HealthPlan Services Announces Partnership With Beazley Accident & Health Insurance

TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthPlan Services, (HPS), the nation's leading technology and administrative services provider for the insurance and managed care markets, announced today that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Beazley Accident & Health Insurance to provide comprehensive business process services.

Under the agreement, HPS will provide a full range of services, including sales, case level underwriting, enrollment, billing, claims and member retention supporting Disability, Accident, Critical Illness and other products. Most notably, HPS will provide Beazley's customers and agents with access to online enrollment as well as integration of multiple products for streamlined quoting and billing.

"We are confident that HPS is the right partner for Beazley," said Paul Gulstrand, Head of Beazley's U.S. Accident & Health Insurance. "We are excited to align with a world-class administrator that has a strong reputation with producers, solid credibility in the marketplace, broad expertise in the industry and a longstanding commitment to quality."  

Adds Jeff Bak, President and CEO, HPS: "Beazley is a growing company that prides itself on its responsiveness and taking a collaborative approach with its partners and producers. We are pleased it has selected HPS to help manage its expansion into all 50 states in the U.S. market.  We are confident that our industry expertise, proven best practices and proprietary technologies and processes will enable Beazley to integrate into the group and voluntary markets rapidly and successfully."

Beazley Accident & Health Insurance is a division of Beazley Insurance Company, Inc. (BICI), which writes approximately $1.75 billion in annual premiums and maintains policyholders' surplus in excess of $400 million.

As an insurer and reinsurer, Beazley is nimble enough to help brokers and other intermediaries develop profitable business opportunities and stable enough to commit to long-term collaborations. It accomplishes this by focusing on custom solutions and gap protection products in the accident and health niches. These products have taken on new prominence in the wake of healthcare reform, which brings coverage to millions but at a high cost to employers. By focusing on gap coverage, Beazley offers employees valuable protection against life's uncertainties and employers the means to foster loyalty by broadening benefit options.

About Beazley Accident & Health Insurance

Beazley Accident & Health Insurance offers custom solutions for a broad spectrum of risks.  Our suite of gap protection products includes Critical Illness, Short Term Disability, Short Duration Disability, Personal Accident and Corporate AD&D/Business Travel Accident, as well as Reinsurance.  Additional gap protection products are in development and will be launched later this year.  

Beazley includes the issuing company of Beazley Insurance Company, Inc. (BICI), rated A by A.M. Best. Its parent company, Beazley Group, was established in 1986 as a specialist insurer and reinsurer.  Headquartered in London, the company has operations in Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S., and manages five Lloyd's of London syndicates — all rated A by A.M. Best.  Beazley has decades of experience underwriting accident and health insurance and reinsurance, with extensive access to global risk partners.

Beazley Accident & Health Insurance is based in Minneapolis.  For more information, visit www.beazley.com/accident&health.

About HealthPlan Services

HealthPlan Services (HPS), a Water Street Healthcare Partners affiliate, is the largest independent provider of service and technology solutions to the insurance and managed care industry. Since 1970, HPS has offered customized administration and distribution services to insurers of individual, small group, voluntary and association plans, as well as providing valuable solutions to thousands of brokers and agents that sell into this market. HPS' proprietary, scalable technology provides innovative consumer-facing solutions that are turnkey self-service tools for our insurance carriers and distribution partners. HPS offers an ever-expanding array of services to a diverse and growing client base, and administers products that include medical (PPO, HMO, indemnity, consumer-driven), dental, vision, life, disability, cancer, critical illness, accident, long term care, limited medical, as well as various other ancillary insurance. HPS is committed to providing extraordinary service to its customers. For more information about HPS, visit www.healthplan.com.

About Water Street

Water Street Healthcare Partners is a strategic private equity firm focused exclusively on healthcare.  The firm has a strong record of building market-leading companies across key growth sectors in healthcare.  It has partnered with some of the world's leading healthcare companies on its investments including: Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Smith & Nephew.  Water Street's team is comprised of industry executives and private equity professionals with decades of experience investing in and operating global healthcare businesses.  The firm is headquartered in Chicago.  For more information about Water Street, visit www.wshp.com.

Coverage is available through appropriately licensed brokers and may not be available in all jurisdictions. Beazley includes the issuing company Beazley Insurance Company, Inc. (BICI) for admitted products, rated A by A.M. Best.

SOURCE HealthPlan Services