The Benefits Accountability Matrix
A free worksheet series for benefit plan sponsors. Four sheets, run in order, each answering a question the one before it raises.
The Benefits Accountability Matrix is a set of print worksheets for benefit plan sponsors. It exists because most benefits committees are busy, and most of that activity is aimed at the wrong end of the plan. The sheets are free, they are meant to be filled in by hand, and none of them require anything you cannot pull from your own reports. The longer argument for why they exist is in what to count before you run another RFP.
They run in order. Each one answers a question the one before it raises.
The complete set, as one booklet. All four worksheets in reading order, with a foreword, a page on how they fit together, and a notes page. Eighteen pages, formatted to print double sided.
The Benefits Accountability Matrix (BAM), the complete booklet, PDF
Or take the sheets one at a time, below.
One. What is the plan for, and what is in the way?
The Benefits Accountability Matrix is the canvas the rest sit under. Four boxes: what the program is for and how you would know it is working, what you are doing about it on a calendar, what is dragging on it, and everything you are already paying for that answers none of it.
The fourth box is the one that decides whether the exercise is worth anything, because it asks somebody to write down that a program they championed answers nothing. It is a room tool rather than a desk tool for that reason.
Download the Benefits Accountability Matrix, two pages, PDF
Benefits Accountability Matrix worksheet, PDF
Page one is a worked example. Page two is the blank sheet you fill in.
Two. Where does the money actually sit?
The Iceberg Review checks whether your cost really is concentrated in a few claimants, and by how much. Three numbers off your claims report, compared against a commercial benchmark at $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000.
By $10,000 a year the member line has reached 85% and the dollar line has reached 24%. Nearly everyone has been counted and a quarter of the money has. The other 15% of members carry the remaining 76%, and that is the part worth working.
Download the Iceberg Review, two pages, PDF
Bring a claims report on an allowed basis. Three numbers and two percentages.
Three. What is worth doing about it?
Where the leverage is ranks twelve cost levers by what each one moves as a share of total plan spend, with a separate column for how well each is measured. A lever can cut 30% off everything it reaches and still be small, and most of the sales material in this market quotes the first number while a sponsor is trying to budget the second.
It comes with a worksheet and a prompt that turns a de-identified claims extract into every row of it.
Download Where the leverage is, three pages, PDF
Where the leverage is worksheet, PDF
Page three is the addendum: what to pull from the claims file, row by row.
Four. Did any of it actually work?
The 90 Day Plan is where the other three get tested. It holds five commitments, and each line carries one named owner, one measure, and the value of that measure written down on the day you commit. 90 days later the same sheet comes back out and you record what the number actually is.
It is the only sheet here that cannot be finished in one sitting. You fill in half of it now and the other half in 90 days.
Download the 90 Day Plan, two pages, landscape, PDF
Fill in the left half the day you commit. The right half waits 90 days.
What each sheet needs from you
The matrix needs a room and an hour. The Iceberg Review needs three numbers from a claims report, on an allowed basis. The leverage sheet needs the same file cut ten ways, which is what the prompt is for, or an analyst who can do it faster than any assistant will. The 90 Day Plan needs five decisions and a date in the calendar.
None of them need a vendor, a login or a discovery call.
Why the sequence matters
Run in order, each sheet narrows the next. The matrix tells you what the plan is supposed to do, which is the only standard against which any of the rest counts as progress. The Iceberg tells you whether your problem is concentration or volume, and those two point at completely different work. The leverage sheet then ranks the work. The 90 Day Plan puts a name and a number against whichever piece of that work you actually commit to.
Run out of order they still function, but you will find yourself ranking levers before you know whether your cost is concentrated, which is how committees end up working hard on the small end of the curve.
What is still missing
A sheet for the fourth box. Everything a plan is already paying for that answers nothing, with an annual cost against each line and an honest answer about who produced the return number, which is almost always the vendor and almost always stated against billed charges rather than against what the plan paid. It is the sharpest question in the whole system and it still does not have a sheet of its own.
Until it does, that question lives inside box four of the matrix, which is where it started.
Fringe Theory is independent and unaffiliated. Views expressed are my own and do not represent those of my employer. Nothing here is legal, tax, medical, or investment advice. Figures described as modeled or derived are my own arithmetic from the public sources listed, not disclosed data.