How Can I Know What Options I Have as a Business Owner?
Company-sponsored insurance can be available with as few as one employee. Yes, even for solopreneurs. In fact, many of our clients are one-person businesses. For this discussion, we’re focusing on employers with 1–50 full-time employees. (For benefits purposes, “full-time” typically means working 30 hours per week or more.)
I’m a Business Owner with a Handful of Employees—Why Am I Being Told I Need to Get Bigger Before Offering Benefits?
Across the Triangle, North Carolina, and the United States, many insurance brokers have moved away from serving small groups. Instead, they often focus on larger clients, typically those with 50 or more employees. They sometimes even require a minimum of 100.
Why Don’t More Brokers Support Small Businesses?
During the low interest rate environment of the 2010s (which feels like a lifetime ago), corporate brokerages out of Chicago, London, and New York could issue corporate bonds for almost no interest and aggressively buy out local firms across regions of the United States.
How do I know? I was an award-winning vendor during that time, before founding JWM Consulting as a broker. I saw 60+ independent firms in the Triangle become 10 major corporate outposts. And now those 10 major brokers are buying each other out in multi-billion-dollar deals!
In health insurance, it takes the same amount of manpower to service a 10-person firm as it does a 100-person firm. Why? Usually, layers of HR and leadership in bigger companies can take care of the day-to-day “noise” that comes with insurance. With a 10-person firm, the owner leans much more heavily on a broker, and rightfully so.
But from a corporate perspective, they all pressured, cajoled, and incentivized their newly acquired teams to look upstream. The net effect of this simultaneous strategy created a vacuum in the market and reduced competition, since 30 brokers who used to compete against each other now work under one roof.
How many locally owned independent brokerages in the Triangle focus on the small group health insurance market currently?
It can depend on one’s definition, but I would say fewer than 10 firms in our region specialize in and embrace this side of the market. I founded JWM because, as a vendor, I saw elite boutique firms lose their vibrant cultures, which then affected their teams and, in turn, their clients. I saw a chance to make a difference—to give enterprise-level support to small businesses and stem the tide of consolidation in group benefits.
A 2024 Pew Research survey estimated that 95% of all companies in the United States have fewer than 50 employees. So this is a hugely important issue in our industry and shows the need within the community. Seven years into this journey, and nearly 15 years into my insurance career, I still see that need, and I am lucky enough to know we are making that difference.
What Can Be Some Differences Between Individual Insurance and Group Insurance?
The first and most immediate impact is network. On a philosophical level, we always quote the richest network available across all carriers. With Blue Cross group insurance, for instance, you would have access to Duke, WakeMed, and UNC locally, along with the major hospital systems across the state. Beyond the state, wherever Blue Cross or Anthem is accepted in the U.S., you would have in-network coverage. So that’s especially valuable if your team is spread out over several states or if you travel for business or pleasure.
Individual insurance can be more narrow. Typically, it includes only a handful of hospital systems and can even limit coverage to a single county.
What Carriers Exist for Small Businesses in North Carolina?
In our state, the two major organizations offering fully insured ACA plans for employers with fewer than 50 employees are Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC and UnitedHealthcare. Aetna offered fully insured ACA plans in the under-50 market up until January 2026, and Cigna typically offers insurance to employers close to or over 50 employees.
With 12 or more full-time employees, a company can expand its search to another 5 to 7 carriers. We believe in being on offense for our clients—that’s when things can get really interesting overall!
Stay tuned for Part II on how to go about setting up plans for your team!
Wilson McWilliams, JWM Consulting in the Greater Triangle Area, can be reached at 919-635-8533, Wilson@TheJWMGroup.com, TheJWMGroup.com.
