A Texas building-trades contractor, about 130 employees

Three carriers in three years, the same broker throughout, and a change in how that broker is paid: about $6,000 a year or less on the medical contract through 2022, about $45,000 in 2024, most of it carrier overrides and bonuses rather than commission, split between the broker and a second firm.

Year by year, from the filings

*The 2024 contract bundles medical, dental, vision and pharmacy, so its premium and lives are not comparable with earlier years. The 2021 to 2023 contracts also carried dental (and vision in 2021 and 2022), which accounts for a small part of the per-person rise. Carriers are shown as letters. Dollar figures are rounded, and headcounts are rounded to the nearest 10. Peer group: 52 Texas electrical, plumbing/HVAC and building-systems contractors with 75 to 300 employees on a fully insured medical plan, from the same DOL files. Medians: $6,094 premium per employee, broker pay 5.3% of medical premium, $29 per employee per month.

Three facts from the public record

1. The price per covered person rose 76% in four years on the main health contract, from about $3,000 in 2019 to about $5,200 in 2023, while covered lives fell from about 210 to about 160 and the employee count held between about 100 and 120.
2. Through 2022 the medical contract paid the broker almost nothing. The broker may have been paid some other way, such as a fee billed to the company or pay on the ancillary lines, which the Schedule A does not capture.
3. In 2024, about $40,000 of the $45,000 was “override” and “bonus,” most of it to the broker and the rest to a second brokerage. An override is paid by the carrier to the agency on top of the producer’s commission; it never appears on an invoice, which is why the law requires it to be disclosed in writing.

What the public record cannot show

• What the company paid its broker directly in 2019 to 2022, if anything.
• Claims across three carriers, and whether the 76% was the group’s own experience or the market.
• The medical premium on its own inside the 2024 bundled contract.

Three questions a CFO can ask the broker today

1. May we have the written compensation disclosure for the plan, every payee, including overrides and bonuses, in dollars?
2. Why were the two carrier moves made, what did each outgoing carrier offer, and what did the alternatives quote?
3. In the next renewal, may we see medical, dental and vision priced separately?

None of these questions costs anything or changes anything. They put what the plan’s fiduciary is supposed to know on paper.

From the company’s Form 5500 and Schedule A filings with the U.S. Department of Labor, as published in the DOL’s public datasets. Real companies from the public filings. Figures rounded and details removed so they can’t be traced. Exact rows on request. Advisory analysis, not legal or tax advice.

Previous: Study 4 · All six studies · Next: Study 6, A normal plan for half the people