Informed Benefits Buyer

Informed Benefits Buyer provides independent buyer-side strategies for UK and global professionals operating in Compensation & Benefits, Reward, HR and Procurement, empowering employers to act as informed buyers rather than passive renewers.
 
Informed Benefits Buyer is typically relevant for organisations spending £1m+ annually on insured benefits, platforms and related advisory services.

Informed Benefits Buyer focuses on commercial efficiency, governance transparency and strategic alignment. Typical cost reductions range from 15%-30% of current spend.

The Informed Benefits Buyer Approach

  • IBB recognises that managing employee benefits can be unnecessarily complex. Insurer pricing models, adviser remuneration structures and governance processes often evolve incrementally without strategic reassessment.
Managing employee benefits.
Unconflicted advice
  • Even well-managed arrangements can become less effective or transparent over time. Few buyers have the time, confidence and depth of knowledge to prevent such commercial drift. This can lead to cost rises, transparency reductions and inefficiency creep.
  • The IBB independent buyer-side review is designed to determine whether your organisation’s employee benefits arrangements continue to reflect appropriate and best commercial value and strategic alignment.
Specifying the right benefits

The Challenge

The UK and global employee benefits market is complex and dominated by large advisers. Their total remuneration can be opaque, often due to supplier alliances which offer a temptation to maximise profit margin ahead of individual client objectives.  

Conflicts of interest such as consequential business arrangements and hospitality abound. Additionally, it is common for both clients and insurers to pay advisers, but without the client being aware.

The problem of employee benefits buying.

The IBB Solution

The IBB solution focuses on:

  • The major cost, risk and efficiency gains.
  • Challenging where appropriate, supporting where justified.
  • Simplifying and improving communication and trust between client and adviser.
  • Deconstructing adviser complexity where it is being used to justify fees, not outcomes.
  • Improving adviser transparency to allow your organisation to make better commercial decisions.

The IBB Buyer-Side Diagnostic Review

The Diagnostic Review uncovers the commercial, governance and structural improvements which may be possible from your current arrangements and provides a concise summary of these findings.

Areas examined include:

  • Commercial Efficiency
    Insurer pricing, adviser delivery, economic and procurement competitiveness across UK Group Risk, PMI and all types of international benefits.
  • Governance and Transparency
    Governance oversight, reporting structure complexity and transparency of adviser and insurer remuneration.
  • Market Positioning
    Are existing arrangements aligned with current market practices and your organisational priorities?

An Executive Recommendation quantifies options and provides practical recommendations about how best to implement them.

What The Diagnostic Review Can Reveal:

  • Hidden commissions, particularly within international policies
  • Adviser fee structures that don’t reflect the work involved
  • Missed opportunities for tax efficiency and risk structuring due to conflicts of interest between clients, advisers and insurers
  • Over-engineered reporting and unnecessary administration

Bringing your adviser with you

Advisers often welcome clients being more engaged and informed about their benefits.

IBB can help you understand and manage your adviser and supplier relationships whilst still obtaining best value from both.

Alternatively, you can delegate all or part of any change of plan you decide to action to IBB. 

IBB Review Types and Outcomes

UK and International
PMI Reviews

This example illustrates how long- standing, stable arrangements which had not been independently assessed for many years identified opportunities to improve pricing transparency, insurer positioning and manageable risk sharing as well as providing procurement leverage which led to a 23% cost reduction.

Review
Energy Sector Employer
730 UK employees,
700 EMEA

International Benefits
Review

Regional arrangements have often evolved inconsistently following organisational growth and acquisition activity. This review identified opportunities to simplify governance and improve insurer coordination as well as removing opacity that can exist in some arrangements.

Review
Financial Services Employer
1800 UK employees,
150 EMEA,
30 RoW

Governance &
Remuneration Review

Adviser remuneration structures and renewal governance processes can lack meaningful commercial transparency. This review supported improved governance oversight and more effective market challenge.

Review
Software Services Employer
4300 UK employees,
280 RoW in 9 locations

About Informed Benefits Buyer

Informed Benefits Buyer
Iain Taylor

IBB is a service provided by Iain Taylor Consulting (ITC). Neither IBB or ITC are Regulated Financial Advisers.

ITC and IBB are headed by Iain Taylor who has over 35 years’ financial services and employee benefits experience, both running his own company and previously working at a senior level with national and international advisers. He has a comprehensive knowledge of the industry and its practices. He recognised a market need for independent and unconflicted advice to help buyers manage insurers and advisers.

Contact

IBB intentionally operates as a small independent specialist practice undertaking a limited number of engagements each year.

Most engagements begin with a focused exploratory discussion designed to determine whether a broader review is likely to add value.

Initial discussions are informal and without obligation.

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