About us
Small on purpose. That’s the point.
We’re Julie and Cody Wall. We’ve both been in employee benefits since 2008, we’re married, and we run Clever Benefit Solutions LLC, which trades as The Clever Insurance, out of an office on Westpark Drive in Houston. When you call, you get a person who knows your plan.
6220 Westpark Dr, Suite 115, Houston
Why we started The Clever Insurance
We’d each spent the best part of two decades watching the same thing happen. A business owner signs up for a plan, the broker collects the commission, and then nobody hears from them again until the renewal letter shows up with a number on it nobody explained.
We thought benefits should come with a person attached. Not a service team, not a ticketing system, not a 1-800 number that routes you to someone in another state reading from a script. A person, who knows your business, who picks up.
So that’s what we built. It means we take on fewer clients than a big firm would. It also means that when one of your employees calls about a bill they don’t understand, they get someone who already knows which plan they’re on.
Julie Wall, CEO and Founder
What Julie likes most about this work is taking something that feels complicated and overwhelming and making it make sense to someone.
Most brokers work with the employer. We work with the employer and with their employees, which is a different job, and it was Julie’s idea. If someone on your team gets a claim denied, or opens a hospital bill for $4,000 they were sure was covered, or just doesn’t know where to start, our team takes it on and deals with the carrier. In English or in Spanish.
Her way of putting it: we shouldn’t just be your insurance agents, we should be who your people call about anything to do with their health coverage. Julie also runs the regulatory filings side, which is most of the paperwork that has to be right and nobody enjoys.
Cody Wall, President
Cody is the third generation of his family in this business. His grandfather started their agency about 60 years ago. His father took it over in the late nineties. Cody went on to become its president before he and Julie started this one.
Cody runs the enrollment meetings and builds the tools clients use to compare their options, including short videos that explain the plan to employees in language they actually follow.
Compliance is the part he pays closest attention to. ACA reporting, ERISA documents, Section 125, and the non-discrimination testing that employers fail without ever knowing they were being tested. He keeps up with the rule changes so clients don’t have to, and he walks them through it rather than emailing over a PDF and wishing them luck.
How we work
How we work with clients
Three steps, and then a long quiet stretch where we’re just there.
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We listen
What you have now, what it costs you, what your team complains about, and what you actually want the benefits to do for the business. Sometimes that’s holding onto people. Sometimes it’s getting the number down. Usually it’s both.
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We shop it and we explain it
We take it to the market, put the real options next to each other, and tell you in plain language what each one means for your money and for your people. Then we explain it to your team too, not just to you. That part gets skipped a lot and it’s the part that decides whether anyone values the benefits you’re paying for.
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We stay involved
New hires, terminations, ID cards, life events, claims problems, compliance dates, open enrollment. All year. You should hear from us more than once, and not only when the rate goes up.
What we believe
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Trust.
You should never have to wonder whether we’re recommending something because it’s right or because it pays better.
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Transparency.
If a plan has a catch, we’ll tell you what it is before you sign, not after someone hits it.
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Education.
Nobody values a benefit they don’t understand. Explaining it properly is most of the work.
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Affordability.
The goal is coverage your team can actually afford to use, not the cheapest premium on a spreadsheet.
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Long-term relationships.
We’d rather have forty clients for ten years than four hundred for one.
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Employee wellbeing.
The person holding the card is the one this is all for.
Outside of work
We’ve been married eighteen years and we have a 16-year-old daughter. When we’re not working we’re usually traveling, at a concert, or at a game. We like being busy, and we’ve built the kind of business we can run together.
Where we work
Houston, and most of Texas
Our office is on Westpark Drive in Houston and most of our clients are in the Houston area. We also work with businesses in Corpus Christi, Victoria, El Campo, East Bernard, Austin and Dallas. Texas is one state and we’re licensed across it, so distance has never been the thing that decides whether we can help.
- Houston
- Corpus Christi
- Victoria
- El Campo
- East Bernard
- Austin
- Dallas