“Always invest for the long term,” as Warren Buffet simply says. That is what Epic Brokers, a San Francisco-based national insurance brokerage, did when they invested in the employer services platform for their employees and clients.
“We sat down and looked at what investments do we need to make as a firm to make sure that we continue to provide the needed resources in a very changing and complex environment for our clients,” said Derek Thomas, chief strategy officer at Epic.
Thomas, along with Dana Liedel, managing principal in the employer benefits department, analyzed the evolution of the employee benefits space, focusing on transitioning their brokerage from a traditional model, to a consulting/brokerage model. Interested in moving producers and account managers up market towards larger opportunities and with more success among mid-to-large clients, led to the concept of an employer services platform that was designed and created to establish expertise and specialty focus.
“If we could develop that expertise, then we can provide real-time information from a platform to our account managers and producers to keep them current on all of the major changes and really move us forward in our ability to communicate our capabilities and our messaging to our clients,” said Thomas.
Beginning in 2014, after Epic partnered with The Carlyle Group, a global alternative asset manager, Epic hit the ground running on creating the employer services platform (ESP). “When we pushed this, one of the things we did was we went out and asked our producers ‘what do you need,’ setting the strategy aside. We went door-to-door, to every single office and did surveys and asked them what they needed to be successful in a post-ACA [affordable care act] environment - that was the key question,” said Chris Duncan, chief growth officer.
So when Epic rolled out the ESP program, they challenged their producers and account managers to use and leverage the platform to be successful in the marketplace, especially following the implementation of ACA, which created a more complex insurance world. “This was a required investment that we made to be able to be competitive in the marketplace and create a better future for our employees, all at the same time,” said Duncan.
ESP specifically addresses both current and future requirements in the healthcare and employee benefits marketplace. The platform serves as a resource center for Epic’s employees on behalf of their clients, which can be used to help clients manage both their short-term cost control challenges, as well as the longer-term issues of health program management, compliance, employee engagement, accountability, health and well-being.
“It is pretty powerful when you walk in and say ‘what you said you needed, we got for you. This is how it is going to work and we are re-investing in your future.’ That is very powerful and motivating, and culturally very consistent with what it means to be inside of Epic,” said Duncan.
