who in return pays for claims made by members— our program is completely outsourced which means that our organization has no control or ability to positively influence our program to give our workforce a better deliverable.

We needed to determine where our healthcare spend was going and what aspects of the plan could be improved. With a traditional plan, little flexibility was available and our people needed options.

THE SOLUTIONS

At Conner Insurance we work hard to solve insurance and benefits problems for other companies, both small and large. In doing so, our organization has now grown to a size where we are able to transfer our expertise and deliver a successful plan for our own business.

With only 27 people on our plan, we embarked on our own journey and opted for self-funding. Some clear benefits are:

Direct contracting. A direct relationship between the healthcare facility and our self-funded plan exists. With this approach, we were able to contract with two hospitals providing high-quality, affordable care.
Employee contribution control. With the re-engineering of our program, our employees’ costs have not gone up, which means they are able to take their pay increases home and not waste them on rising health insurance costs.
H.S.A. contributions. Since we have a HDHP, we have been able to offer H.S.A. contributions to our employees’ H.S.A. accounts for positive behaviors within the health plan.
Lower out-of-pocket costs for employees. Our employees’ deductible responsibility has been lowered because of how we have managed the cost of our health insurance program.

DECIDE FOR YOURSELF

By self-funding our benefits program we have been able to save costs and increase employee satisfaction. We can help you achieve the same success with your health insurance and benefits programs.

Navigating the healthcare industry is a challenge that many businesses share, but, with a well-designed strategy and strong support system, you could be on your way to delivering a meaningful, cost-saving program that represents your company culture.