David Thaxton, CLU, Vice President     Ross Hays, CEO         Duffy Thaxton, CLU, ChFC, President

The Elan Group was formed in 1986 when its founding members, Ross Hays Jr. and Joe Mack Thaxton, CLU, recognized that the landscape was changing in employer funded benefit plans. Thaxton and Hays, veterans in the voluntary benefits field, watched the sharp increases in benefit costs force employers to increase deductibles and co-pays in their group health plans. Many were forced to limit or stop offering additional coverage such as disability, dental, and life insurance.

The need for this coverage didn't change, the ability for the employer to fund it all did. The logical step was the development of voluntary benefit planning, a way for employees to have continued access to these plans, more conveniently, less expensively, with advantaged underwriting concessions, that don't exist away from the workplace. In the past 30 years this market has grown exponentially and The Elan Group has grown with it. Today we are a full service employee benefits firm, emphasizing employee benefits, Human Resource solutions, communication and benefit enrollment strategies/implementation, and individual insurance needs.

Three Key Principles turn "good benefits into great benefits".

The first principle is design. Design means helping employers navigate through the many benefit choices and Insurance carriers that offer benefit plans. It means negotiating pricing with the over 30 top rated Insurance companies we represent, bringing the most competitive quotes to our clients. It means strategies that help you determine where economies exist by shifting costs within your group health plan, sometimes to voluntary products. Design also means that once you have set your benefit plan for the year, how you communicate and enroll it to your employees, will take a good benefit plan and make it a great benefit plan. Communication is the key to this, and the design of your enrollment communication component is critical. .

Second is Communication. The Elan Group provides state of the art enrollment and communication. We have been at the fore front of providing electronic enrollments for our clients for years. To us, electronic enrollment means more than simply meeting with employees and enrolling their core and voluntary benefits by computer. It means helping the client design the E-enrollment communication system they need, which best fits their particular situation.

This can mean a design using the clients existing benefit administration and enrollment platform, or a design where our online portal provides the platform, housed outside our client's computer system, but which can be personalized to reflect your company's unique brand, and serves as the clients comprehensive benefit management and communication system. These designs can include self service enrollment, call center and/or assisted individual appointment enrollments. All designs include the communication, collection, and transfer of employee benefit choices to HR, payroll, and the various selected Insurance carriers. Designs can also include, plan comparison tools, multilingual support, personalized benefits information, and educational videos on demand. Billing administration and adjudication are also available.

The third principle is Service. We believe we provide service that is second to none. Our enrollment systems provide payroll and data integration, workflow management, employee communication portals, single source billing for multiple carrier clients, with premium adjudication, and of course claims assistance. They also provide ongoing HR benefits management year round.

For many of our larger clients we house full time 24/7 benefit counselors on site, for use by HR departments for new hire orientations, benefit communications and enrollments, and other HR tasks directed by the client. We provide toll free phone access, where employees speak with an Elan Group employee and not a recording, and of course provide web access through our web site at www.elan-group.com

It's easy to say you provide superior service. We invite you to contact our clients to ask their opinions. Some we have serviced for over 30 years.