Christopher Efthymiou, Founder & CEO HealthInsuranceGeeks.com
Chris Efthymiou is the founder and CEO of HealthInsuranceGeeks.com (HIG) and has spent the last 16 years building fast growing employee benefits brokerages. He started his career in the early 1990’s at Oxford Health Plans in New York City while it was one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. After Oxford, Chris was in very senior level sales and sales management roles in New York City at JPMorgan, and HSBC, until he joined the start-up team of HealthPlanOne in Southport, Connecticut (HPOne). HPOne is an online health insurance brokerage selling individual and Medicare health insurance plans. Along with co-founders William Stapleton and Brendan Shanahan, Chris and the senior management team secured an institutional series A round of investment Capital led by Pequot Ventures (Now FirstMark Capital), and Greycroft Partners in 2008.
Chris spun out the growing small group health insurance brokerage of HealthPlanOne, where he remains an investor, and re-branded the business HealthInsuranceGeeks.com (HIG). HIG focuses on the under-serviced market of small businesses specifically on the East Coast, with extensive concentration in the Metro-NYC, and Metro-Charlotte, NC markets. In addition to running HIG, Chris is a co-founder of Nexus Benefits Consulting, a middle market employee benefits brokerage in New York City. HIG and Nexus share many resources, technologies, and consulting staff to outpace their competition with efficiently priced services and negotiating leverage in the insurance markets.
Chris earned his B.A. from Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He has brokerage insurance licenses for life & health, and property & casualty programs.
Joseph Cortelli, Co- Founder
Joe Cortelli is the co-founder of HealthInsuranceGeeks.com (HIG). His entire career has been spent selling and servicing benefit programs for small and mid- sized businesses. Joe considers himself keenly aware of what a small business requires from their insurance broker and that experience is the groundwork for HealthInsuranceGeeks.com.
Beginning his career processing claims and answering calls for Oxford Health Plans, Joe learned the business from the ground up quickly rising to Customer Service Manager. Shortly after, he made the transition to sales; selling and servicing medical accounts such as Doubleclick.com and Datek Online.
Joe became certified as an insurance underwriter at United Health Care, expanding his knowledge of employee benefits and broadening his expertise to include dental group disability and life insurance programs. Clients included companies such as JCrew and Hugo Boss. In 2003, Joe was recruited by Aetna to continue selling the Aetna portfolio through “A” level brokers like Mercer, AON and Willis, playing an important part in the early stages of Aetna’s turnaround. In 2005, he was named by Aetna as the number one sales representative for group insurance cross sales in the northeast and was awarded the Pinnacle Award for outstanding sales in 2006, selling an average of $21 million in premiums per year.
In 2006, HSBC recruited Joe to help lead the expansion of its group employee benefits department. During his first 12 months he sold and managed $4 million of premiums. Shortly after, he was promoted to Practice Leader of the Group Insurance division and continues to manage HSBC’s benefit customers. Joe earned his B.A. from Fordham University in Bronx, New York. He has brokerage insurance licenses for Life & Health, and Property & Casualty programs.
