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Within the household, you can initiate the various products and services for Caribou, including the HealthPlanning Analysis, Consultation Call, and Office Hours.

You can also check the status of your clients’ accounts, meaning you can know if they have logged in and activated their accounts. There are two account statuses: PENDING and ACTIVE.

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You have the ability to communicate with Caribou and your clients through HealthPlanner’s HIPAA-compliant, secure messaging feature called Inbox.

At the current moment, you can only reply to conversations that have been started by Caribou or by using the conversation created when you initiate a HealthPlanning Analysis for a household.

To type a message, scroll to the bottom of the conversation and type in the box pictured below. Ensure you hit Send to send the message.

Recipients of the messages in the conversation are listed at the top of the conversation thread.

You will receive an email notification whenever you have a new message.

This messaging system integrates with your firm’s message archiving system. In order to receive copies of client communications to the email registered with your message archiving system, ensure that Caribou has that email on file by emailing info@getcaribou.com. Conversations between a financial and Caribou without clients will not be archived.

Please contact Caribou at info@getcaribou.com to give more advisors access to HealthPlanner.

Healthcare planning, much like financial planning, provides a comprehensive overview and optimization of clients’ present and future costs based on personalized needs and budget - but for healthcare.

Although it’s a new area, we strongly believe that healthcare is an essential area to consider when setting financial goals. Not only does it increase the accuracy of the financial plan, but it also addresses what is currently the top financial concern for clients. Even prominent financial services companies, like Nationwide, are writing about the importance of healthcare costs.

In an ideal world, financial advisors are revisiting the ‘healthcare plan’ annually, just as they are with the financial plan. One’s healthcare costs can change based on health status (eg. new medications, an upcoming surgery) or life events (eg. having a baby, retirement) and, as an advisor, you have the ability to be involved in those key moments in clients’ lives. We published this White Paper that shares more.

The Caribou healthcare planning process:

When you access the the HealthPlanning Analysis Plus, tailored plan options are provided. Plan types that Caribou is able to address in the analysis include Medicare and the Marketplace (state or federal system). Only cost data from employer plans (COBRA, group plans, retiree benefits) provided by the client can be compared and cannot be checked for doctor networks or medication costs. This is Navigation work.

There are various common life transitions that spur the need for a HealthPlanning Analysis, however they are helpful for clients at any life stage, irrespective of an event, in order to gather insights into expected costs based on current needs. Some common examples include:

We work exclusively with financial advisory firms. These firms are mostly RIAs, vary in size, and can be found across all states in the country (some of our partners even have multiple offices!). Our smallest partners work with less than 50 clients while our biggest work with a few thousand.

WE DO NOT WORK WITH INSURANCE COMPANIES, nor are we one ourselves. We are not incentivized in any way by things like commissions.

From time to time, we get a call from a consumer who stumbled upon our website. If we can help them, we certainly do.

We certainly do! Check out any of the following media published by 3rd parties:

Finance-related

Tech-related

We also have a blog published for advisors and for clients.

We know it takes time to build up a healthcare planning offering. That’s why we charge on a per household basis. You can always find our most up to date pricing on our Pricing Page or by booking a call with our team.

You can choose how to distribute fees to clients. Our fees are very transparent and fixed, so they align very well with fixed-fee advisory firms. Many of our partners cover the cost of Caribou, while some do pass fees through to their clients.

Of course. We help you implement a healthcare planning offering that is efficient and effective. We provide with you with engagement materials, such as:

Security is our number one priority at Caribou. We aren't governed by HIPAA nor the SEC, but we have high security measures in place in order to protect client and advisor data.

To start, we use the latest encryption technologies to ensure data transferred over public networks is secure in transit. In addition, we only expose those services which need to be publicly reached. All other services live behind secure firewalls powered (and guaranteed to be valid as per SLA) by Google Cloud. In addition to encrypting all network traffic, we also encrypt all data at rest using the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) to ensure that in the event of a leak, an attacker would be unable to make use of the retained data.

As an internal engineering policy, we use the Principle of Least Privilege to limit the potential harm an employee could cause either by accident or by nefarious reasons.

If you’d like more information, view our pamphlet about why we ask for certain health data and information for our HealthPlanning Analyses.

See below.

All savings listed are a comparison of the client’s current coverage against a new coverage option identified through the HealthPlanning Analysis that best aligns with their preferences and is the least expensive. Savings always represent “potential” because any money saved depends on the action chosen by the client.

The total expected spend on healthcare through minimizing premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and out-of-pocket maximums, reducing the total risk that a client is exposed to in a given year.

Caribou does not explicitly offer a recommendation on which plan to select because we have intentionally chosen to provide unbiased, non-commissioned guidance. The HealthPlanning Analysis will narrow the plans  - from hundreds down to just a few! - that best fit their needs and preferences, but their financial choice is ultimately their decision.

We are not insurance agents and therefore do not 'push' any specific plans. Insurance agents sometimes do this for their own benefit due to commissions, rather than for the benefit of the client. The information and insights your clients receive from the HealthPlanning Analysis will leave them feeling confident in their ability to choose the plan that best fits their needs. It’s a truly customized, unbiased approach!