Changing Your Broker or Your Insurer

A signed instruction from the plan sponsor to the insurer appointing a new broker on an existing policy. It transfers servicing rights and commission. It does not change the contract, the rates, the insurer or the coverage.

Nothing about your coverage moves and nobody re-enrols. Your plan, your carrier, your rates and your members’ cards all stay exactly as they are. Only the adviser changes.

The same instrument under a different name, depending on insurer and jurisdiction.

Use whichever term appears on the insurer’s own form.

The broker currently servicing the plan.

Insurers usually notify the incumbent and allow a window to respond. Expect a call, and expect an offer. That is normal and not a reason to reverse course.

Commission is a percentage of premium built into the rate, varying by line — richest on health and dental, thinner on life and disability. A servicing fee is a flat negotiated amount replacing commission, disclosed to the client.

Commission sits inside retention, which means it is part of what you pay whether or not your broker does anything. Asking what your broker is paid is a fair question and a good one.

Taking a plan’s specifications to multiple insurers for competing quotes.

Deciding not to market is a legitimate outcome. A plan marketed into an unfavourable window can come back worse, and that costs more than it saves.

A takeover provision under which the incoming insurer matches the prior plan’s treatment of members already disabled or absent — no coverage lost on the move, and none gained.

Ask for it in writing on any move involving anyone off work. Without it, an employee on leave can fall between two insurers with neither accepting responsibility.

Members not actively at work on the takeover date must be individually disclosed to the incoming insurer.

Non-disclosure is the most serious error possible on a takeover. An insurer that learns at claim time of an undisclosed absent employee can rescind, leaving the employer with an uninsured liability.

The window after termination during which the prior insurer continues to pay claims incurred while their contract was in force — often ninety days for submission.

Tell members explicitly where to send claims from the weeks either side of a change. This is where the complaints come from on an otherwise clean transition.

Whether amounts already used in the year under the prior plan count against the new plan’s maximums.

Frequently overlooked. A member who has used their dental maximum may find it either reset or preserved — and either answer produces a phone call if nobody said which.