Principal Associate, Health & Wellness (H&W) Benefits

Principal Associate, Health & Wellness (H&W) Benefits
Are you passionate about shaping a world-class employee experience? We are looking for a Principal Associate, H&W Benefits to drive the delivery, administration, and continuous evolution of our comprehensive Health & Wellness programs.
In this high-impact role, you will serve as the operational anchor for an exciting portfolio of vendors—spanning on-site clinics and pharmacies, dental, vision, FSA/HSA, life insurance, LTD, AD&PL, mental health, MSK, and executive physicals. You’ll tackle complex challenges, champion initiatives, and lead RFP processes, all while enjoying the autonomy to drive meaningful work forward in close collaboration with talented internal and external partners. Join us and help make a tangible, positive difference in our organization!
The ideal candidate has a passion for benefits and helping associates have an exceptional experience with Capital One’s benefits. They are strategic, compliance-minded, and excel at translating complex legal, regulatory, and policy requirements into well-managed operational processes in a matrixed enterprise to uphold an exceptional standard of audit readiness and risk mitigation.
Key Responsibilities
1. Vendor Management & Governance
Own Plan Program Management for on-site clinics and pharmacies, dental, vision, FSA/HSA, life insurance, LTD, AD&PL, mental health, MSK, and executive physicals. Develop a network and build trust-based relationships with vendors and cross-functional partners to get work done.
Performance Monitoring: Meeting with vendors and actively monitoring vendor adherence to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure vendors deliver on contracts.
Partner with Enterprise Supplier Management (ESM) to execute required vendor management tasks to ensure compliance and mitigate risk (e.g., business reviews, risk assessments, data share requests).
Responsible for preparation and timely submission of state and federal filings related to H&W plans, H&W nondiscrimination testing, SOC-1 reviews, legally required communications, SPDs, and maintaining a compliance calendar to ensure compliance work is timely.
Serve as designated lead for HIPAA compliance, internal H&W audits, and liaison between Benefits and HR Risk teams on issue management and controls.
Serve as the subject matter expert for laws, rules and regulations that impact US H&W benefits including, but not limited to: ERISA, CAA, HIPAA, MHPAEA, state individual mandate reporting and San Francisco HCSO. Partner with Legal and HR Risk to monitor emerging legislation and assess impacts to US H&W plans, propose compliance and execute decisions to maintain compliance.
Continuous Improvement: Create analytics to leverage data to generate insights on vendor capabilities and recommend plan or program improvements based on benchmarking data, areas of employee abrasion, compliance updates, or emerging market trends. Consider broader and longer term impact to create value. Stay up to date on new programs or offerings from vendors and support the Policy & Design team with input on investment decisions.
2. Operations & Program Administration
Issue & Escalation Resolution: Maintain comprehensive, up-to-date issue logs for each vendor to drive timely resolution and document outcomes.
Partner with Benefits Operations to manage annual program implementation changes with vendors. Ensure changes are properly implemented and tested.
Core Administration: Handle administrative tasks related to the assigned plans with a sense of urgency, while balancing quality, to ensure smooth day-to-day operations. Navigate any ambiguity to determine the proper course of action.
Internal Communications: Own and maintain internal intranet pages for your plans to ensure benefit program information, FAQs, and resources are accurate and accessible. Partner with HR Communications to make needed changes.
3. Associate Experience
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Own tier-3 employee escalations for your plans. Work with members to understand the situation, investigate root causes, interface with vendors for resolutions, and implement processes or solutions to prevent future errors.
Understand associate experience (how claims flow, customer service support, etc) to recommend and execute improvements.
Oversee the monthly benefits and wellbeing newsletter to increase plan utilization and drive awareness of benefits. Develop a project plan with monthly themes, partner with stakeholders to provide relevant content, socialize as needed to support key HR initiatives, and work with HR Communications on production.
Leverage data to support key messages and partner with HR Communications to design and execute on a communications plan to drive understanding of benefit and how to access/ use. Review communications recommended by vendors and partner with HR Comms on a view point for which should be sent, and timing.
4. Strategic Initiatives & Growth
RFP & RFI Support: Support team members responsible for plan design with Request for Proposals (RFPs) and Request for Information (RFIs) for benefit program contracts, including evaluating vendor bids and participating in stakeholder reviews.
Implementation Support: Handle program implementation changes with vendors; ensure changes are properly implemented and tested.
Proactively seeks out benefits knowledge to stay current on benefits products, industry innovations, and regulatory changes by attending webinars, reading industry publications, and participating in conferences.
5. Documentation
Process Documentation: Author and maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs) for vendor management and escalation workflows to ensure team business continuity.
This role is designated as a hybrid position. You are expected to adhere to Capital One's hybrid policy regarding required on-site presence at your designated office location.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree or military experience
At least 3 years of experience working with Health & Wellness employee benefit plan vendor management
Preferred Qualifications
MBA or Master’s Degree
Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) or Certified Benefits Professional (CBP) designation
4+ years of experience in Health & Wellness employee benefits for organizations with 10,000+ employees
5+ years of experience with benefits vendor management
Experience with benefits governance practices
Solid business acumen, strategic thinker, and problem solver
Strong analytical skills and knowledge of statistical analysis
At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (e.g. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, E-3, and O-1, or any other forms of work authorization that require immigration support from an employer).
The minimum and maximum ful

Skills
Excel, Vendor Management, Documentation