The Precision Manufacturing Benefits Trust combines the buying power of California's manufacturers into the largest single buying pool in the industry.
Administered by Dochterman Insurance Services. Built for precision manufacturers, metal manufacturers, plastic manufacturers, and heat treaters who deserve better than what direct carriers will quote a small group.
When a precision manufacturer shops health benefits as a single small or mid-sized group, they're competing for rates on the carrier's terms — not their own. Under the Affordable Care Act, every employee, spouse, and dependent is age-rated individually, and small groups have almost no leverage to negotiate plan design.
What manufacturers run into:
Your shop competes on precision. Your benefits buying power should match.
When manufacturers pool their workforce into a single buying entity, the math changes. PMBT delivers what no individual shop can negotiate on its own:
Because when manufacturers buy together, everything gets easier — and a lot less expensive.
PMBT is an industry-owned benefits trust that pools the buying power of California's precision manufacturers into a single negotiating entity. Your company joins the trust, and the trust deals with the carrier.
Through PMBT, your group has access to:
We don't sell you benefits. We give you access to a buying pool you couldn't build alone.
PMBT delivers a complete benefits package through United Healthcare — the same carrier that serves Fortune 500 companies — at rates negotiated across the entire trust pool.
"One carrier. Six lines of coverage. Composite rates only PMBT members can access."
Every line of coverage is administered through United Healthcare, with trust-wide negotiation setting the rates and plan terms. Your employees get carrier-strength benefits with the bargaining power of an industry behind them.
Accident, disability income, and additional voluntary plans from leading carriers like AFLAC can be coordinated through your PMBT enrollment — a single, streamlined experience for your HR team and your employees.
All coverage administered by United Healthcare. All rates set by trust-wide negotiation.
PMBT is structured as a VEBA — a Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association — authorized under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(9) and federally regulated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
VEBA-based trusts have served contractors, teachers, firefighters, municipalities, law enforcement, and truckers for nearly a century. PMBT brings that same collective-buying model to precision manufacturing.
Your contributions grow in a non-taxed trust, are protected by federal fiduciary law, and are governed by three trustees whose sole mandate is the membership's best interest.
The Founding Organization
501(c)(6) Industry Association
The Precision Manufacturing Benefits Trust was organized and funded by the Women of Manufacturing Empowering Network (WOMEN) — a federally tax-exempt 501(c)(6) nonprofit formed in California for the purpose of advancing the participation of women in the manufacturing sector.
WOMEN's broader mission is to improve business conditions across the precision manufacturing industry. PMBT was created to deliver one of the most direct paths to that improvement: lower the cost of health insurance for the manufacturers who employ the workforce.
Today, PMBT is administered through Dochterman Insurance Services, the agency that has spent its career serving California's precision manufacturers, metal manufacturers, plastic manufacturers, and heat treaters.
Our mission is to reduce the cost of health insurance by combining the buying power of precision manufacturers into the largest single buying pool in the industry.
Once your group is enrolled, the trust handles the heavy lifting. You focus on running your business.
What changes when you become a PMBT member:
Monthly contributions are due on the 15th of the prior month. Everything else — claims, ID cards, plan administration, renewal negotiation — is handled.
As a PMBT member, you're never negotiating alone.
Onboarding is built to be the lightest part of your year. Most of the work happens at the trust level, not on your desk.
Tell us about your shop, your workforce, and your current plan.
We quote your group based on average age — usually a meaningful reduction.
Each employee submits an enrollment form. PMBT becomes the policyholder.
Trustees re-shop your rates and plans every year on behalf of the entire pool.
The details manufacturers ask about most before joining the trust.
PMBT is organized as a VEBA, a Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association authorized under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(9) and regulated under ERISA. It is not an insurance company or a shared risk pool.
The trust is controlled by three trustees, each with a fiduciary responsibility to protect plan assets and benefit selections. Their single mandate is to act in the best interest of the trust's membership.
For groups under 100 employees, the Affordable Care Act age-rates every employee, spouse, and dependent individually, which adds both cost and administrative complexity.
PMBT is composite-rated on the average age of your group, and offers custom plan designs available only to trust members, built around price and value for the manufacturing workforce.
Employees can buy up to any available plan and receive their plan ID card directly from the carrier, with access to a multilingual call center for questions and support.
Their benefits are also portable. If an employee moves to another employer participating in the trust, their coverage can follow them.
You handle basic administration as you would with any group benefit plan. But membership minimizes your COBRA liability, because PMBT, not your company, becomes the policyholder as each employee joins the trust.
Contributions are made in advance, on the 15th of the month prior to coverage. As an ERISA-governed trust, PMBT is held to the highest standards of fiduciary responsibility.
Benefits trusts aren't new. They have been in active use for decades across contractors, teachers, firefighters, municipalities, law enforcement, and truckers.
VEBA trusts that band together the buying power of many companies within a single industry are growing in popularity as healthcare costs and reform pressures continue to rise.
Reform locked direct carriers into rigid plan designs and per-person age rating for groups of 2 to 99. PMBT works with an expanded selection of plan designs and strategically builds a unique package offering choice and value.
PMBT's composite rating, based on the group's average age even for groups under 100, and its custom plan designs are not available through traditional carrier offerings for groups of 10 or more.
Each year the trustees review renewal quotes from current carriers and entertain competing quotes from others, the same shopping you do now but on behalf of potentially thousands of employees.
That scale gives the trust far greater negotiating power, along with the ability to secure custom coverage packages designed to fit the manufacturing population.
Adding employees is simple. Submit a signed enrollment form to the PMBT Support Center, and the trust handles the rest.
PMBT currently offers medical (HMO and PPO), dental (DHMO and PPO), vision, and group life coverage through United Healthcare, plus voluntary supplemental plans such as accident and disability income that coordinate with your enrollment.
PMBT is a welfare benefit plan that provides benefits to employees and their beneficiaries. It is not a retirement plan.
Still have questions? Schedule a trust consultation and we'll walk you through it.
