This position will report to the Director of Software Engineering.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (May 6, 2013) New data from employees using Bloom Health’s defined contribution private exchange shows how more choice and personalization through private exchanges results in many employees selecting benefit packages that are better aligned with their healthcare needs, risk tolerance, and financial flexibility.

In 2012, 66 percent of Bloom Health’s defined contribution private exchange customers opted to increase their take-home pay by choosing less rich coverage than they had prior to using the Bloom platform—when they had fewer choices and little, if any, decision support.  During the same time, 11 percent of Bloom’s customers chose to invest in richer coverage than they previously had, and 23 percent chose benefit levels similar to what they already had.

Bloom customers made their benefit decisions with the help of a robust decision-support tool, driven by a proprietary survey and recommendation engine.

“After more than three years in the industry, our experience and data shows that when you give people the ability to make personal decisions about the benefits that best fit their needs, there is a real opportunity for savings and increased take-home pay for employees,” said Bloom Health CEO Simeon Schindelman.  In fact, premium contributions for employees using the Bloom solution are 20 percent below the national average.

The employee savings are especially notable given that employees’ contributions to health insurance premiums have grown 167 percent since 2000 (Kaiser Employer Health Benefits Survey, 2012), compared to wage growth of just 39 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics) over the same period.

“When we give employees choice and control over their wage vs. coverage tradeoff, our data clearly shows that they overwhelmingly choose to increase take-home pay.  This could help reverse a decade-plus duration during which wages have been relatively stagnant, in large part due to the cost of health benefits,” Bloom’s Schindelman said.

For more information on Bloom Health’s defined contribution private exchange platform, go to www.gobloomhealth.com.

About Bloom Health

Bloom Health is a leader in the defined contribution health benefits marketplace, committed to assisting employers of all sizes move toward an employer-sponsored system that has effective cost predictability for employers and increased choice and personalization for employees. Bloom Health was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Minneapolis.

So, what does an actuary do? Essentially, traditional actuaries put a price tag on risk and uncertainty. For insurance companies, risk and uncertainty means not knowing the magnitude of their members’ future insurance claims. Prior to working at Bloom, I worked for a health insurance company and performed the more traditional tasks of valuing this risk and uncertainty. Now, working as an actuary at Bloom, my role is taking me in new creative directions.

What do Bloom actuaries do?

• Demonstrate the Bloom Solution: Analysis performed by Bloom actuaries is vital to communicating how our private exchange solution brings value to employers and their employees. Especially important is our financial analysis that models a client’s shift from the defined benefit world to the defined contribution world. The tool Bloom has built allows us to guide clients through the actuarial analysis, which illustrates the financial implications for the employer, shareholders, and employees. Explaining the analysis and benefits is exciting and rewarding—it’s also something most actuaries don’t have the opportunity to experience.

• Help Tell Our Story: We have a great story to tell about how we’re changing the employee benefits landscape, and the most impactful stories are those supported by facts. The actuaries at Bloom are relied upon to be data experts; it is our job to track and analyze the types of products our members are electing on Bloom’s Private Exchange Platform. Our solution creates the marketplace, and our members ultimately decide which plan design is best. The actuaries gather, report, and make sense of our members’ decisions to help other areas of Bloom continually innovate our products. The proof that our solution works is in the numbers, just ask the actuaries!

• Keep an Eye on Washington: The Affordable Care Act (“Healthcare Reform”) is changing the way people will buy insurance and the way employers might offer it – not only does a Bloom actuary need to understand relevant legislation and forecast its impact on clients, but they also need to anticipate how any law changes would impact an insurer.

While being an actuary brings its own unique set of responsibilities, my time at Bloom has been an exciting transition from traditional actuarial duties to solving new challenges that a private exchange solution brings.

-Luke Brehmer, Bloom Actuary

Responsibilities include directing development, leadership through coaching and mentoring, growing our software engineering team and partnering with our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to advise on strategic technology decisions and implementations Bloom is responsible for.

The Director of Software Engineering will report to our CTO and will play a large role in the construction and definition of our software applications; including consumer-facing websites, operations management applications and internal software systems.