November 22, 2019 by Jason Contant
With the growing need from Canadian businesses for cross-border expertise, clients are often looking for a complete solution to cover all their employees, Hub International told Canadian Underwriter recently.
“What we are hearing from our clients that have employees in the U.S. is that they want a holistic approach for their benefits cross border and they want to deal with a single organization that can serve them in both markets (and beyond for those clients that have a global footprint),” Faizal Mitha, chief innovation officer of Canadian employee benefits at Hub, said Wednesday.
“What we often find is that employers have a hard time establishing what is fair and equitable for benefits in new markets beyond Canada that line up with their overall benefits and compensation goals.”
Mitha discussed cross border solutions with Canadian Underwriter following Hub’s announcement Nov. 12 that it was expanding its Canadian employee benefits and retirement solution with six strategic service areas: pharmacy, total health, retirement, communications, digital, and cross-border. Hub has acquired about two dozen Canadian employee benefits firms over the past two years.
Hub said in a press release that it is leveraging its geographic footprint to provide easy access to support and an efficient path to complete coverage solutions that many Canadian and U.S. businesses desire on either side of the border.
“It all starts with common leadership and alignment across the country with our Canadian advisors and their U.S. counterparts, who work closely together to help our clients with sound advice, cost management and an eye towards trends in the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage,” Mitha said. Mike Barone leads both the Canadian and U.S. benefits consulting team.
Hub chose the specific six services areas as they were aligned with feedback from clients and its advisor group “as well as some of the success stories from the U.S. which were applicable in Canada,” Mitha said. “The goal was to create a competitive advantage for our clients in areas such as employee engagement, cost savings, administrative efficiencies and greater flexibility. The early results have been very promising thus far and 2020 is going to be even more promising,” Mitha predicted.
Besides cross-border, the other service areas include:
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