Employee Benefits & Online Portal
Our in-house Benefits team can find the perfect benefits solution for you, offering cost-effective solutions suitable for any sized organisations
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Many Small & Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) have a small, but essential benefits package for their employees or require one to be put in place for them. SME business typically offer, or wish to offer, the following:
Stakeholder Pension Scheme
Group Life Assurance
Private Medical Insurance
Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
Our Benefits Team
Our Black Mountain Benefits Consultancy (BMBC) team will help you to set-up and manage your benefits through our Account Management Service, which is available to you on an advised and a non-advised basis.
Both our advised and non-advised services provide the following Account Management support as standard:
Our Account Management Service is designed to support you with the placement and on-going management of your employee benefits.
Your Account Manager will deliver the following services:
Healthcare & Protection Benefits
• Placement of any scheme(s) with our preferred provider(s), including providing quotations, relevant paperwork and confirming placement of the scheme(s);
• The annual renewal of the scheme(s) including payment of the relevant premiums;
• Provision of relevant scheme(s) documentation;
• Support with any claims;
• Support with any medical underwriting; and
• Answering general queries.
Workplace / Stakeholder Pension
Your Account Manager will assist you with the following:
• Placement of your scheme with our preferred provider, including providing relevant paperwork and confirming placement of the scheme; and
• Providing an annual scheme governance report, describing the performance of the scheme only.
Non-Advised Service
In order to make things as simple and cost effective as possible for our SME clients, we have set-up a ‘small schemes deal’ with leading UK providers.
Protection Benefits
Group Life Assurance, Group Income Protection Insurance and Group Critical Illness Insurance
– Canada Life
Healthcare Benefits
Private Medical Insurance – Healix
Dental Insurance – Unum Dental
Cash Plan – Westfield Health
Workplace / Stakeholder Pension
Pension – Smart Pension
Workplace/Stakeholder Pension
By using economies of scale through our preferred provider arrangements, we can secure better insurance terms for the SME’s that participate e.g. higher Free Cover Levels for Life Assurance, meaning less medical underwriting for the higher paid, or lower Annual Management Charges for the administration of employee pensions.
We have selected these providers as they provide a high-quality service to our SME clients.
Existing Schemes
Where an SME business already has schemes in place, depending on the service you select, we can manage those schemes for you following appointment. If you select our Advised service, you can continue to use your current providers but note that our “COGS Salary Plus” Benefits Platform is only available to clients that use our preferred providers through our Non-Advised service. In order to avail of COGS Salary Plus, you would need to switch your benefits to our preferred providers.
Renewal Dates
The renewal dates of all preferred provider schemes will be 1 September. This is non-negotiable.
Our Non-Advised Remuneration
We will receive the following commission from our preferred providers for the Non-Advised service we will provide for you:
Product
Group Protection
Healthcare
Pension
EAP
Remuneration
10% Commission
Healthcare 10% Commission
£500 per annum *
10% Commission
Advised Service
Assessing the clients needs and then managing the implementation training and ongoing support of technology systems In the areas of payroll, HR administration, performance and appraisal management, recruitment, expenses and bookkeeping.
We are happy to conduct this work for you, but this service will be subject to our minimum fees as there is significant additional work for us to undertake for you, which is in additional to the default Account Management:
Healthcare & Protection Benefits
• Full Fact Find;
• Review of the design of your benefit;
• Creation of specification of insurance / outline of product;
• Issue to UK provider panel;
• Gather and check terms;
• Negotiate with the most suitable providers for final terms; and
• Make a recommendation for placement to your business.
Workplace / Stakeholder Pension
• Initial full market review of your pension provision;
• Annual full governance reporting;
• One Financial Wellbeing WebEx per year;
• Supporting employee queries relating to their pension.
Our Advised Service Remuneration
We will charge you the following minimum fees for our Advised service on a commission offset basis:
Product
Group Protection
Healthcare
Pension
Remuneration
£1,500 per benefit, per year
£1,500 per benefit, per year
£1,250 per year*
All work is normally conducted remotely. Any presentation would be by telephone / online meeting (unless otherwise agreed).
*Financial Wellbeing/Education sessions are available as a separate service, subject to separate fees. Quotes are available on request.
COGS Salary Plus
COGS Salary Plus allows all our clients to:
• Communicate key employer funding benefits;
• Offer employees sought after voluntary benefits through corporate arrangements available through salary deduction;
• Provide a Total Reward Statement Lite (in the form of a Benefits Summary);
• Give employees access to Lifestyle Discounts and Savings;
• Help boost employees’ wellbeing and resilience by giving them access to the POWR Wellbeing Tool; and
• Support employees learning with access to thousands of online learning modules.
Our COGS Salary Plus online benefits platform is available to you in one of two ways:
Advised
A personalised version of COGS Salary Plus can be provided that reflects your company branding and core benefits, regardless of your provider/s used.
The cost for a personalised version of COGS Salary Plus, starts at £5,000 plus VAT per annum. A quotation is available on request.
Non-Advised
Access to the COGS Salary Plus is automatically available to all our clients that take up our Non-Advised service. However, access would be through a subscription model that allows you and your employees to join our “COGS Salary Plus Club”.
Access to the club makes all of the above available to you and your employees but through a COGS Salary Plus branded platform that communicates the core, company funded, benefits provided by our preferred providers ONLY. We will not be able to display non-preferred provider arrangements under this solution.
The cost of club membership is up to £8 plus VAT per employee per month, charged annually. At each inception and each renewal (1 September), you will be charged an annual premium, in advance, based on the numbers of employees that are given access to the platform, at that time. A sweep-up charge/refund will also be made/paid to account for leavers and joiners in the previous period.