TIG Advisors has been recognized as one of the Top 10 Emerging Employee Benefits Solution Providers by HR Tech Outlook. We are proud to be featured in the annual listing of ten companies at the forefront of providing employee benefits solutions and impacting businesses. Here’s more from the magazine:
Steve Jobs once said, “Good companies will find out what their clients want and need and meet those needs. But great companies will change the way their clients think!” That quote has served as inspiration for TIG Advisors as they help clients pivot to a new direction in benefits.
Jason Swindle, CEO of TIG, states, “Our ultimate mission is to help businesses achieve greater success. And we have been doing that since 1898.” But as the times have changed and headwinds create challenges with employers in delivering meaningful benefits to employees, TIG has modernized its approach to managing risk.
According to Swindle, business owners, CFO’s, and CHRO’s are struggling to balance employees’ needs with their bottom line. They’ve been stuck with status quo ideas and solutions for their health plan spend and find themselves stuck on a perpetual hamster wheel. Renewal discussions begin to feel like Groundhog Day—where fully-insured renewals start with an uncomfortably high increase, which is negotiated down to something better. But it’s just ‘less bad.’ When appropriate, we want our clients to pivot to self-funding, often through a captive.
Swindle recognizes that not all employers can embrace self-funding and some of the progressive innovations. Clearly, smaller employers will have fewer opportunities to craft custom solutions, but the upward cost pressures are forcing innovation downstream. For employers with 50 or more enrolled employees, we can show them how to de-risk the path to
successful, high-performance plans. And employers with as few as 20-25 enrolled can still implement some impactful strategies.”
TIG Advisors is a multi-disciplinary, independent insurance advisory firm that specializes in employee benefits, insurance, and risk management. Swindle says, “Our approach to managing risk has similarities across their entire enterprise. We evaluate cost containment strategies through 3 lenses: does it measurably save money, how easy it to implement, and how will it be received by employees? Our clients want frictionless improvement in their EBITDA.” A CFO obviously will love liberating cash from the P&L, but the HR team will push back if there is a lot of friction with the implementation or if the employees stage a mutiny. We seek strategies that offer an appropriate balance.
TIG Advisors achieves results for its clients by using its Benefits Compass process, which according to Swindle, helps them build successful, high-performance plans for clients. Swindle says, “Our process ensures we have alignment between the overall corporate goals and the benefits strategy.”
The Benefits Compass process ultimately leads to foundational building blocks within the plan architecture, such as compliance, data analytics, and contractual risk management. Then client-appropriate cost containment building blocks are stacked to create a high-performing plan. Cost containment strategies include transparent and open networks and PBMs, and direct contracts.
Swindle says, “Our value stems from their ideas and results. There are very few original great ideas. But business is replete with examples of iterations that make a world of difference. I rub shoulders with some big thinkers who make me a better advisor—people like Craig Lack, colleagues with Sunstar Insurance Group, and principled leaders with Health Rosetta.”
Swindle recalls TIG’s collaboration with a fully insured middle-market client experiencing a double-digit increase in their health plan spend. TIG showed them how they could de-risk the pivot from fully insured to self-funding by moving to a medical captive and by contractually managing their risk. The Benefits Compass process and actuarial analysis paved the way for a multi-year roadmap for future success. After four years and the use of direct contracts and direct primary care, they have kept their medical spending flat while saving over $1,000,000 compared to fully insured. The last year included several shock claims, but the no-laser, rate-capped stop-loss contract proved to be worth its weight in gold as a fully insured increase would have been quite large.
