Insurance Licensing: What It Means for Employee Benefits
Mackenzie Borgen is a licensing analyst in the compliance department at Gravie. Mackenzie is responsible for making sure we have the licenses and appointments needed to give our members the most benefit options out there. In this post she covers what goes into getting our Gravie advisors licensed.
If you’ve read previous Gravie blog posts, you’ve probably seen the phrase “licensed Gravie advisor” a time or two. Whether a member needs help choosing a plan, working through a claim, or checking if their prescription will be covered, the licensed Gravie advisors (there’s that phrase again) are here year-round assisting Gravie members with all things related to their benefits. It’s what we call Gravie Care. In order for the advisor team to provide Gravie Care, each of them must become – you guessed it – licensed.
Each Gravie advisor has a resident life, accident and health insurance license in the state of Minnesota, plus non-resident licenses in states across the country. In order to get their licenses, each advisor must take a week-long training course, and pass the necessary exams. They are also required to complete continuing education requirements throughout the year to maintain their licenses.
But it doesn’t end there. With the passing of the ACA, health insurance exchanges were created. To help members enroll through these health insurance exchanges, advisors must also be certified by the exchange. This includes Healthcare.gov, the federally facilitated marketplace, where people in states like Indiana, Illinois, Texas and Florida shop.
Some states like Minnesota, California and Colorado have their own state-based exchanges. In Minnesota for example, just like with the federal marketplace Healthcare.gov, each Gravie advisor is licensed and completes training specifically for Minnesota’s state exchange (called MNSure) allowing any advisor to assist any Minnesota caller. In each of the states that have their own exchange, if out-of-state brokers are allowed, Gravie has at least one advisor that has gone through the certification requirements and can help that state’s residents with their on-exchange enrollments.
What does this mean for you? That essentially any caller, from any state, can get help from – one last time – a licensed (and certified!) Gravie advisor.
If you like this post, check out our compliance posts: Tracking the Small Business Health Care Relief Act of 2016: Why It Matters, Square Peg in a Round Hole – Compliance in the Modern World of Health Insurance, and HIPPA & MARS-E Compliance.