Page 4 - Faces O fBusiness 2017

Faces of Business American Benefits Group
RicR
h Cahillane Helps Clients Understand the Language of Benefits
Rich Cahillane, right, with American Benefits Group President Bob Cummings.
ich Cahillane says he grew up in — and in many ways at — his family’s car dealership, Cahillane Dodge in Northampton, and spent the better part of three decades in that business.
When asked what he did at the dealership, there was a simple one-word response — “everything” — followed by an energetic explanation.
“They had me washing cars when I was 12 years old, and I wound up being president of the company when my father and his brothers retired,” said Cahillane, who can summon more parallels between that stage of his career and the current one — as vice president of Sales & Marketing for Northampton-based American Benefits Group (ABG) — than one might expect.
“In both cases, it’s about earning the trust of the people you’re trying to help,” he said, choosing those last words carefully, because in both roles he sees himself as a solution finder. “I saw this as a good fit, because I always liked figuring out the puzzle of benefits when I was doing it from the other side of the desk, and now I can help clients solve what is for many of them a very difficult puzzle.”
Summarizing his role at ABG, Calillane said there are many components to his work and hats to wear, but in many ways, it all comes down to helping clients understand what has
wearing three hats, understand a very complex and changing benefits marketplace,” said Cahillane, who came to ABG at the behest of its founder and president (and also a long-time friend and fellow musician), Bob Cummings, after the family dealership, like so many other smaller operations, succumbed to the difficult times brought on by the Great Recession.
Elaborating, he said business owners and managers now face both a wide array of benefits products and an intimidat- ing wave of compliance issues. Navigating both requires a thorough understanding of issues and options and the confi- dence to make the right decisions — confidence that comes through that aforementioned education.
“Educating business owners and helping them solve prob- lems is really 90% of what I do,” he said, adding that another large component is working with employees to help them understand benefits and get the most out of them.
“With one of the largest, most knowledgeable full service employee benefits teams in the region, we provide exceptional service, competitive pricing, benefits administration services and access to tools and resources that keep our clients and their employees educated, informed, and compliant,” he went on. “Our clients are kept up-to-date with legislative changes, innovations in improving employee health, and access to rel- evant local, national, and industry benchmarking data; we help clients find clarity and peace of mind knowing that they are working with professionals who are helping them to proactive- ly and strategically manage their employee benefits program and their budget.”
When asked how he has mastered this work and success- fully moved from mpg to ACA, Cahillane joked that his degree in English from St. Anselm College in New Hampshire has cer- tainly been a big help.
“One of the parts of this that I like, and one of the parts I think I’m good at, is taking a complex subject and explaining it in terms that people can understand,” he told BusinessWest. “And everyone has different levels of comprehension; some- times it’s harder explaining things to an engineer or a doctor than it is to a butcher.”
Elaborating, Cahillane notes that his most important skill is the ability to listen to others as they seek advice and answers on what has become a realm critical to the success of any company, regardless of its size or sector.
“You can spend a lot of money on benefits, but if employ- ees don’t understand what they have and use those benefits effectively, then neither party is getting a lot of value for it,” he explained.
The company is helped in this work by its membership in a national benefits organization called NFP, which provides a depth of support and resources that enables American Benefits Group to provide resources to small and medium- sized companies that are usually reserved for much larger businesses.
As he said, there are many similarities between this work and doing “everything” at a car dealership. In both cases, the ultimate goal is to create a smooth ride.
George O’Brien
become an extraordinarily complex world of employee ben- efits.
It’s complex on many levels, starting with terminology, products, legislation, and, yes, acronyms — lots and lots of acronyms.
There’s ERISA (the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974); ACA (the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare); HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), and literally hundreds more (ABG actually issues clients a dictionary of sorts to help them navi- gate it all).
Cahillane says his highly rewarding work boils down to not only explaining what all those acronyms stand for, but also, and far more importantly, what they mean to employers and employees alike.
“Benefits consulting is education in a lot of ways — help- ing small business owners or their HR person, who is often
4 MAY 2017