There are, as the old-time serial drama used to say, eight million stories in the city. And now the same can be said for the benefits insurance industry, as Reliance Matrix, a leader in technology enabled employee absence management, recently registered its 8 millionth electronic claim submission.
Reliance Matrix was formed by the integration of Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, founded in 1907 and rated A++ for financial strength by independent agency AM Best; and absence third party administrator (TPA) Matrix Absence Management. Reliance Matrix has been named the #1 US absence management provider by Spring Consulting Group in two consecutive biennial market surveys.
Of course, many disability and other employee benefits claims were initiated the old-fashioned way, through what we call “snail mail” today. As a small workers’ compensation claims administrator in northern California in the early 1980s, Matrix Absence Management leveraged its proximity to Silicon Valley and the passage of the groundbreaking Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993 to become one of the leading innovators in the employee benefits and absence management space.
“A generation ago, we decided our success would be tied to solving business challenges for our clients and brokers,” said Mark Marsters, President of Matrix Absence Management. “Our legacy as a tech innovator actually started out of a commitment to forging deep relationships with our clients and partners, listening closely and aligning our priorities with theirs.”
“Ours has been a history of firsts because we always focus on the solution,” he said.
The road to 8 million claims started decades earlier with the very first telephonic claim intake, then grew to include secure online and eventually even mobile claim filing. Today about 60% of Reliance Matrix claims are filed electronically across virtually every platform.
In the last several years Reliance Matrix has received two US patents for HR technology it has developed. One, Absence Radar®, helps managers see a 12-month running view of their team members who are out of office on approved leaves of all types. The impact to staffing, productivity and quality control is significant. And Absence Blueprint® is a unique tool that allows employees to plan their time away from work using current payroll, benefits products and policies, and statutory entitlement programs to determine the length of time, income replacement and job protection available.
Customer care manager Matt Lochner recalled, “I actually remember filing claim #1,234,567 myself, and I thought that was cool. When I think of the manual processes back then, compared to the automation and capabilities we have today, it’s pretty amazing.”
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