There’s something reassuring about the way David Pittard handles his business. His methods of finding cost solutions through health and welfare management have been time-tested and successful.

Pittard, a partner with The Benefit Planning Group based in Marietta, Ga., lends his expertise to large employer groups as a veteran consultant, who advises on maintaining and establishing group health and welfare programs. “Probably the majority of those clients are large self-funded employer groups, with which you basically have a blank canvas to create a new vision for their organization,” he explains.

“So we [The Benefit Planning Group] do everything from complicated benefit design to strategies to promote improvement of underlying health conditions through wellness strategies and how to introduce and have an effective consumer directed health plan option. We also handle the brokerage services, which would be the marketing and purchase of appropriate insurance or other vendor-based contracts and coverages to support whatever that program design is — reinsurance, life, disability or some type of fully insured premium arrangement.”