Patent ID: 7584107

Claim:
A method for managing defined contribution benefits, comprising: storing product information about a plurality of benefits products from a plurality of benefits suppliers in a computer system for access by multiple of a plurality of employers and by multiple of a plurality of employees, wherein each of the plurality of employees corresponds to one of the plurality of employers; designing a plurality of defined contribution benefits portfolios, each of the defined contribution benefits portfolios corresponding to one of the plurality of employers, including for each employer: providing an employer profile, the profile including the budgeted amount for benefit compensation provided by the employer; defining a plurality of categories of benefits within the defined contribution benefits portfolio, including defining employer preferred allocation values towards the benefits categories; automatically generating, with a computer, a portfolio recommendation for the employer, comprising a set of recommended benefit product plans selected from a combination of the plurality of benefit products customized to both of the employer profile and the preferred allocation values towards the benefits categories; and selecting a set of benefit product plans to be offered within the defined contribution benefit portfolio based upon the portfolio recommendation and selections of the plurality of benefit products by the employer; establishing a defined benefit selection from the defined contribution benefit portfolio of the employer corresponding to each employee, including for each employee: presenting, to the employee, a total contribution by the employer towards benefits; presenting, to the employee, the benefit categories and benefit products within the benefit product plans contained within the defined contribution benefits portfolio of the employer; receiving, from the employee, a plurality of preferred allocation values indicating employee preferences of how to apportion the total employer contribution among the benefit categories and benefit products; generating a package recommendation for the employee, comprising a combination of benefit products from the set of benefit product plans that is customized according to the preferred allocation values; and presenting options to enable the employee to select a personalized subset of benefit products from the plurality of benefits products based on the package recommendation; and configuring, for each of the plurality of employees, a benefits package, the benefits package containing the personalized subset of the benefits products selected from the defined contribution benefits portfolio designed for the employer of the employee.