Michael Ross is a software developer and graphic designer with 15 years of experience in the employee benefits field. Michael is an expert in user experience and enterprise software design. As the Chief Design Officer of Effortless Admin Inc., Michael is responsible for the overall user experience of the Effortless Admin product. Away from the office, Michael can be found planning his next adventure, or enjoying the outdoors with his wife and three boys.
We all know that exercise is good. It’s common knowledge that proper exercise can work to prevent weight gain and even help maintain weight loss. It is also well acknowledged that exercise can help to reduce the likelihood, and sometimes even prevent, certain diseases and health conditions. But did you know that regular exercise also helps improve your mood?…
A Health Spending Account (HSA) is a group benefit that an employer can make available to its employees to cover eligible healthcare related expenses. Qualifying expenses are governed by the Canadian Income Tax Act. Need to know if an expense is covered? Checkout this handy table of eligible HSA expenses.…
We live in interesting times when it comes to insurance technology (insurtech). According to cbinsights.com, in the United States alone, more than $2.56 billion has been invested in insurtech startups in 2018! Huge investments are being made in projects and programs to change an industry that has been traditionally dominated by manual processes and paper. Benefits administration in particular is one area in which tech investment is long overdue. Over the past few years the Canadian market…
The true cost of an employee group benefits plan is more than the plan’s premium. The plan must be administered, and administration is a time consuming, inefficient, and costly part of employee benefits. Benefit plan admin is usually a process of never ending paper chasing for enrollments and other forms, while maintaining a wall of post-it note reminders of important dates as well as an excel sheet to cross reference against insurance company admin websites and invoices.…
For years, Third Party Administrators (TPAs) have been the norm in the United States. Their ability to knit together insurance carrier products to make best-in-class benefit packages while controlling costs, along with the administration and billing efficiencies they bring, have made them the obvious choice for managing employee group benefit plans. Although TPAs have been around for a long time in Canada they have only recently started picking up steam…
Conference Board of Canada: "Employee benefits could not be more important to engagement and retention of an organization's workforce - or, in many cases, more misunderstood." Administering even simple employee benefit plans can be complex and time consuming, and even simple administration errors or omissions can expose your organization to significant liability. These issues only get worse if you want to take advantage of leveraging multiple carriers in order to construct a best-in-class benefits plan.…
