Many people want to know how to best compare Association and Custom Benefits Plans. These Health and Dental Plans for employees come in all shapes and sizes and offer access to affordable, health and dental coverage for many of the expenses not covered by your provincial health care plan. These affordable plans are designed to fit your family’s health needs and your budget. They covers many day-to-day extended health care expenses like dental appointments, prescription drugs and eyeglasses. They can also protect you from unexpected medical costs.
At its core, an Association Benefits Plan is simply a Custom Benefits Plan that has been set up by an Association as a benefit of membership for its members to optionally participate in. Because it is a set plan there is minimal flexibility within the plan for the individual members to have their own unique coverage. However, such plans typically have a few set options so that members can select the level of coverage they want within predefined parameters. In this way smaller companies and sole-proprietors can participate in a group plan which would be out of their reach if they tried to set up their own Custom Benefits Plan. There is typically cost savings to this plan when compared to an individual plan purchased elsewhere.
Many do not realize that a Custom Benefits Plan can be created for a company with as few as 3 employees if it meets the right criteria. Still many small companies find that it is better to wait until they have 5 or more employees before they put together their own plan if they are able to take advantage of their associations’ plan and they are happy with the coverage it provides.
The following gives a broad comparison of what to expect with these two approaches to Health and Dental Plans:
Who Are These Plans For |
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Association Benefits Plan |
Custom Benefits Plan |
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Advantages |
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Association Benefits Plan |
Custom Benefits Plan |
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Required Benefits |
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Association Benefits Plan |
Custom Benefits Plan |
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Life Insurance and Accidental Death and Dismemberment can be set up with either a flat amount in a denomination that makes sense for the average needs or based on one times or two times annual earnings. | |||||||||||||||||
Dependents Life Insurance provides a small amount of coverage (ie. $10,000) on your spouse, and half that amount on each dependent child. | |||||||||||||||||
Extended Health Coverage for yourself and your family. The plan is usually set up with three options that can be chosen from such as:
This benefit can be set up to pay most items that Provincial Medical does not pay for such as:
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Extended Health Coverage for yourself and your family. Since it is customized to your needs there are numerous options and combinations available.This benefit can be designed to include all or some of the items that Provincial Medical does not pay for including:
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Optional Benefits for Each Group |
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Association Benefits Plan |
Custom Benefits Plan |
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Dental Care is available for yourself and your dependents. The plan is usually set up with three options such as:
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Dental Care is available for yourself and your dependents. You can customize the plan in any way that you want with varying deductibles for different services such as:
The other ways you can customize your benefits is by setting custom recall exam periods and custom annual maximum coverage limits. |
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Short Term Disability is a benefit that pays a percentage of your earnings if you cannot work by reason of accident or illness. Benefits begin on the 15th day of either accident or illness and continue for up to 15 weeks (or earlier recovery) paying 66 2/3% of net weekly earnings (after business expenses are deducted.) | |||||||||||||||||
Long Term Disability is provided to help you replace your earnings should you be unable to work by reason of accident or illness. Benefits begin after you have been off work for 17 weeks, or when your Short Term Disability benefits expire (if you have chosen this benefit). For both the Short Term and Long Term Disability plans, the income is usually set up to render the benefit tax-free at time of collection. | |||||||||||||||||
Critical Illness is available to pay you a tax free lump sum if you are diagnosed with and survive any one of a variety of conditions such as:
The *Top Four conditions are usually covered on a basic plan and a long list of additional ones on a comprehensive plan. |
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Employee Assistance Programs are a very new innovation for group insurance. They are designed to prevent ill health by offering employees access to services such as:
All services provided are confidentially administered with the employer never knowing that such services were utilized. |
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Choose A Plan Today |
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Set up an Association Benefits Plan by contacting us to discuss how. | Set up A Custom Benefits Plan for your Company by using our online form. |