Make the Most of Your NJBIA Membership in 2018

Report to Members

By Michele N. Siekerka, Esq., NJBIA President and CEO On Feb 1, 2018

NJBIA is well-known for providing our members with powerful business advocacy in Trenton and delivering the information, resources and exclusive money-saving programs needed to grow and succeed. But what you may not know is that we’ve recently expanded one of the most popular business resources in that toolkit – the free legal hotline – and delivered a new affordable health benefits solution that’s already earning rave reviews from members.

Solutions for Small Business. For decades, NJBIA members have told us their No. 1 concern is the cost of providing health benefits. That’s why, after extensive research, we recently partnered with the not-for-profit Association Master Trust (AMT) to offer a health benefits solution that helps smaller businesses save time, control costs, and pool their purchasing power to access the more competitively priced health plans typically offered to entities with thousands of employees.

AMT operates under the NJ Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangement (MEWA) law and is regulated by the state. It gives NJBIA member companies all the advantages of a large, self-funded health plan: claim and cost stability, administrative efficiency, and a full menu of competitively priced plans, including Direct Access, EPO, HSA and AMT OMNIA designs. And because it is a not-for-profit run for members, surplus funds are returned in the form of annual dividends, including $14.5 million in surplus during the past five years.

The feedback from NJBIA members so far has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from very small businesses that would have otherwise been forced into the individual health insurance marketplace to find coverage. NJBIA members have been telling me how easy it is to obtain a free quote from AMT and that the signup process is “smooth and painless.”

If you’re looking to solve your health benefits challenges, go to our website, www.njbia.org, and see if NJBIA’s partnership with AMT is right for your business.

More Legal Help at Your Fingertips. Running a small business is challenging enough, especially when you are the CEO, CFO and HR director all at the same time. That’s why, two years ago, NJBIA created a legal hotline to provide our member companies with 30 minutes per month of free guidance on employee matters from attorneys at the leading human resources firm Jackson Lewis, P.C. The original hotline has logged hundreds of calls from small business owners since its launch, and that inspired us to build upon that success.

For 2018, we’ve added two new phone numbers to the hotline system for questions related to general business contract matters as well as business disputes and litigation. Attorneys from Sills, Cummis & Gross, P.C. are providing up to 30 minutes of free legal guidance per month to NJBIA members. One line handles questions about contract drafting and negotiations, third-party vendors, new entity formations, and tax questions. The second line is for questions related to litigation, business disputes, shareholder disputes, unfair competition, restrictive covenant, fraud and misrepresentation, intellectual property and antitrust matters.

NJBIA businesses that call Jackson Lewis, P.C. or Sills, Cummis & Gross, P.C., for guidance must provide their NJBIA membership number. Log on to our website, www.njbia.org, and look under the Resources tab to see the three legal hotline phone numbers and the types of questions each handles.

In short, your NJBIA membership is more valuable than ever in 2018 as we work to ensure your voice is heard in Trenton, and also provide you with new, expanded resources and programs to grow your business. It pays to be an NJBIA member!

 

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