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Benefits March 2, 2010
Hewitt Finds Online Resources More Popular for Enrollment Season
March 2, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The 2009 enrollment season highlighted the increasing importance of online tools and support to assist employees in optimizing their benefits selection, according to Hewitt Associates.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
A review of Hewitt’s Total Benefit Administration platform activity found that among those participants who actively signed up for their benefits, the vast majority (88%) did so online via Hewitt’s Your Benefits Resources (YBR), up 12% from 2008. In addition, use of Hewitt’s online decision-support tools, including health plan comparisons, cost estimators, and customized portal and guidance solutions, increased by as much as 18 percentage points over 2008, according to a news release.
The firm’s YBR portal handled an average of 4.4 million Internet page requests a day during the most recent annual enrollment season, with a single day peak of 9.6 million.
In addition, Hewitt reported its call center managed more than 54,000 calls a day, peaking at nearly 140,000 participant calls in a single day. The press release said that between the months of October 2009 and December 2009, 2.6 million employees actively chose their heath care benefits regardless if they changed coverage – the highest number since Hewitt began tracking enrollments in 2003, and up from 2.3 million in 2008.
Hewitt’s Total Benefit Administration platform – which offers defined contribution, defined benefits, and health and welfare services – handled health care enrollment for nearly six million participants across 153 companies, representing 21 industries during the 2009 annual enrollment season.