During your Onboarding, Sun Life will collect important information so that we can configure everything for your company’s benefit setup and create final contracts.
Here is general guidance on the main areas you'll review and how to complete the required company information to ensure your setup with Sun Life is accurate:
- Company Details
- Plan Administrators
- Billing Preferences and Payroll Cycles
- Plan Configuration and Eligibility
- Other Contract Details
Please note: Depending on your setup, you may complete this information in Onboard through DocuSign or through a guided smart form within Onboard that digitally captures all the information needed.
| Completing through DocuSign >> | Completing through digital smart form >> |
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| If you have specific questions unique to your company and/or benefits as you complete this information, please feel free to reach out directly to your Implementation Consultant. |
Company Details
Sun Life will need to capture some basic company details to complete your setup. You’ll provide information on your company such as:
- Full legal name of your company
- Tax ID
- Previous coverage information
- Benefits administration and data feed details
Note: If you’ll be setting up an eligibility data feed to send information, it is also helpful to understand who will be the contact for the initial setup, discrepancies and ongoing management of your file feed.
Plan Administrators
Sun Life needs to capture the right contacts so that we can understand who will have access to view and/or manage your employee and benefit information.
Most importantly, you’ll need to provide a primary contact who will have full online access to view and manage all employee info, administer benefits, manage billing, and edit other administrator accounts. This should be a contact at the employer.
- Note: Broker contacts should not be listed as the primary, but can be added separately and set up with access.
The additional contact information you provide will also be used to set up individuals with access to Sun Life Connect - the site used to manage your account, employees, claims, and Sun Life benefits once they are effective. You can determine what these additional Sun Life Connect users will have access to - such as certain eligibility groups or salary information
- Note: This is a separate login that requires a separate registration process.
Billing Preferences and Payroll Cycles
During your onboarding, you’ll tell us how you would like to administer and structure the way you pay your Sun Life bill. The options available to you will depend on what benefits you have with Sun Life.
- Note: You can find out which options are available to you as you complete your company information within Sun Life Onboard.
For more explanation on the billing types available, or if you have questions on how to pay your bill, please see these articles:
Depending on the benefits you are setting up with Sun Life you may also be asked to provide your payroll cycle(s) - especially if they differ between benefits or eligibility groups. This ensures that the benefit charges you'll see on your bills are listed correctly for each employee and their coverage.
Plan Configuration and Eligibility
During your onboarding, you’ll tell us which groups of employees are eligible for which benefits, what the waiting period for benefits will be, and how much premium you will contribute towards the cost of benefits.
When you provide details, you’ll also tell Sun Life how you organize your employees. How you determine this is, for the most part, up to you. We would recommend that you classify them in a way that helps make the administration of benefits easy and efficient for you. A few examples of how clients may classify their employees include:
- Based on employment status (such as Full Time vs. Part Time)
- Based on position (such as Management & Partners vs. All Other Employees)
- Based on location (such as Massachusetts vs. California)
- Based on contribution structure (such as your employer chose to cover 50% of the cost for Dental for partners vs. 25% for all other employees)
Additionally, you’ll specify details about waiting periods and provide your contribution strategy. For example, what does your contribution strategy look like for each benefit? Are any of your benefits 100% employer paid? Or is the employee responsible for a portion of the premiums?
- Note: For certain benefits such as prepaid Dental, Critical Illness, Cancer Indemnity, and Accident, there may only be one option for waiting period.
Other Contract Details
We’ll continue to capture any remaining information needed based on the types of benefits you’re setting up with Sun Life. This can include any of the following options:
- Additional waiting period rules
- Rehire provision
- Union members and domestic partners
- Changes during annual enrollment
- Termination of insurance
- Other changes to coverage
- Employee certificate
- Section 125
- ERISA
- Earnings definitions
- Note: This determines what earnings amounts should be used to pay claims and how premium amounts are calculated. If you anticipate a broad salary change across employees during your enrollment event/implementation of your Sun Life benefits, you should communicate those changes as soon as possible to your Implementation Consultant. They will need to account for these before your first bill is run.
- Tax Status
- Note: Being clear on tax status will avoid any issues in the future for you in managing your employees and their benefits because tax status impacts:
- How you administer the benefits (i.e. payroll deductions)
- How your benefits will be listed on your bill
- How claim payments are taxed
- Note: Being clear on tax status will avoid any issues in the future for you in managing your employees and their benefits because tax status impacts:
You'll want to be mindful when completing these options because they can impact not only your employee’s benefits and eligibility, but how you’ll track changes and how they impact your bill.