How Bennie Brought Clarity and Confidence to Marquis’s Self-Funded Benefits
About Marquis
Our Customer
The Largest Dry Mill Ethanol Plant in the United States
Marquis is a family-owned business and the largest dry mill ethanol plant in the United States, located in a small, rural Illinois community. The company manufactures ethanol from corn and has built its culture around taking care of the people who make that possible. For Marquis, offering a rich, comprehensive benefits plan isn’t just an HR function — it’s a reflection of who they are as an organization.
What makes Marquis’s benefits challenge particularly distinct is context: as a mid-market manufacturing business with a diverse workforce, the company must balance the complexities of a self-funded health plan with the need to deliver benefits information in ways that are accessible and meaningful to every employee. The stakes for getting benefits right — and communicating them well — are high.
Our HR Leader
Meet Jade, Human Resource Manager
Jade Magnafici is the HR Manager at Marquis. She oversees the company's benefits program, including plan design, open enrollment, carrier relationships, compliance, and employee education. While she maintains overall accountability for benefits administration, she works closely with her HR team to support employees and ensure the successful management of the program. The HR Coordinator serves as the first point of contact for many day-to-day benefits questions and the Director of Human Resources actively participates in the renewal process and supports more complex benefits decisions.
Jade is a self-described data person, and she leads an HR function that must balance the expectations of a data-driven CEO with the needs of a workforce that may not have deep familiarity with benefits complexity. When Marquis made the decision to go self-funded in 2023, it set off a chain of challenges that their previous broker was not equipped to handle — and Jade and her team felt it immediately.
HR Challenges
1. Self-Funding Without a Guide
Self-funding is a fundamentally different model than fully insured coverage. The plan design decisions are more complex, the financial exposure is more direct, and the administrative requirements are more demanding. When Marquis transitioned to self-funding, they needed a broker who could educate them, hold their hand through the details, and stay ahead of what was coming.
Their previous broker didn’t deliver that.
2. Always Behind the Eight Ball
With the previous broker, Jade found herself discovering important information after the fact — reactive instead of proactive, surprised instead of prepared. As one of the key points of contact for benefits at a self-funded company, that gap had real consequences.
With our previous broker, I was finding things after the fact and felt like we were constantly behind the eight ball, so to speak. When Bennie came in, it was like I didn’t have to worry about any of those things anymore.
3. Change Management in a Traditional Workforce
Moving to a tech-forward broker in a rural manufacturing environment required internal selling. Employees who had been with Marquis for years were accustomed to doing things a certain way. Getting management buy-in, and then bringing employees along, was a challenge Jade had to navigate carefully.
Once management realized the benefits of moving to Bennie, it was an easy sell.
.png?width=636&height=159&name=Customer%20story%20customer%20+%20Bennie%20(6).png)
Confidence, Consistency, and a Partner Who Earns It
The Results
What Jade describes is not simply a better vendor relationship. It’s the difference between managing benefits in a constant state of catch-up and managing them from a position of informed confidence. Bennie’s consistency, proactivity, and genuine partnership have changed how Marquis operates its benefits function.
I think Bennie has just been consistent. The consistency and the responsiveness of Bennie has been something we were lacking with our previous broker.
And for HR leaders who worry that a tech-forward broker means losing the human relationship they rely on, Jade offers direct reassurance:
I would tell another HR leader that they shouldn’t worry about the lack of human interaction with a tech-forward company like Bennie. I have never felt that there was a lack of personal connection. I haven’t felt that we weren’t supported by someone, whether it’s our account manager or someone else. There is still that personal touch, even though they are high tech.
I view Bennie as the new standard. I would not hesitate to recommend Bennie. I do recommend Bennie to a lot of people that I speak with in the HR world, and I definitely view this as the new norm for benefits brokers.