As we enter into February most of us are growing tired of the long dark nights and the cold weather. Most of our clients, at least the ones that work outside, will remain shut-down for the next two months.
The good news for our clients is that their employees have been receiving double unemployment benefits and their medical insurance coverage has continued uninterrupted and without them needing to make payments under COBRA.
How?
Our clients contribute prevailing wage fringe benefit dollars for their employees to our bona fide benefit trust – The DirectAdvisors Trust. The trust provides bona fide benefits such as medical, dental, life and disability insurance, health savings accounts, apprentice training, paid-time off, supplemental unemployment and retirement benefits.
For our clients with seasonal layoffs, we design the plan to budget savings for the layoff so that benefits will continue uninterrupted for the employees. It’s great for the employees and their families but it’s also a huge time savings in administration for the office staff since we eliminate most of the work related to benefit interruption (COBRA notices, collecting payments, etc.).
How can it get any better?
By including a supplemental unemployment benefit plan as one of the bona fide benefit offerings through our trust, employees will receive payments each week in addition to their state unemployment benefits. These payments can match or even exceed the amount employees receive from state unemployment.
Could it get even better? It sure can, because supplemental unemployment benefits paid from our trust are exempt from FICA taxes. That’s a 7.65% savings for both the employee and the employer!
If you have additional questions please do not hesitate to contact us or download our whitepapers – “Harnessing the Power of Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Plans” and “Working the Fringe.”
Please also view our short animated video, to see how constructing a bona fide fringe benefit plan, can move prevailing wage dollars out of payroll and reduce associated costs. Increase profits. Submit more competitive bids. Build employee loyalty.
How we can help
DirectAdvisors, established in 2001 and located in Albany, New York provides bona fide benefit plan consulting and third party administrative services to merit shop (non-union) construction companies that are subject to the Davis-Bacon Act, Service Contract Act and state prevailing wage regulations. Our clients are located throughout the United States and range in size from 10 to 3000 employees.
In 2015, our construction company clients contributed tens of millions of dollars of prevailing wage fringe benefit contributions to The DirectAdvisors Trust (health & welfare benefits) and retirement plans managed by our team.
Our solutions are free from any conflict of interest as we do not sell any financial or insurance products. We work with existing agents, brokers and insurance companies.