Benefits Compliance

Access to IBP Insurance Services’ ACA Portal, offering a wealth of Affordable Care Act information to guide your health care reform-related decisions.

Access to IBP Insurance Services’ exclusive ACA Navigator program, including our customized health care reform consulting service, e-newsletters, and other Affordable Care Act resources.

Employers with 50 or more full-time employees (including FTEs – Full-time Equivalent Employees) and all self-insured employers regardless of size must report their healthcare coverage information to their employees and the IRS. Applicable Large Employers (ALE) (those that employ 50 or more full-time employees) are required to report under section 6056.

IBP can provide your organization resources to ensure that the information needed to calculate and complete the forms is gathered.  Additionally, our team is available to answer any questions you may have regarding calculations, compliance or vendors who specialize in this market.

IBP will prepare Form 5500 Filing for clients that have at least 100 plan participants under their ERISA health and welfare plans (not retirement).  All new clients will receive a needs assessment by our team to ensure that their Form 5500 filing history is up to date and to review plan details.  Annually our team will gather the required data using a custom worksheet and employer/carrier provided information (Schedule A, Schedule C, etc.) to prepare a signature-ready Form 5500 document for filing with the IRS.  All documents, including Form 5500, Schedule As, and Schedule Cs, are available for employer review on a secure, password-protected portal. Upon approval, employers will file the Form 5500’s electronically.

Group health plan sponsors must provide Medicare Part D “creditable coverage” notices prior to October 15th the start date of the Medicare annual enrollment period for Part D, Prescription Drug coverage.  The October 15th deadline applies for all group health plan sponsors, regardless of plan year, plan size, employer size, grandfather status, or whether the plan is insured or self-funded.

Employers are also required to notify CMS online annually that they have sent out these Part D notices. The notice to CMS is due within 60 days after the start of the plan year.

IBP provides all employers sample notices that they can send out to employees.  Additionally, your account manager will contact you prior to the deadline to ensure that your team has sent out the notifications.

Under the Affordable Care Act employers are tasked to make available to employees a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) for each medical plan offered.  The SBC explains things like what a health insurance plan covers, what it doesn’t cover, and what the employee’s share of costs will be.

To ensure that our clients comply, IBP prepares a benefits portal for each client.  This portal will host all mandated documents pertaining to the health and welfare plans.  This portal will also provide information on how and when employees become eligible for benefits, contact numbers if they are experiencing problems or have questions, and any other information the employer would like to make available to employees. 

All employers are required to distribute a Summary Plan Description (SPD) to all employees who participate in health benefit plans (or retirement plans) that are covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The SPD is a detailed guide to what benefits the plan provides and how the plan works. It must describe when employees become eligible to participate in the plan, how benefits are calculated and paid, how to claim benefits, and when benefits become vested.

IBP will work with clients to ensure that they SPD’s have been prepared, made available and/or distributed to all employees.