How does Service 1st Benefits support my business during open enrollment?

We personally manage the entire open enrollment process — from educating employees to handling enrollment forms and answering plan questions. Our goal is to make open enrollment smooth and stress-free for everyone.

Can employees contact you directly for help?

Yes. Employees can reach out to us anytime for questions about claims, coverage, ID cards, or plan details. We act as your team’s benefits partner, not just your broker.

What size businesses do you work with?

We specialize in serving small and medium-sized businesses, typically ranging from 1–200 employees. If you’re growing or planning to expand, we help scale your benefits as your team grows.

Do you handle communication with insurance carriers for us?

Absolutely. We take care of claims issues, employee changes, renewals, and any carrier communication so you don’t have to spend hours on hold.

Do you offer voluntary or supplemental benefits?

Yes. We can provide optional add-ons like disability, accident, or critical illness insurance to enhance your benefits package at little or no cost to the employer.

What types of group benefits do you offer?

We provide comprehensive group health, dental, vision, and life insurance options for small and medium-sized businesses. We help you compare plans, handle enrollment, and manage carrier communication.

What information do you need to provide a quote?

We typically need: Number of employees Basic employee census (age, gender, ZIP code) Current plan (if applicable) Desired benefits or coverage goals We keep the process as simple as possible.

Do you charge fees for your services?

No. Our services — including plan comparison, open enrollment, and year-round support — are provided at no additional cost to your business.

Stop-Loss Insurance Explained: The Safety Net Behind Level-Funded and Self-Funded Plans

Charlie Hopgood

Sep 1

4 min read

If your business is on a level-funded or self-funded health plan, there's a piece working quietly in the background that most employers never look at closely: stop-loss insurance. It's the mechanism that keeps one bad claims year from becoming a financial crisis — and it's often the reason those funding models can cost less than fully insured coverage in the first place.

In this article, we'll explain what stop-loss insurance actually does, the difference between specific and aggregate coverage, and the contract details worth understanding before you sign — not just accept off a proposal.

What Stop-Loss Insurance Actually Does

Stop-loss insurance caps your business's exposure to claims costs. Instead of your company absorbing unlimited risk on a level-funded or self-funded plan, a stop-loss carrier agrees to pick up costs once claims cross a set threshold.

There are two types, and most plans carry both:

Specific stop-loss protects you against one unusually large claim from a single person — a major surgery, a NICU stay, an ongoing cancer treatment. Without it, one catastrophic claim could wipe out a year's healthcare budget on its own.
Aggregate stop-loss protects you if your group's total claims for the year, added up across everyone, run higher than expected — even if no single claim was catastrophic. This is what protects against "a little worse than normal, across the board" rather than one dramatic event.

Why Level-Funded Plans Lean on It

Level-funded plans work by having you pay a fixed monthly amount that bundles your premium-equivalent, administrative fees, and an estimate of expected claims. Stop-loss coverage is what makes that fixed number possible in the first place — the carrier is willing to let you pay a predictable amount each month because stop-loss picks up the risk once actual claims cross a set line, called the attachment point.

Without stop-loss behind it, a level-funded arrangement wouldn't be meaningfully different from full self-funding, where your business carries unlimited claims risk directly.

The Number That Actually Matters: Your Attachment Point

Your attachment point is where stop-loss coverage kicks in. It applies at two levels:

Your specific attachment point (often called the specific deductible) is the dollar amount one individual's claims have to cross before that person's claims are covered by stop-loss instead of your plan.
Your aggregate attachment point is the total claims dollar amount your whole group has to cross before aggregate stop-loss starts covering the overage.

Set either attachment point too low, and you're paying more in stop-loss premium than the protection is worth. Set it too high, and you're carrying more risk than your business can comfortably absorb in a genuinely bad year. This is a number worth understanding on its own terms, not a line item to skim past in a renewal proposal.

What to Watch for When You Renew or Change Carriers

A few contract details matter more than most employers realize, especially at renewal:

Lasers

If someone on your plan is a known high-cost risk — currently in treatment for an expensive condition, for example — a stop-loss carrier may apply a laser: a higher specific deductible that applies only to that individual. A plan's standard specific deductible might be one number, but a lasered employee's threshold could be set significantly higher, which means your business carries more of that person's risk directly. Some stop-loss contracts include "no-laser" guarantees at renewal; others don't. Worth knowing which kind you have.

Run-In and Run-Out Provisions

Claims don't always get incurred and paid in the same policy period. A run-in provision determines whether claims incurred under a previous policy still get picked up by your new stop-loss carrier — this matters most for a business moving into self-funding or level-funding for the first time. A run-out provision determines how long after your policy year ends a claim incurred during that year can still be paid and covered. Gaps in either provision can leave real claims uncovered by either the old or new carrier.

Why This Matters Even If You're Fully Insured Today

If you've never been on a level-funded or self-funded plan, stop-loss might sound irrelevant to you right now. But it's frequently the exact mechanism that makes those funding models cost less than fully insured coverage in a normal year — the carrier isn't taking on unlimited risk, so it doesn't have to price for the worst case the way a fully insured premium does. Understanding stop-loss is part of understanding whether a funding switch would actually make sense for your business, not just a detail to learn after you've already switched.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign

What are our specific and aggregate attachment points, in plain dollar terms?
Does anyone on our plan currently have a laser applied, and what's that threshold?
What run-in and run-out provisions does this contract include?
Is there a no-laser guarantee at renewal, or can lasers be added later?

Final Thoughts

Stop-loss isn't a detail to skim past in a proposal — it's the mechanism that makes level-funded and self-funded plans work, and the attachment point (plus the laser and run-in/run-out provisions behind it) determines how much risk your business is actually taking on. If you're evaluating a funding switch, or renewing a plan that already has stop-loss coverage, those are worth understanding in specifics, not just in concept.