Advisors Can Now Give Businesses More Choice On Benefits, Risk Management

A newly launched digital platform gives advisors more choice when shopping for commercial insurance policies for corporate clients.

Sacramento-based benefitRFP announced the launch of Nations Choice Trusted Advisors, a risk management firm that combines the infrastructure behind benefitRFP’s platform with BD Capital’s network of risk managers and agencies to provide insurance and benefits solutions for businesses.

“Companies want to make sure they have risk taken care of so they don’t insure 95 percent of their business and then encounter 5 percent that’s causing a problem,” says Bob Nienaber, co-founder of benefitRFP. “The system asks them about benefits, also, and evaluates any risks associated with those. It finds areas of exposure, and then shops the entire marketplace for solutions, shop any products to the carriers who provide the products, then goes through application, finalization and all the associated paperwork.”

At the beginning of August, BD Capital Partners acquired benefitRFP and a sister firm, Affiliated Companies, as part of a cash transaction. Nations Choice was created as a partnership between BD Capital and benefitRFP. As part of the BD Capital acquisition, Nienaber remains at the helm of benefitRFP and Nations Choice Trusted Advisors.

Nations Choice uses a diagnostic tool to determine shortcomings in a business’s benefits and insurance coverage, then matches the firm’s needs with the suitable products and managers.

According to Nienaber, companies requested that benefitRFP apply the platform it has used for executive benefits to the commercial insurance and benefits space, thus Nations Choice was born.

“We were approached by a lot of business-to-business firms asking us to work on their benefits,” says Nienaber. “It was an area that many folks stayed away from in the past because they worried that someone would bring up questions that they had no expertise on. We decided that we wanted to open up our technology to commercial organizations and center a new platform around risk.”

Whereas benefitRFP offers cloud-based executive benefit programs for American companies through an efficient digital platform, Nations Choice marries that technology with BD Capital’s commercial risk management business to offer a more comprehensive line of service to companies.

The benefitRFP platform first analyzes a firm’s executive compensation and benefit package for shortfalls and opportunities. The company’s eponymous software then combines products and services from asset managers and insurance providers with administrative solutions to create a holistic benefits package.

“Instead of being sold a solution by a producer, companies could now understand their funding and planning needs and shop the entire marketplace of providers,” says Nienaber. “It helped take the guess work out. At the same time, it created opportunities for providers as companies recognized and understood their needs.”