For Your Business
Christ Taylor is an independent employee benefits brokerage based in Houston. We work directly with business owners, HR leaders, and C-suite executives to build benefit strategies that directly fit each company's goals, budget, and culture.
Whether you're evaluating a level-funded approach, looking at PEO options, or trying to stabilize rising renewal costs, we bring clarity to every decision. Our work goes beyond quoting plans -- we handle implementation, employee education, compliance, and renewals. Every client and employee has direct access to their advisor, not a call center.
What We Offer
Health insurance is the benefit employees value most, and for most employers, it represents the largest share of the benefits budget. The available plan designs have stayed fairly consistent over time. What has changed is the way employers can fund them.
The traditional options remain widely used. A health maintenance organization (HMO) controls costs by keeping care within a defined network and coordinating it through a primary care physician. A preferred provider organization (PPO) carries higher premiums but gives employees more freedom to see specialists and use out-of-network providers. An exclusive provider organization (EPO) falls between the two. A high-deductible health plan paired with a health savings account (HSA) trades a lower premium for greater out-of-pocket responsibility, while allowing employees to set aside tax-free funds they own and keep from year to year.
For many small and mid-sized Texas employers, a fully insured plan remains the right choice. The premium is fixed, the carrier assumes the risk, and the cost is predictable. That predictability carries real value, particularly for younger or smaller groups.
The Affordable Care Act is no longer the uncertain landscape it once was. Its rules are now well established. What remains is the ongoing compliance work they require, from federal reporting to affordability testing, and this is where an experienced broker proves their worth.
Our role is not to advocate for one model. We review your group, your claims history, and your tolerance for risk, then recommend the structure that fits your business. In some cases that is the plan you already have. Increasingly, it is an approach built differently.
Every group medical plan is built on one of two foundations. An employer either pays a carrier to assume the risk or takes on a portion of that risk directly. The choice should be made deliberately. Each approach carries its own administrative requirements, cost structure, and reasons to choose it.
Under a fully insured plan, the carrier collects a fixed premium and keeps whatever it does not pay out in claims. When a group stays healthy, those savings remain with the carrier. Under a self-funded plan, the employer pays claims directly, nearly always with stop-loss insurance limiting exposure in a severe year, and the savings from a healthy year remain with the employer.
For many years, this structure was practical only for large employers who could absorb an unfavorable claims year. That is no longer the case. Level-funded plans now extend the same model to groups as small as a few employees. The employer pays a fixed monthly amount that covers expected claims, administration, and stop-loss coverage. If claims come in low, a portion may be refunded. If they run high, the stop-loss provides protection. The result pairs the predictability of a fixed monthly cost with access to savings that previously stayed with the carrier.
The tradeoff is greater involvement. The employer gains access to actual claims data, enabling it to manage costs rather than estimate them. The employer does have greater direct exposure in a difficult year, which is exactly what the stop-loss coverage is designed to address. For the right group, this is the difference between leasing a benefits program and building one.
Vision coverage is easy to overlook, yet it offers value well beyond its modest cost. It encourages employees to maintain routine eye care and helps offset the costs of exams, lenses, and frames. A routine eye exam also reveals more than vision problems. It can surface early signs of conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, often before other symptoms appear. When those conditions are caught early, they are easier and less costly to treat, benefiting both the employee and the medical plan.
Dental coverage is one of the most appreciated benefits an employer can offer, and one of the most affordable. Employees place real value on solid dental care, and its low cost makes it one of the simplest ways to strengthen a package. The value runs deeper than routine cleanings. Oral health is closely tied to overall health, and regular dental visits can catch problems before they turn into serious and costly medical issues. Treating dental as an optional line item often costs more in the long run, both in avoidable medical claims and in the difficulty of attracting and keeping good people without a competitive benefits package.
Employer-sponsored life insurance can be structured in several ways. An employer may offer term coverage, permanent coverage, or both, and the cost structure can vary from one plan to the next. Some employers cover the full premium, some pass it to employees, and others split it.
The most common arrangement is a group-term policy provided at no cost to the employee, with coverage set at a multiple of annual salary, often 1 to 5 times pay. Group-term coverage usually ends when an employee leaves the company, though many plans let the employee convert or continue the policy on their own afterward. It is an affordable benefit for employers to offer and a meaningful one for employees, with the main limitation being that the coverage is tied to employment.
Many employers who offer such a group-term policy also offer additional voluntary coverage options, in which the employee pays the full cost but still realizes the benefit of group rates and payroll deductions. Additional coverages offered may include:
Short-term disability coverage replaces a portion of an employee's income when an injury or illness keeps them out of work for a limited time. Benefits usually begin within one to fifteen days of the qualifying event and pay either a fixed weekly amount or a set percentage of regular income. It covers the gap that paid time off rarely reaches, keeping employees financially stable while they recover.
Long-term disability coverage takes over when a serious condition keeps an employee out of work for an extended period. It pays a set percentage of regular income after a waiting period, which is often when short-term disability benefits run out, typically after three to six months. LTD protects employees through an extended disability during their working years, and many employers include it as part of a standard benefits package.
Plan lengths vary. Some pay benefits for a set period, often between two and ten years, while others continue through retirement age.
What We Offer
Voluntary benefits let employees add coverage beyond their core plan, paid entirely through their own payroll deductions. Because the employee typically covers the premium, an employer can broaden the package without adding to its own benefit costs.
These plans tend to cover the gaps a standard package leaves open. Common options include accident insurance, critical illness coverage, hospital indemnity plans, and additional life or disability coverage. Employees get group rates and the convenience of payroll deductions, which usually beats what they could arrange on their own.
Christ Taylor can help you design a customized benefits package that gives your employees streamlined access to both traditional and nontraditional voluntary options.
A health savings account lets an employee set money aside for medical expenses and benefit from strong tax treatment along the way. It pairs with a qualified high-deductible health plan and belongs to the employee rather than the employer, so the account and its balance follow them even if they change jobs.
The tax treatment is what sets an HSA apart. Money goes in with a tax advantage, the balance grows tax-free, and withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are not taxed. Unused funds roll over from one year to the next, so nothing is lost by leaving a balance in the account.
Any adult can have an HSA if you:
Contributions can come from the employee, the employer, or both, up to a limit the IRS sets each year. Contributions an employee makes on their own are tax-deductible, even without itemizing. Contributions made through an employer's payroll are typically taken pre-tax, so they already carry their own tax advantage.
A Section 125 plan, often called a cafeteria plan, lets employees pay for certain benefits with pre-tax dollars. That lowers an employee's taxable income, and because those contributions are not subject to payroll tax, it lowers the employer's payroll tax burden as well. Without a Section 125 plan in place, employees would have to cover the same benefits with after-tax dollars.
The arrangement rests on Section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code, which lets an employer offer a choice between cash and qualified benefits without the value of those benefits being taxed as income. The tax mechanics sit in the background. What employees and employers actually see is simpler: the same benefits cost less.
A flexible spending account lets employees set aside pre-tax dollars to pay out-of-pocket costs not covered by the health plan. There are two common types. A health FSA covers medical, dental, and vision expenses such as copays, prescriptions, and glasses. A dependent care FSA covers eligible childcare and adult care costs, helping an employee stay in the workforce.
Because the money goes in before taxes, the employee lowers their taxable income, and the employer reduces its payroll tax on those contributions. With a health FSA, the full annual election is available from the first day of the plan year, even though contributions come out of each paycheck over time. An employee can draw on the whole amount early in the year if they need to.
The main tradeoff is the use-it-or-lose-it rule. FSA funds generally have to be spent within the plan year. Some plans soften this with a limited carryover into the next year or a short grace period, but not both. The annual contribution limits are set by the IRS.
One point that trips people up: a general health FSA and a health savings account (HSA) usually cannot be used at the same time. An employee contributing to an HSA would need a limited-purpose FSA instead, which covers dental and vision only.
What We Offer
With the exception of health insurance, retirement plans are the benefit employees desire most. The good news is that business owners have a variety of plan options from which to choose.
Defined Contribution Plans allow employers and employees to contribute a set amount or percentage of pay, and retirement benefits are based on the actual performance of the funds. These plans give employers the ability to control costs because the contribution is defined. The amount an employee can contribute is based on a percentage of their salary up to a maximum amount defined by law. Defined contribution plans can take many forms.
401(k) plans help employees save for retirement by allowing them to set aside a portion of their salary that is often matched in whole or in part by their employers. Employees can select where they want to invest their funds and they are not taxed on this income until withdrawals are made. Employers’ costs are a tax-deductible business expense. Sometimes employers elect to integrate the 401(k) plan with a discretionary profit-sharing plan that can increase the employer’s retirement contribution for employees.
This option is for employers with 100 employees or fewer who do not maintain any other retirement plan. It allows an employee to contribute a percentage of his or her salary up to a fixed maximum to an individual retirement account (IRA). The employer may also make contributions on a fixed or matching basis, which are tax deductible. SIMPLE plans are easy to set up, require minimal paperwork,and have low administrative costs. Plus, employees retain their SIMPLE account when they change jobs.
Created with the small business owner in mind, SEP’s allow employers to set up IRAs for themselves and their employees. The employer contributes a percentage to each employee’s salary each year, up to a fixed maximum, and those contributions are tax deductible. SEPs have low administrative costs, and can even be started by those who are self-employed. Since the business owner can decide how much to contribute each year, this type of plan is often the answer for businesses that my want to adjust their contributions based on the health of the business.
Commonly known as pension plans, require employers to pay a fixed annual amount to eligible employees, during their retirement years. These allow employers a high degree of tax savings, and in good times, favorable growth rates can reduce or eliminate the employer’s contribution. However, they can be costly to administer and may require higher contributions in times of poor or negative investment returns. For employees, they provide the greatest degree of retirement income certainty since they take on virtually no risk.
Whether you are shopping group benefits for your team, turning 65 and sorting out Medicare, or looking at life insurance for the first time, we are happy to spend some time walking through it with you.
