2021 Broker of the Year finalist: Rachel Miner
A big part of Miner’s approach is encouraging employers to look at self-funding, which allows more cost transparency.
The 2021 Broker of the Year will be announced at the BenefitsPRO Broker Expo, August 16-18 in San Diego. The winner will be further profiled in our September issue. |
Rachel Miner is looking forward to the day when there are fewer Zoom meetings. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based broker says she loves driving to open enrollment meetings and talking face-to-face with employees.
“There’s a boatload of coffee that’s involved,” she adds.
This high-energy, hands-on approach has been a hallmark of Miner’s style. Health care has always been personal to her; she is driven in part by her experiences in dealing with the health care system as a parent.
Related: The ‘BEN’ talks: The personal side of the industry
“I’m really passionate about our health care system,” she says. “My middle child has had a lot of health issues, so I’ve had to be my own advocate. I started being kind of bold and asking questions. People would say, ‘why are you asking so many questions?’ and it’s because it’s costing me money and we’re putting my kid through pain every time we get blood drawn. It’s like, what are we doing?
“Really, I was a mom who got pissed off enough about our health care system to think I should start doing something about it.”
Miner is founder and owner of Thrive Benefits, a firm that works primarily with larger employers. Miner, who grew up with a knowledge of health care thanks to her father’s career as a pharmaceutical executive, is a fan of challenging the status quo. She says part of the inspiration for creating Thrive was because of a time where she was pushing back at a major carrier, and a colleague at her former firm said she should apologize.
“One thing that a lot of brokers miss the mark on, in my estimation, is that they don’t focus on who’s driving the cost. That’s the consumer.”
“I remember thinking, ‘I should never have to apologize for doing the right thing,’” Miner says.
Miner’s focus is as much on the employee as the employer. She said that many brokers think primarily of the employers’ needs when coming up with a benefits strategy. “They will tell employers they want to help them have long-term sustainability, good benefits and help them keep costs low,” she says. “But one thing that a lot of brokers miss the mark on, in my estimation, is that they don’t focus on who’s driving the cost. That’s the consumer.”
Employee benefits are important to everyone, but Miner notes that lower-wage workers really appreciate it when benefits advisors can reduce the cost deductibles and cut through the red tape. “I work with a lot of lower-paid workers; I love working with manufacturers, primarily because they’ll listen to you,” she says. “A lot of white-collar workers tend to not care because they have the money. But when someone has to make a choice between getting their child’s medication or making their car payment, it’s a sick-to-your-stomach feeling. So, I think any time we can lessen that burden and allow someone to get the medical care they need, it’s a huge win.”
A big part of Miner’s approach is encouraging employers to look at self-funding, which allows more cost transparency. With that information, she says, it’s easier to design a plan that both holds down costs and addresses the needs of employees.
“For firms of a certain size, fully insured doesn’t necessarily make sense,” she says. Due to medical loss ratio regulations, carriers are incentivized to have more claims, and to encourage brokers to recommend fully insured plans.
“There’s a very disincentivized system in place,” she says. “Carriers incentivize brokers to keep clients fully insured because they make more money off of them.”
For Miner, the pandemic year definitely had challenges; not only was she working from home with three kids, but she had hired a new employee in March of 2020, who she was also training during that time. She said there was a general acceptance that the industry couldn’t take a business-as-usual approach.
“It was a year where there wasn’t a lot of control over what happened; what mattered was how you controlled your reaction to it,” Miner says. “One of the things that I saw with my clients was that you just had to go with the flow. Everyone had to give each other a little grace.
“The standard of having everything be professional all the time definitely slacked a bit,” she adds. “Even during renewals, the carriers weren’t really reaching out to us; everything was kind of in slow motion.”
Miner’s is a member of the Vanguard Council of the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU). Megan Chiarello, vice president of marketing for WellNet Healthcare, who is also on the council, credits Miner for helping the group with its approach to diversity by overseeing the development of a playbook for internships.
“One of the goals of the internship playbook is to help agencies recruit and bring in diverse talent to the industry,” Chiarello says. “Rachel really weighed in to ensure we were creating a playbook that spoke to the needs of diverse internship programs for brokerage firms.”
Chiarello also praises Miner’s proactive approach as a broker, describing her as “bold.”
“Rachel intentionally works with companies that probably have the most challenges or really needs a strategist to get in there and roll up their sleeves. She likes to work with companies that have a diverse workforce because she knows that those are the companies with the employees that need her help the most,” Chiarello says. “That’s such an indication of a leader—someone who sees where there are areas of need and actively goes in to serve those needs within a community.”
For her part, Miner says she makes it a priority to have an open-door policy when it comes to giving advice or acting as a sounding board for new ideas. “Any time anyone asks me for my advice or mentorship, I always take the call,” she says. “I think that it’s really important to get fresh ideas and share your leadership with other people. The only value that we bring is what’s between our ears; and no one has cornered the market on good ideas. It’s good to get new ideas and help young people and diverse people feel included in our space.”
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