The employee benefits industry consists of health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance and 401(k) products and the participants include almost everyone in America: insurers, benefits brokers, employers and the employees who receive benefits on the job. The inefficiencies in the industry, including paper-based processes and redundant data entry, lead to escalating costs to employers and employees, and eroding profits for insurers and brokers.

"The inefficiencies and complexities of the benefits industry cost all of us money, time and frustration," said Mark A. Pulido, chairman and chief executive officer of BenefitPoint, Inc. "Our strategy is simple yet powerful - by connecting the benefits industry end-to-end we provide a better way of doing business for everyone involved. The most comprehensive solution available on the market, BenefitPoint has been adopted by the leading benefits professionals and is quickly becoming the industry standard."

The BenefitPoint Solution
At the core of BenefitPoint's ASP offering is the BenefitPoint eInfrastructure, which serves as the enabler for the complete suite of employee benefits applications that deliver improved processes for each participant in the chain. The BenefitPoint Web-based technology infrastructure provides a suite of hosted applications that serve all industry participants involved in the employee benefits process. It is the first comprehensive offering that eradicates redundant data entry and provides efficiency across the industry. Carriers and brokers are using the system in order to share data industry-wide, manage daily business processes, procurement and communication of employee benefits products.

The "Benefits" of BenefitPoint
"When we evaluated eCommerce solutions we were impressed by BenefitPoint's reputation and the buy-in they had in the insurance brokerage community," said Chris Fazzini, vice president, sales and marketing at Reliance Standard Life Insurance (RSLI). "By adopting the BenefitPoint solution as our standard, we expect to improve our efficiency, increase our access to brokers, add new distribution channels and thereby enhance our market share. Given the inefficiencies of the paper-based systems used in the employee benefits industry, we feel the BenefitPoint standard will save us time and money."

"BenefitPoint has built and deployed the leading scalable industry solution," said Jim Murray, vice president of technical support and compliance for Gallagher Benefit Services, Inc. "As the only company to have substantially organized the employee benefits distribution channel through a common Internet solution, BenefitPoint is becoming the de facto industry standard. We believe having such a standard will bring benefits in terms of cost savings and time savings both to our organization individually and to the industry-at-large."

BenefitPoint Applications Support the Employee Benefits Industry End-to-End
While the industry at-large gains tremendously from a shared way of doing business using the Internet, so does each participant. In the case of carriers, they gain greater efficiency, streamlined requests for quotations and the ability to distribute more products and services. Brokers gain comprehensive process automation to house and configure the data used in the process of procuring and managing employee benefits. Employers gain benefits administration tools, online enrollment, and access to better products and services and better data accuracy. Employees gain a stronger benefits package, access to better information for more informed decision-making and less risk of claims disputes. Everyone gains e-commerce capabilities and the ability to share and access information online.

• Client Management
  An Internet-based application to collect, manage, and access detailed customer information. Automates daily processes and centralizes customer account and contact information, plan information, fees and reporting.
• Procurement
  The tools and connectivity to electronically handle the request for proposal (RFP) and the entire procurement process.
• Benefits Administration and Enrollment
  Tools to easily manage and organize group benefits because it stores detailed information on the company's benefits programs as well as employee records and relevant data. For employees the systems puts better tools in their hands as decision makers for online enrollment, benefit news, plan and rate comparison tools, provider look-up, forms and links to HR.
• Eligibility and Billing
  Premium and eligibility information is electronically distributed to insurers, 401(k), COBRA administration and payroll vendors through BenefitPoint. In addition, because rates and eligibility information from all vendors are captured in one system monthly billing reconciliation is simplified for employers.
• Worksite Marketing
  Worksite Marketing provides a tool for presenting time sensitive, relevant financial and insurance products to employees when they have life changing events. This tool is an efficient, cost-effective way for insurers and brokers to reach individuals who need their services and a unique way for employers to offer new products and services to their employees.
• Analytics and Data Mining
  Beyond the applications themselves, insurers, brokers and employers need access to key business intelligence that can now be captured through the BenefitPoint technology infrastructure. Using BenefitPoint's analytics and data mining capabilities, carriers can distribute products more efficiently, quantify acquisition costs and design specific products and services to meet market needs. Brokers can market to targeted audiences to better understand and quantify their acquisition costs and to design marketable proprietary products and services. Employers will gain a better understanding of the trends in the employee benefits market making them more equipped to compete for new employees and retain existing employees.

About BenefitPoint, Inc.
BenefitPoint, Inc. delivers the leading Internet-based employee benefits infrastructure for the distribution and management of group insurance and financial products. As the central nervous system of the employee benefits industry, BenefitPoint provides a complete set of B2B services enabling benefits professionals to manage the entire group health insurance and benefits lifecycle. Building on the existing industry relationships among carriers, brokers, employers, and employees, the BenefitPoint solution combines the efficiency of the Internet with the established distribution model of the insurance industry to eliminate paper (saving everyone time and money), to make it possible to deliver more products and services (giving everyone more choices), and to make better information available (enabling everyone to make better decisions).

Releasing its first solution in December 1999, BenefitPoint has already received widespread industry adoption from regional and national insurance carriers as well as from more than 120 of the leading U.S.-based brokerage and consulting firms. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, can be reached at 415.277.5600 or at www.benefitpoint.com. BenefitPoint, Inc. is privately held.