Why your business needs a COBRA administrator

In an earlier article, we highlighted what COBRA is and which businesses are required to provide it. In this article, we’ll take a look at the benefits of outsourcing your COBRA administration duties to a qualified provider.

Compliance complexities

There are many regulatory and compliance aspects to COBRA, not to mention myriad deadlines. What’s more, they’re enforced by agencies such as the IRS and the Department of Labor, making your attention to detail all the more important. We feel like it’s safe to say you don’t want to get on their bad side, which can lead to fines of up to hundreds of dollars per day — not great for your business. It might be a much better business decision to reduce your company’s risk by hiring these duties out. Partnering with Omnify brings a consistent, repeatable process to show compliance if there is ever a dispute.

High risk, low reward

Given the compliance headaches we highlighted above, you’d think that with that much risk involved, there must be some great reward for offering COBRA, right? Well, not really. In the vast majority of scenarios, you’re offering COBRA to people (and/or their dependents) who don’t even work for your company or organization anymore. You might be better served by hiring out these required tasks and focusing more time on projects and initiatives that will have a much more positive impact on your organization’s missions and bottom line — not to mention your current employees.

Awwwwkward…

In many situations, COBRA is being offered to a former employee who was fired, had their hours significantly reduced, or was laid off — or you may even be offering these benefits to an employee’s former spouse after a divorce. If you enjoy communicating with people in those situations, our hat’s off to you. For most, these are uncomfortable situations that you’d rather not deal with. And if you hire a COBRA administrator, you won’t have to.

If your business is required to offer COBRA and you’d like to make your life easier, consider hiring a third-party administrator (TPA) to ease your burden. Omnify is an excellent option. Our team of experts focuses solely on benefit accounts and solutions, including COBRA.

Omnify: A better experience for your business

Omnify COBRA is a full-scale, secure experience offering one point of entry for administrators, employers, and participants — and don’t forget about the ease of working with one trusted administrator for all your employee benefits, including HSAs, FSAs, lifestyle spending accounts, and COBRA administration services.

At Omnify, we’re not just another provider, we’re a partner. And we’d love the opportunity to make this part of running your business much less of a headache!