Hawthorne Benefit Technologies' BeneTrac Receives High Marks from Nevada's Carson City School District

Business Wire, July 25, 2002

Business Editors

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 2002

Hawthorne Benefit Technologies Inc. recently completed installation of its online employee benefits administration program, BeneTrac, for the 1,000-member workforce of the Carson City School District (CCSD) in Nevada.

Open enrollment -- the crucial period annually when employees make selections about their plan options -- was held in May and the BeneTrac program's ongoing plan administration went into effect this month.

BeneTrac enables the CCSD's employees, both in state and out of state, to have Web-based access to benefit plan information; to update personal information; check the status of flexible spending accounts for medical and child care; as well as peruse an extensive bank of provider information.

Sold exclusively through insurance brokers and benefits consultants, BeneTrac was introduced to the CCSD by Valerie Clark of Clark and Associates in Reno, Nev.

Bob Anderson, CCSD's director of Fiscal Services, said the BeneTrac system has already simplified their benefits administration and provided immediate pay back.

"Prior to installing BeneTrac, our benefits administrator had to manually prepare a census of each employee group for each separate provider -- medical, dental, vision and life ... It was an administrative nightmare and took hours to manage and reconcile each month."

He added, "The real value (in BeneTrac) is the outstanding array of reports we can now create. We know exactly in real time how many benefited employees are in the system. (We) can prepare monthly reports on an Excel spreadsheet that detail exactly who is enrolled in each program.

"We are going to maximize reporting and tracking to accomplish our goals through this system for years to come, we have no doubt."

According to Art Brooks, vice president of sales at Hawthorne Benefit Technologies, "A computer-driven approach to health benefits has the potential to drastically change the way employers provide and workers receive their benefits packages. Corporations are rapidly adopting these Web-driven technologies, but the concept is relatively new within school districts.

"We hope to assist more districts in achieving a more streamlined, cost-efficient approach to benefits administration."

About Hawthorne Benefit Technologies Inc.

Hawthorne Benefit Technologies Inc. was one of the first West Coast companies to offer a B2B real-time online employee benefits administration and tracking solution (BeneTrac) for human resource managers. Sold exclusively through insurance brokers and benefits consultants, Hawthorne's ASP technologies are designed to combine efficiencies of the Internet with established insurance distribution models.

More information about Hawthorne's custom solutions for BeneTrac and BeneQuote, an online quoting system for insurance agents and brokers, is available respectively at www.benetrac.com and www.benequote.com, or by contacting their San Diego offices at 877/645-4342.