COBRA Administration Software

Automate your COBRA admin work

What is COBRA?

COBRA is an acronym for the 1985 federal law which gives employees (of companies of a certain size) the right to continue their insurance coverage after their employment has been terminated or once they have lost eligibility to participate in an employer's insurance plan.

How does Rippling help?

Rippling helps your company manage and automate COBRA-related admin work—like sending out required notices, collecting premium payments from the employees, and allowing employees to select or change their coverage on Rippling's website.

Detect COBRA eligibility

Typically, employees become eligible for COBRA because they've been terminated. However, they may also achieve eligibility due to other changes, like moving from full-time to part-time or from W-2 employment to 1099 contracting work. In any of these cases, Rippling will detect that a COBRA-qualifying event has occurred, then begin the COBRA process with the employee or former employee.

Send out required notices

Election notices to terminated employees

Rippling will send out the notices you're required to provide to COBRA enrollees and eligible employees, informing them of their right to enroll in continuing coverage, of changes to coverage, of pending coverage termination, and more. Rippling will also send these notices to any enrolled employee dependents, via regular mail, at the physical address on file for each of these dependents in Rippling.

Initial notices to active employees

In addition to sending COBRA election notices after termination of employment, Rippling also sends initial COBRA notices to active employees. The initial COBRA notice explains COBRA coverage and outlines when it may become available to a person and their family. The initial COBRA notices are sent out whenever there is a new hire, open enrollment, new group enrollment, or qualifying life event, and are for informational purposes.

Simplify the enrollment process

Run online election and enrollment

COBRA-eligible employees can elect COBRA and re-enroll in coverage directly through their Rippling accounts at any point during the enrollment period. And just like the process your new hires go through to select insurance coverage, all COBRA elections and enrollments can be completed online, directly from an employee’s Rippling account.

Easily manage COBRA enrollees during open enrollment

Just like your regular employees, COBRA enrollees can make changes to their insurance during your company’s annual open enrollment period if they’ve had a qualifying life event. Rippling automatically includes COBRA enrollees in all company open enrollments alongside your regular employees.

Offer new company coverage to COBRA enrollees

If your company changes the insurance plans you offer, you'll need to offer COBRA enrollees the ability to enroll in the new coverage—the same as with any regular employee. Rippling automatically includes COBRA enrollees in any open enrollment for newly offered coverage.

Additional features

Automatically submit forms to your carrier

When COBRA participants elect, terminate, or change their coverage, forms have to be sent to your insurance carrier to process the change. Rippling automatically submits these forms for you and prepares submission-ready forms for your broker.

Collect premiums

Because COBRA enrollees appear on the invoices you receive from carriers, the same as with any regular employee, you ultimately pay for their insurance coverage—and you need to collect insurance premiums from these individuals to cover this cost. Rippling will debit COBRA enrollees' bank accounts for their premiums each month and then remit those premiums to your company.

Manage termination of coverage

COBRA enrollees can cancel their COBRA coverage in Rippling at any time. Alternatively, Rippling will cancel their coverage for non-payment (in the event we can't withdraw premium payments from their bank accounts) or when they come to the end of their COBRA eligibility period (18 months of coverage, in most cases).