Overview of Flex Credit Offerings

Workers can use flex credits, which are monetary units, to offset costs of specific plan enrollments.

Consider creating flex credit offerings to implement any of the following styles of benefit offerings:

Cafeteria plans offered in the US to comply with Section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code
Benefit plans offered in the US to comply with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
Benefit plans offered in other countries that enable workers to buy benefits from an allowance that the employer might offer
Benefit offerings that provide flex credits, but aren't necessarily recognized by or pursuant to a government agency

This overview introduces:

Flex Credit Setup Task Sequence

The following figure illustrates the sequence of tasks to create a flex credit offering.

Use the Plan Configuration work area to:

Sequence	Task Description	Task Name
1	Create a program of type Flex credits or Flex credits plus core	Manage Benefit Program Details
2	Create the rest of the benefit objects, such as: Plan type, plans-in-program, options-in-plan-in-program Rollover rates and elements	Various setup tasks in Plan Configuration work area
3	Create a flex credit shell plan and associate it with the flex program	Manage Flex Credits Configuration

Sequence

Task Description

Task Name

Create a program of type Flex credits or Flex credits plus core

Manage Benefit Program Details

Create the rest of the benefit objects, such as:

Various setup tasks in Plan Configuration work area

Create a flex credit shell plan and associate it with the flex program

Manage Flex Credits Configuration

You create a flex credit shell plan to define your flex credit policy:

Create credit pools at specific levels in your benefit hierarchy to calculate and maintain credits.
Define which benefit offerings participants can enroll using flex credits.
Decide whether participants can spend beyond their flex credit budget.
Decide the order in which you want to deal with excess credits that might remain after enrollment:
- Pay out a percentage
- Transfer a percentage to other offerings in compliance with corresponding contribution limits
- Forfeit the credits

During enrollment:

The flex credit shell plan doesn't appear and participants can't enroll in a flex shell plan directly.
When participants enroll in a program that's associated with a flex shell plan, the rules defined in that plan enable participants to use flex credits to enroll in specific offerings.