Co-Founder, Mitigate Partners & Co-Advisor, DeSoto Memorial HospitalBarry Murphy CLU, ChFC
In 2017, Barry Murphy and Carl Schuessler formed Mitigate Partners with the intent of gathering like-minded entrepreneurial benefit shops to collaborate on and share resources for self-funded health plans. As the author of the active management approach to benefit plan management, Mitigate Partners is at the vanguard of a new model for benefit advisory services, essentially cutting out the middlemen and delivering substantially better benefits at drastically lower costs, all while re-localizing care and fostering direct communications between employer plans and the provider community. A Win, Win, Win for all.
After providing personal financial consulting services for several years, Barry realized his talents were more closely aligned with the Business Markets. This focus naturally led him to counsel his business clients in regard to their benefit programs.
Barry started his Insurance career two weeks after graduating from Georgia Tech in 1972 with a degree in Industrial Management. He chose the insurance business realizing he wanted to chart his own path and did not respond well to “structure-based” supervision.
Over the ensuing 35 year career with Northwestern Mutual Life, Barry achieved both educational and production-based recognition. In the late ’70s, Barry was at the forefront of a shift to a new “service model” for agencies and pioneered many of the agency services that are common today.
In 1983, Barry founded the 3rd in what would become a 110 location Benefit Agency for Northwestern Mutual nationwide and led the field in production for 4 straight years.
In 2004, Barry again reinvented his benefit operation based upon his unique financial perspective that continued to generate substantial savings for his client’s benefit programs. In 2005, Barry left Northwestern Mutual to pursue a new methodology for funding health programs and he founded Perspective Benefits Consulting, Inc.
In 2013, Barry Founded Lighthouse Benefit Resources, LLC to take advantage of opportunities afforded under the Affordable Care Act. This led him to develop his “Better Than COBRA®” program to assist self-funded health plans to mitigate the risk of high COBRA claims – – an outbound COBRA Counseling and Risk Mitigation services to large self-funded clients, TPA’s, Reinsurance carriers, and select cadre of creative brokers. Over the past 2 years, using seasoned HR counselors, COBRA activity for their clients has all but disappeared.
