How Benefit Administration Works for You


Benefit Outsourcing. Benefit Administration.

These are words that you may hear frequently. But what do they really mean? Cowan Benefit Services has been providing Benefit Administration to a group of our clients for over 10 years. What began with one key client has now grown to a service provided to over 20 clients. Cowan now provides services for up to 11,000 employees.

When Cowan refers to Benefit Administration, there are several areas that we become involved in and give assistance to our clients in. Listed below are some of the ways that our administrative services help our clients in the areas of paperwork, compliance, phone calls and enhanced brokerage and consulting.


Cowan becomes your "off-site" Benefits Department

We take over much of the day-to-day paperwork associated with maintaining an employee benefit program, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, accidental death and dismemberment and long term care insurance plans, such as:


  • Processing and sending enrollment forms to the carriers
  • Calculating employee deductions and communicating to payroll
  • Sending initial COBRA notices and confirmation letters to all newly eligible employees
  • Auditing billing statements and allocating by location (if applicable)
  • Sending COBRA notices to employees no longer eligible for coverage
  • Tracking COBRA eligibility and payments for those former employees who elect it.

We take compliance with the many rules and regulations that affect Benefit Administration very seriously. Listed below are some of the ways we do this.


  • Section 125 - Premium only plans and FSA Administration
    Verifying eligible status changes
    Verifying consistency of change with the event
    Adjudicating FSA reimbursement claims
    Tracking FSA account balances
  • COBRA
    Processing COBRA notifications within the prescribed time frame
    Checking for timely monthly payments
  • HIPAA
    Protecting Personal Health Information (PHI) that we receive
    Allowing our clients to be "hands off" while still getting assistance for their employees

Phone Calls
We also assist by being the main contact for employee phone calls regarding their benefits. Your company would be assigned to one of our experienced Benefit Administrators, who also have a team of support behind them to take calls when they are out of the office. Here are examples of some of the types of phone calls we would handle instead of you:


  • Helping employees get accurate information from the insurance carriers
  • Acting as an advocate for an employee when carriers are not responsive or helpful
  • Answering questions in regards to eligibility, what changes are allowable, etc.

Are Cowan's Benefit Administration services right for you?

Here's a look at our "typical" client:


  • Our current clients have an average of 600 employees, with 75 as the smallest and 2600 as the biggest.
  • Many of our clients are multi-site employers with a Corporate Human Resources department, but without individual HR professionals in the field.
  • Some of our mi-size employers are at the size where the current HR staff needs to move benefits off of their plate in order to be able to manage the many other HR demands.
  • Several of our clients are in a growth mode and want Benefit Administration to be in place as their employee count increases