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Case Study

How a NY Real Estate Company Avoided a 96% Premium Increase and Built a Talent Magnet Benefits Package

Company Profile: A New York-based real estate company that had outgrown the qualifications for state-based health insurance subsidies. The HR team was already certified on Rippling for payroll, and growth meant a renewed focus on talent attraction and retention as a top strategic lever.

Prior Challenges

  • 96% premium hike on the table: Loss of state-subsidy eligibility put the company in line for a 96% renewal increase at January.
  • Rippling friction: The HR lead was certified in Rippling but found day-to-day use clunky relative to the price tag, with comparable platforms costing meaningfully less.
  • No talent-attraction lever in place: The benefits package wasn't a competitive differentiator in a tight NY hiring market.

Capabilities Needed

  • Contain health benefit costs while preserving a broad provider network
  • Support continued growth without onboarding a benefits team internally
  • Shift the benefits package from cost center to recruiting tool
  • Multi-state compliance protection as the company expanded past 100 employees

Solutions Explored — six funding options on the table

1. Fully Insured (status quo, top-10 broker quote)

Baseline rates from the original broker. The 96% increase that triggered the project.

✗ Unsustainable cost trajectory

2. Taft Hartley plan

Projected savings: $2.12MM (38.9%) over 6 years vs. a comparable fully-insured gold-level plan.

Strengths: Flat-rate premiums independent of demographics, no payroll provider switch required, superior premium stability.

~ Strong fit on savings + simplicity

3. Taft Hartley plan via national partner

Projected savings: $2.17MM (39.8%) vs. fully-insured gold; $2.12MM (51.8%) vs. fully-insured bronze, both over 6 years.

Strengths: World-class benefits package usable as a recruiting tool, dedicated compliance protection for multi-state expansion, enhanced customer service team, retained business decision autonomy.

✓ Selected — see decision rationale

4. Self-Funded

The group did not qualify for self-funded options at this size.

✗ Not eligible

5-6. Level-Funded and Captive

Modeled but not preferred — neither matched the talent-magnet objective the way the Taft Hartley route did.

Decision Rationale

A Taft Hartley plan would have been the natural choice on simplicity and cost stability alone. What flipped the decision was modeling the talent attraction and retention value of a world-class benefits package against the marginal cost of the Taft Hartley route.

Result: the expected 6-year retention value was 5.8x to 31x the expected health insurance savings — even though Taft Hartley admin costs ran roughly 6x more than the alternative payroll provider.

Leadership reviewed the numbers with the head of HR, reversed an initial "PEO is out of bounds" stance, and committed to the Taft Hartley path. The decision was made in a single short conversation once the business value of retention was quantified.

Outcome

  • 96% renewal threat neutralized with a stable, demographically-independent premium structure
  • Benefits package converted from a cost line into an active recruiting tool
  • Compliance burden offloaded ahead of multi-state expansion
  • Business decision autonomy preserved — no surrender of operational control to the PEO

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