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| BB&T Implements Health Savings Account using Benefitfocus CDHP tools: calls Open Enrollment "a complete success"
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| Mount Pleasant, SC and Winston-Salem, NC – December 19 2005 – BB&T Corporation's Rose Ketner has been a Human Resources administrator for 10 years. "Usually my husband can tell when I’m in the middle of open enrollment, because I’m working late hours and am stressed," said Ketner, Benefits Administration Manager. "But this year I was halfway through and he didn't notice until I told him."
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The difference between this year’s open enrollment and years’ past is that the southeastern financial holding company decided to enroll its 30,000 employees using eBenefitsNow. eBenefitsNow is Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina’s (BCBSNC) proprietary enrollment software, provided by Benefitfocus.com, Inc.
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"I have this employee that I have developed an email relationship with over the past year, because he is out on disability and has lost his hearing. We sent out our 2006 benefit information and login instructions to everyone's homes. I was expecting him to contact me and he did on the very first day,” said Ketner. "He sent me an email and said 'Can you just give me everything that I have this year?' I wrote back to him and said 'Just try it. Here's how to login and let me know what you think.' I got a reply email a little later just saying 'I did it!' It was wonderful."
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Open Enrollment is typically the busiest time in any Human Resources department schedule—the two-week period when each employee must fill out insurance and benefit elections for the following year. For companies still using paper-based benefit forms, administrators must manually enter each employee’s form into a human resources system, which can be an extremely time-consuming and inefficient process.
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Using eBenefitsNow, 95% of BB&T employees self-enrolled for all of their benefits online, with absolutely no paper.
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"BB&T wanted to encourage its employees to consider all of their health plan options, including the high deductible health plan and Health Savings Account (HSA) options,” explained Ken Lerner, Vice President of Product Management, Development and Market Research for BCBSNC. "Employees were able to use eBenefitsNow calculators and comparison screens in order to have a better understanding of their company’s offerings.”
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"The process went very smoothly and open enrollment is going well. It's terrific,” said Steve Reeder, Benefits Manager for BB&T Corporation. Approximately 5% of BB&T employees contributed to the HSA plan, a standard figure for new health product introductions. And regardless of whether or not the employee contributes to the HSA, BB&T automatically contributed $500 if the employee elected the high deductible health option. "We were able to manage reports of who elected the HSA plans throughout the process and provide targeted communication to employees to make sure they understood their choices.”
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"This has been a foundational year for BB&T, as we’ve laid the groundwork for the future expansion into innovative health plan offerings and consumer directed empowerment for all of the BB&T associates,” said Shawn Jenkins, President and CEO of Benefitfocus.com.
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BB&T had approximately 75 custom requests for functionality from Benefitfocus’ system, including some intricate retiree functionality. eBenefitsNow allows retirees to log in to the application and enroll electronically. BB&T’s retirees will enroll at their convenience, adding benefits, changing dependents and viewing their rates online, as opposed to calling their administrators for the answers. Benefitfocus was able to configure the application so that a retiree’s dependent could enroll in a plan separate from the retiree based on age and eligibility. Additionally, although retirees are spread amongst numerous grandfathered plans and varying subsidy amounts, with eBenefitsNow, BB&T administrators are able to access all retiree data from one source.
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Benefitfocus also implemented a successful integration with BB&T’s payroll system. For example, when an employee’s status goes from active to disabled, rather than the administrator keying the change into both the HR system and the payroll system, the administrator can enter data in either system. The two-way payroll interface makes changes to employees in eBenefitsNow from payroll or vice versa. Additionally, Benefitfocus transmits the employee elections to the BB&T payroll system, so it configures the correct deductions to take from a paycheck.
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The software implementation went smoothly, and all of the BB&T employees were able to enroll in their benefits successfully during the open enrollment period. Carol Conrad, a BB&T Benefits Administration Manager, said, "I can honestly say that it has been the smoothest implementation that I've ever had. I've been involved with a lot of project implementations, and it's been great."
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About Benefitfocus
Benefitfocus.com, Inc. (Benefitfocus) is the leading provider of employee benefits software and services. It offers employees and employers secure, online access to benefits and human resource information. Benefitfocus’ suite of products and services includes large and small group electronic enrollment, electronic billing, and data exchange services. It replaces time-consuming, expensive and error-prone paper processes allowing companies to administer all of their benefit offerings through one interface. This one-to-many platform substantially speeds up benefit enrollment and administration while reducing overall costs and greatly improving communication to the employee.
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About BB&T
BB&T Corporation, headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, is a fast growing, highly profitable financial holding company with $107.1 billion in assets. Its bank subsidiaries operate more than 1,400 branch offices in 11 states and Washington, D.C. BB&T ranks No. 2 in market share in North Carolina; No. 2 in Virginia / Washington, D.C.; No. 3 in South Carolina; No. 1 in West Virginia; No. 6 in Georgia; No. 6 in Maryland; and No. 2 in Kentucky.
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