Our why
Trinity Risk Partners was founded by people who worked on the carrier side and inside a national brokerage. We know how a renewal gets built, who it gets built for, and what usually goes unsaid in the meeting where it is presented. This firm exists to put that knowledge on your side of the table.
At a glance
Trinity Risk Partners is an independent, privately held employee benefits agency based in Fort Worth, Texas. We advise small and mid sized employers on how to fund and manage their health plans, including fully insured, level funded, self funded, and group captive arrangements, and we rebuild renewals line by line through a five part methodology called the Risk Analysis Plan.
Where we come from
Most of what an employer is told about their insurance program is shaped by people who have only ever stood on one side of it. Our background covers both.
Carrier side. Time spent inside an insurance company teaches you that a renewal is not a fact. It is a construction. There is a claims period someone chose, a trend factor someone applied, a credibility weighting someone decided on, and a set of fees that were never itemised. Knowing where those levers sit changes what you can ask for.
National brokerage. Time spent inside a large brokerage teaches you how the other half works. How accounts get tiered, how revenue targets travel down to the producer, why some markets get approached first, and why a smaller employer's renewal so often arrives as a packet rather than an analysis.
In our case, that means time at Cigna on the carrier side and at USI on the brokerage side.
What we saw
None of what follows is a secret and none of it is illegal. It is simply how a great deal of this industry is now structured, and structure decides behaviour. It is worth understanding before you decide who should be advising you.
A large share of this industry now answers to public shareholders or to private equity sponsors. Those owners are entitled to a return and they are entitled to ask for it on a schedule. The schedule belongs to the quarter, not to your renewal.
Every layer between your dollar and a paid claim takes something. Some of that is earned work and some of it is simply margin that has never had to justify itself, because it is quoted as one number and presented as a market rate.
Carrier bonuses, overrides, and contingent compensation are legal and disclosable, and they are also real money that moves with where business is placed and how it performs. When an agency is paid more for steering volume one direction, the advice and the incentive are no longer pointed at the same thing.
Acquisitions are financed, and financing has to be serviced. That pressure tends to arrive as centralised service teams, standardised offerings, and a strong preference for larger accounts. Smaller and mid sized employers are usually the first to feel it.
Why we started this
Trinity Risk Partners is independent and privately held. No outside investor holds a return target that arrives before your renewal does. No parent company sets a production requirement that makes one carrier's quote more attractive to us than another's. The people you meet are the people who stay on the account.
That structure is the whole point. It does not make us right about your program, and we would not ask you to take it on faith. What it does is remove the reasons an advisor might have to be wrong on purpose, which leaves us with a simpler job: read the plan carefully, explain what we find in language you can act on, and recommend what we would recommend if it were our own money.
In practice
A renewal arrives as a conclusion: a percentage, a new rate sheet, and a deadline. Underneath it sit a claims period, a trend assumption, a stop loss contract, and a pharmacy agreement, none of which are usually presented alongside the number they produced.
Reading them is the work. The annotations here are the sort of questions we would put to an underwriter before anyone signs anything.
The Risk Analysis PlanIs that trend, or one claim year the carrier never credibility weighted?
On whom, at what level, and for how many contract years?
Not stated is not the same as zero. Where is it going?
Figures shown are illustrative and do not describe a specific client.
What we write
Our practice
Fully insured, level funded, self funded, and captive programs, each explained in terms of the risk you are actually taking. Plus claims and underwriting analysis, pharmacy contract review, and the employee education that decides whether a good plan ever gets used.
The methodology
Five components, run in order, that rebuild your renewal from the inside so you can see which assumptions are producing the number.
Who we work with
These are the employers who most often go without real analysis, not because their programs are simpler, but because they rarely have a benefits department to run one. The person handling this is usually a controller, an owner, or an HR generalist with several other jobs, and the work deserves the same rigour a much larger employer would receive.
Industry matters less than claims history, cash position, and how much variability an organisation is comfortable carrying. We are based in Fort Worth and we write business wherever we are licensed, so geography is rarely the deciding factor.
Free book
A former underwriter's guide to what your health plan really costs. Eighteen short chapters on networks, PBMs, how underwriters price your group, funding, stop loss, broker pay, and running a renewal the right way, each ending with the questions to ask. No email required.
Common questions
Trinity Risk Partners is an independent, privately held insurance agency in Fort Worth, Texas that works only in employee benefits. It helps small and mid sized employers decide how to fund their health plan, and it takes renewals apart line by line so the employer can see which assumptions produced the number.
Small and mid sized employers, usually where benefits are handled by an owner, a controller, or an HR generalist with several other jobs rather than a dedicated benefits department. Industry matters less than claims history, cash position, and how much variability the organisation is comfortable carrying.
The firm is privately held and owned by the people who do the work. It is not tied to a carrier, it has no house market or production requirement that favours one carrier's quote, and no outside investor or private equity sponsor holds a return target. The people a client meets are the people who stay on the account, and the firm explains how it is compensated whenever a client asks.
The Risk Analysis Plan is Trinity Risk Partners' five part methodology for rebuilding a renewal from the inside: an underwriting review, a large claim review, a stop loss audit, a pharmacy benefit audit, and a plan design analysis, run in that order. Each component depends on what the one before it found, and the firm tells each client at the outset which components apply to their situation.
Sixty to ninety days before the effective date, and ask for the underlying claims and underwriting data at the same time as the renewal. A renewal reviewed sixty days out is a negotiation. A renewal reviewed ten days out is an acceptance.
The firm is based in Fort Worth, Texas and serves employers across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It writes business wherever it is licensed, so geography is rarely the deciding factor.
A first conversation is a read of what you already have, usually your current renewal. You come away understanding how the number was built and where the real opportunities sit, whether or not you ever move the account. Call 860-919-1599, email dom.aiello@trinity-risk-partners.com, or use the contact form.
Next step
A first conversation is a read of what you already have. You will come away understanding how your number was built and where the real opportunities sit, whether or not you ever move the account.
