Insperity: registry status and how the fee is built

Start with the registries, because they are the only claims about a co-employer that can be checked from outside. Federal certification is published as a register of entities that have met bonding, financial reporting and independent audit requirements, and this provider is on it. Separate industry accreditation, granted after a review of financial statements and verification that employment taxes collected have actually been remitted, is also in place. Together those answer the solvency question. Neither answers the price question, and treating certification as a proxy for value is the most common error buyers make in this category.

The fee structure here is unusually consequential. Public materials describe the flagship offer as an administrative charge calculated on gross payroll, which means the fee grows in lockstep with wages even when the work performed for you does not change. For a company whose salary bill is flat, that is unremarkable. For one planning a wave of senior hires or an annual uplift, the same percentage produces a materially larger invoice in year two for identical service. Model the fee against your projected wage bill rather than today's, ask whether the percentage steps down at agreed payroll thresholds, and get any step-down written into the agreement rather than described on a call.

Service model is the differentiator this provider markets, and it is worth interrogating precisely because it is not visible in any register. An assigned specialist team is only valuable if the assignment survives your account growing or shrinking. Ask who is named on the account, what happens when they leave, how escalation works outside business hours, and what the contracted response time is for a payroll error. A workforce with field or trade exposure should also press on how workers' compensation class codes are assigned, since a blended code applied across mixed duties reconciles badly at audit.

One more structural point deserves attention before signature: the workers' compensation arrangement. Inside co-employment the policy usually sits with the provider's master program, which is why a small employer with an unlucky claim year can see a rate it could not obtain alone. The exposure runs the other way too. Class codes are assigned by the provider, and a payroll containing office, field and driving duties can be blended into a single higher-rated code if nobody insists otherwise, producing a bill that only reconciles at audit. Ask for the class codes in writing before the first invoice, ask who controls claims handling and return-to-work decisions, and ask what happens to open claims if the relationship ends while a claim is still running.

How to check this yourself

Run your own census through the cost model for co-employment before taking a quote, compare the registry entry against the TriNet fact page and the ADP TotalSource fact page, and read the side-by-side at the head-to-head fee comparison. Fee vocabulary is defined at per employee per month pricing, the register index sits at every provider we track, charity-sector buyers should start at the nonprofit vertical, and the category overview is the co-employment hub.

What this doesn't cover

Registry status and publicly stated commercial structure only. No rate is quoted, no ranking is implied, and no fee is paid to appear here. Medical premiums, workers' compensation rates and any discount depend on your census, claims history and state mix, and cannot be published in advance. Implementation quality and account-team performance are experiential, vary widely between clients, and are deliberately not scored on this page.