Insurance brokerage Financial Independence Co. helps companies find new health plans. Although it also deals in life, disability and 401(k)s, Financial Independence primarily seeks out the highest-quality medical and dental insurance plans at the lowest cost. Sheila Hartman, president and founder, has built Financial Independence into a company with 25 employees and offices in four states. She spoke with Lauren Hollingsworth about her concerns over the direction the health care industry is going, and how those changes are affecting her brokerage.
Every day is a new day. A few years ago, we thought we’d be out of business because of national heath care. These days, so many companies are gobbled up by other companies that now the problem is less competition. PacificCare bought Health Point. United Health Care purchased Humana. We’re not going to have as many companies to go to and compare prices.
We go out to bid for our clients once a year. A lot of large companies will go directly to a broker. The Human Resources person doesn’t have time to send a census to the insurance companies and compare rates. I give my clients a list of rates and locations. But why would a company need to use us if there aren’t that many insurance companies to choose from?
Our niche is to educate employees on how to use their benefits, so it’s less pressure on a client’s benefits manager. I have a teaching background, that’s why I focus so much on education. That’s why I got into insurance, because I saw companies taking advantage of people. We get down to the level of the employee. A lot of companies don’t provide the handholding and fuzzy wuzzy treatment to the employees. We go to the cafeteria and answer questions.
A lot of major firms charge consulting fees. We don’t do that. We do all that service for the same amount of money. We work with the benefits management and the HR director. We have an 800 number and employees can call us with a problem. We do everything in English and Spanish and we have a language line (a telephone line that provides information in other languages), because we feel that it’s important for the employees to understand their benefits.
Many times when dealing with insurance companies, it takes a long time to solve issues, and benefit managers don’t have time for that. We try to take as much responsibility away from benefit managers as we can. That’s really what has made us successful, is the difference in the service we provide.
