Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS)

Issued by Benefitfocus University

The CEBS program is the leading and most respected designation in employee benefits. It consists of eight courses that that address topics such as group health plan design and management, compensation principles and management, and retirement plan design and management.

Additional Details

Skills

Earning Criteria

GBA 1 - Group Health Plan Design (required). This course emphasizes the concepts and principles to be considered in the development, implementation and management of life, health and other group benefits provided by employers and unions. Among the topics covered are group insurance fundamentals, general design issues, mathematics of insurance, the pricing process, underwriting and funding methods, administration, communication and ethics.
GBA 2 - Group Benefits Management (required). This course examines in-depth, specific applications of life, health and other group benefits programs provided by employers. Among the programs covered are life insurance, income replacement, health, dental, and work/life programs including employee assistance and wellness, financial planning and other financial benefits. This course also provides an introduction to flexible benefits design options.
GBA 3 - Health Care: Financing, Quality and Reform (elective). Economics is a social science that concerns itself with analyzing the production and distribution of goods and services. Health economics concerns itself with the health care economy and applies the tools of economics to the health care sector. This course is based on the assumption that in order to understand the field of health economics, students must develop a working knowledge of the analytical tools of economics.
CMS 1 - Human Resources and Compensation Management (required). The course covers incentive programs, total compensation approaches and strategies for their implementation, and employee rights and the applications of such right in disciplinary, discharge and termination situations. Also discussed is the impact of unionization on employers as well as specific practices and policies of human resource management that are needed to support high-performance work systems.
CMS 2 - Compensation Concepts and Principles (required). This course provides a framework for understanding various types of compensation approaches. It presents a pay model outlining strategic compensation objectives, policies that form the foundation of a compensation system, and alternate techniques that can be used in paying employees. Other topics include methods for decision-making regarding pay level, pay mix and pay structures.
CMS 3 - Executive Compensation (elective). This course presents an overview of executive compensation issues and practices. It begins with an explanation of various organizational approaches in determining which employees comprise the executive group. The course proceeds to describe the various components of executive compensation including direct pay, employee benefits, perquisites, short-term incentives and long-term incentives.
RPA 1 - Retirement Plan Design (required). This course focuses on individual retirement needs, employer-sponsored programs, and plan design considerations. The differences in defined contribution (DC) and defined benefit (DB) approaches are detailed. Additionally, an overview of various types of retirement plans, the primary provisions of Social Security, the fundamental characteristics of tax-qualified plans and the workings of distinct types of DC plans are explained.
RPA 2 - Retirement Plan Management (required). This course examines approaches to enhancing retiree financial security. The impact of various types of retirement planning structures and the importance of effectively managing retirement assets are discussed. The course focuses on investment principles in accumulating retirement wealth and the essentials of fiduciary oversight and plan governance by plan sponsors.
RPA 3 - Asset Management (elective). The course introduces asset management in the context of setting investment objectives for pension plan assets. It then provides the necessary background on financial markets, how they are organized and how they operate. The concepts of risk versus return and efficient markets and the impact of modern portfolio theory are presented, followed by a detailed discussion on bonds, stocks and derivatives.
RPA 4 - Personal Wealth Management (elective). This course provides comprehensive and authoritative treatment of knowledge and best practices for the emerging discipline of personal wealth management. Since wealth management holistically integrates such specialty areas as personal goal setting, risk analysis, investment management, retirement income forecasting, and estate planning, the course surveys these inter-related yet distinct topics.