Should We Use An Employee Benefits Broker?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a big corporation with hundreds of employees, an SME or even a start-up. Setting up and maintaining a competitive employee benefits package takes time and expertise.

We might be biased, but we think regulated advice from an independent employee benefits broker is generally a better way to manage your benefits package than dealing with insurers directly or working with a general financial adviser.

Working with an employee benefits broker you get an expert in you corner who knows the market and all the providers inside out. It therefore tends to be easier for them to get the best outcome for you and your employees.

For many brokers like ourselves, not only do you get an expert in your corner but you get our advice fee-free. With no fees and all the heavy lifting taken off your desk, an employee benefits broker can remove many of the potential headaches involved with arranging benefits yourself.

What is an Employee Benefits Broker?

An employee benefits broker is someone who acts between your company and an employee benefits provider. They do all the heavy lifting when it comes to setting up and managing your employee benefits package including:

• Handling employee data
• Researching the entire UK market
• Negotiating the best policy terms
• Helping you communicate your benefits to your staff
• Managing scheme administration including applications, trusts, new joiners and leavers
• Claims support
• Undertaking annual reviews
• Making sure you are up to date with current legislation

If you choose an independent broker, such as ourselves, you get access to every provider on the UK market. This saves you a great deal of time, effort and money.

Employee benefits brokers focus specifically on employee benefits and don’t work in other areas of the market. 100% of their expertise is therefore in this sphere.

What Employee Benefits Are Available?

Some of the most common benefits you might introduce to your employees include:

• Death in Service Insurance
• Group Income Protection
• Group Critical Illness Cover
• Business Health Insurance
• A workplace pension

However, employee benefits can be anything from flexi-time to a cycle to work scheme. With such a wide variety to offer your workers, it can be hard to know where to start.

For more information you can read our guide on the most popular benefits staff want in 2023.

Why Use an Employee Benefits Broker?

Arranging employee benefits for your whole workforce can be tricky. That’s true whether you have a few employees or a few hundred. There’s a lot to think about, teach yourself about various providers and benefits to navigate.

That’s why it makes sense to hand it over to someone who does do this day in, day out.

Employee Benefits Are Important

A good employee benefits package plays a key part in the wellbeing of not only your workers but also your company.

Employee benefits that help meet your workers’ emotional, health and financial needs mean a happier, healthier workforce. This in turn drives higher workplace satisfaction and improves productivity.

Moreover, they can help you stand out from the crowd when you’re hiring new staff, as well as retain existing workers.

Clearly, employee benefits are important — there’s a lot to gain from introducing them. That’s why it’s so important to use an expert broker to make sure you get it right.

Using someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and has experience arranging benefits for a business just like yours makes the process easier.

It also ensures you and your employees get the best possible benefits at the best possible price.

Danielle Hines
Employee Benefits Consultant at Drewberry

They’ll Provide The Technical Expertise You May Lack

Nothing beats the help of an expert. Even when your situation is fairly simple, having an employee benefits broker arrange your cover can make things so much easier.

However, that’s especially true when there are more complex issues to think about. For example, a broker’s advice can be invaluable when you:

• Want to ensure you’re meeting new employees’ contractual rights to benefits when you bring them on board under TUPE regulations
• Have questions about whether to use the insurer’s master trust with Group Life Insurance or your own bespoke option
• Want to know just which benefits constitute a P11D / benefit in kind and will therefore be taxable for your employees.

For the answers to these trickier questions, an expert broker can be your first port of call.

They’ll Take the Heavy Lifting Off Your Desk

At the end of the day, while you your company might have asked you to arrange an employee benefits package, it’s probably not your day job.

Moreover, it’s a fairly labour intensive process. For example, there’s no online price comparison for group insurance policies. Prices depend very much on your particular company and its employees, so you’ll have to go to each insurer individually for quotes.

Of course, not every provider will offer you quotes in the first place. Many insurers don’t deal with companies directly. Insurance policies — or at least the best rates — are often only available via a broker. That makes it hard to do a decent comparison by yourself.

As an employee benefits broker, our relationships with the right people at every provider mean we can get your request for quotes to the top of the pile.

It also means you won’t have to lift a finger, so you’re free to do what you’re best at while we do our thing.

Nadeem Farid
Head of Employee Benefits at Drewberry

Brokers Tend To Negotiate Better Rates

Our status as an independent employee benefits broker which places hundreds of companies with providers each year means we have bargaining power on our side.

That means we can negotiate the best rates for you from the outset.

Also, with insurance benefits, they renew on a regular basis. With Business Health Insurance, this renewal is annual. As a result your broker will be their every year to review your policy and compare the market to make sure you’re still getting the best cover for the best price.

They’ll Provide Ongoing Administrative Support

No one likes doing admin. There, we said it.

Unfortunately, running an employee benefits package does involve a bit of administration every now and then. It’s vital to ensure what you have in place works smoothly and covers the right people.

Keeping up to date with who’s on the scheme is crucial not just so new joiners can benefit but also for the price of your package. However, especially if you’re growing rapidly with lots of new hires, all this admin can become time consuming.

That’s why Drewberry has a Group Admin team. They take care of all these little details for you so you don’t feel like you’re getting bogged down.

Support Communicating Your Benefits With Staff

It’s no good getting an employee benefits package if you don’t tell your staff about it so they can use it.

Employee benefits brokers can help with rolling out your communication strategy once you’ve arranged benefits. Whether that’s encouraging staff to return nomination of beneficiary forms for Group Life Insurance or offering product literature, we’ve got you covered.

For instance we provide a bespoke employee benefits portal page for your company, laying out the benefits in one place for all your employees to be able to refer to.

Advice From Employee Benefits Brokers is Protected

As we’ve said, when you go it alone it’s not only more work for you but you also lack financial protection. If you choose the DIY route, the responsibility for ensuring your benefits package is suitable rests on your shoulders.

However, an employee benefits broker will be authorised and regulated to provide specialist financial advice in this area. The responsibility lies with the broker if things go wrong, giving you protection if what we arrange for you isn’t right for your business.

Many Brokers Work On A Fee-Free Basis

Our services won’t cost a single penny more than if you went direct to every UK provider (and remember not every provider offers quotes direct).

In fact, you might even find your benefits work out cheaper when you use a broker because we have more bargaining power than you do as an individual entity.

Expert Advice From A Regulated Employee Benefits Broker

We provide  if you’re looking to introduce or improve a benefits package. We provide advice on all aspects of employee benefits and our broker service is on a totally fee-free basis.

Feel free to pop us a call on 02074425880. Alternatively, drop us an email at help@drewberry.co.uk.

Why Speak to Us?

We started Drewberry™ because we were tired of being treated like a number.

We all deserve a first class service when it comes to things as important as protecting our health and our finances. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.

• We are award winning 🏆 independent insurance advisers who work with all the leading UK insurers
• You’ll speak to a dedicated expert from start to finish
• We are very proud of the 3640 and growing independent client reviews rating us at 4.92 / 5
• We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. You can find us on the financial services register here 🧐
• Claims support when you need it most.