The Mortgage Collaborative (TMC) is expanding its member offerings beyond education and networking with the launch of a new healthcare cooperative designed to help mortgage lenders better manage one of their largest operating expenses: employee health benefits.
The organization announced the TMC Healthcare Cooperative, a self-funded medical program available to TMC lender members and preferred partners with 51 or more employees. Developed in partnership with CCIG, the program allows participating organizations to pool healthcare claims, share risk through a group captive structure, and access stop-loss insurance typically associated with much larger employers.
Unlike traditional fully insured health plans, where employers pay fixed premiums to an insurance carrier regardless of claims activity, the cooperative enables participating organizations to fund their own claims collectively. According to TMC, claims risk is shared across the group, while stop-loss coverage limits exposure to large individual claims. If claims costs come in below expectations, any surplus is returned to participants rather than retained by an insurance carrier.
"Mortgage lenders have for too long been paying into a system that offers nothing in return when claims run well," said Jodi Hall, president and CEO of The Mortgage Collaborative. "For an IMB without the scale of a large institution, for example, that means absorbing rate increases year after year with no transparency into what's driving costs and no path to a better outcome. The TMC Healthcare Cooperative changes that equation for our entire network, giving members and partners the purchasing power, the claims visibility and the risk-sharing structure that large employers take for granted, delivered through the trust and community TMC has already built."
For community banks and credit unions, the program extends beyond mortgage employees and covers the institution's entire workforce. TMC said participants will also have access to claims data, flexibility in plan design and opportunities to share best practices with other members.
Organizations interested in joining the cooperative are encouraged to begin the enrollment process roughly 180 days before their health plan renewal date. TMC said participation is currently limited to organizations with at least 51 employees, though options for smaller employers are planned.
What It Means
The announcement addresses one of the largest operating expenses many mortgage companies face outside of compensation.
Large financial institutions have long used self-funded health plans to gain greater control over healthcare costs, but those arrangements have often been out of reach for smaller lenders because they lacked the employee base needed to spread risk effectively. By pooling multiple organizations together, TMC is seeking to make a similar model accessible to independent mortgage banks, community banks and credit unions.
For lenders, the potential benefits include greater visibility into healthcare spending, more predictable benefit costs, and the opportunity to retain savings when claims come in below expectations. Lower operating costs can also free up capital for investments in technology, recruiting, marketing or other strategic initiatives.
