The ICHRA market is growing fast. But manual processes, custom integrations, and a lack of visibility are holding carriers and ICHRA admin platforms back.
Ideon changes that dynamic. Our infrastructure powers the complete ICHRA experience—from plan shopping and decision support to enrollment and payments—so carriers can grow their ICHRA business and platforms can offer a seamless employee experience.
NEW YORK, NY — April 16, 2025 — Ideon, the leader in data management and connectivity solutions for the health and benefits industry, today announced a strategic partnership with Ambient, the ICHRA payments and administration unit of Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. The partnership combines Ideon’s advanced enrollment technology with Ambient’s payment and administration solution, providing health insurance carriers and ICHRA administrators a unified, automated solution for managing ICHRA enrollment and payment data.
As the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) market rapidly expands, carriers and ICHRA administrators face increasing complexity around enrollment integrations and premium payments. This partnership addresses these challenges by providing a consistent, scalable method for exchanging critical enrollment and payment data, resulting in fast, accurate processing and an improved employee experience.
“Our partnership with Ambient allows carriers and ICHRA platforms to rapidly scale their ICHRA business while enhancing the overall experience,” said Steve Swad, CEO of Ideon. “We’re now delivering an end-to-end ICHRA solution—from initial quoting through premium payments—that removes complexity for carriers, administrators, employers, and employees.”
IdeonEnroll for ICHRA builds upon Ideon’s proven success automating group benefit enrollments, extending these capabilities to the individual market. The solution significantly reduces integration costs, errors, and processing time, and offers greater visibility into ICHRA enrollments.
Ambient streamlines the ICHRA premium payment process—precisely deducting premiums from employer accounts, allocating funds for each employee, and distributing payments to carriers.
“Ambient simplifies premium payments and administration, empowering carriers and ICHRA administrators to scale efficiently,” said Jim Mrowka, Chief Operating Officer of Priority’s Ambient unit. “In partnership with Ideon, we’re delivering a comprehensive solution that transforms the entire ICHRA experience.”
This partnership further expands Ideon’s suite of ICHRA solutions. Combining IdeonQuote, IdeonSelect, and IdeonEnroll with Ambient’s payment product, Ideon provides the data and connectivity required to power ICHRA plan shopping, decision support, enrollment, and payments. Using this infrastructure, carriers and platforms can enter the ICHRA market faster with accurate data and pre-built integrations.
For more information, visit ideonapi.com/ichra-solutions.
About Ideon
Ideon provides modern data management and connectivity solutions to advance the health and benefits industry. Ideon’s centralized, API-powered solutions enable real-time, reliable data sharing from quote to renewal. With Ideon, insurance carriers and technology platforms benefit from streamlined operations and accurate data, which ultimately improves the consumer experience, drives more revenue, enables smarter decisions, and increases timely access to care. To learn more, visit ideonapi.com.
About Priority and Ambient
Priority is the payments and banking solution that enables businesses to collect, store, lend and send funds through a unified commerce engine. Our platform combines payables, merchant services, and banking and treasury solutions so leaders can streamline financial operations efficiently — and our innovative industry experts help businesses navigate and build momentum on the path to growth. With the Priority Commerce Engine, leaders can accelerate cash flow, optimize working capital, reduce unnecessary costs, and unlock new revenue opportunities. To learn more about Priority and its publicly traded parent, Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRTH), visit prioritycommerce.com.
Ambient, a dedicated unit within Priority, specializes in automating payments and administration for ICHRA plans, easing operational burdens for brokers, TPAs, and carriers. Learn more at ambienttpa.com.
NEWARK, N.J. – Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU) announced today that its Group Insurance business has collaborated with Ideon, a leader in data exchange and connectivity solutions, to deliver unique technology solutions for benefits eligibility and enrollment processes for workplace clients and their employees.
As employers expand their benefits offerings to attract and retain top talent, the need for fast, safe and efficient benefits administration has never been greater, with high expectations around data exchange between providers, employers and the benefit administration systems they use. Through this strategic relationship with Ideon, Prudential aims to improve the accuracy of enrollment data, help reduce the administrative workload for human resources teams, and seek new and innovative ways to ensure accurate enrollment and eligibility data. The collaboration will also allow Prudential to expand integrations with certain benefit administration systems where connectivity is limited today.
“We are committed to providing a superior experience for our clients and their employees,” said Jess Gillespie, head of product and underwriting for Prudential Group Insurance. “Enhancing Prudential’s digital connectivity makes it faster and easier for groups, and their employees, to enroll in workplace benefits.”
The initial phase of the collaboration focuses on expediting the data exchange process that impacts the onboarding process, including enrollment and eligibility information.
“This relationship signifies a major step forward for Ideon and Prudential,” said Steve Swad, CEO of Ideon. “Our data solutions will enable Prudential to deliver a fast, seamless, and accurate benefits enrollment and administration experience. We are excited to support Prudential in enhancing their platform ecosystem.”
For more information, visit Prudential Group Insurance or Ideon.
About Prudential
Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), a global financial services leader and premier active global investment manager with approximately $1.6 trillion in assets under management as of Sept. 30, 2024, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Prudential’s diverse and talented employees help make lives better and create financial opportunity for more people by expanding access to investing, insurance, and retirement security. Prudential’s iconic Rock symbol has stood for strength, stability, expertise, and innovation for nearly 150 years. For more information, please visit news.prudential.com.
About Prudential Group Insurance
Prudential Group Insurance manufactures and distributes a full range of group life, long-term and short-term disability and corporate and trust-owned life insurance in the U.S. to institutional clients primarily for use within employee and membership benefit plans. The business also sells critical illness, accidental death and dismemberment and other ancillary coverages. In addition, the business provides plan administrative services in connection with its insurance coverages, and administrative services for employee paid and unpaid leave, including FMLA, ADA, and PFL.
About Ideon
Ideon’s data solutions allow health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers to connect with technology partners to deliver seamless consumer experiences at every stage of the member journey. Ideon serves as the infrastructure simplifying the exchange of quoting, provider, and enrollment data between carriers and the technology partners, so they can deliver health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans every day. Ideon transmits billions of data points between insurtechs and insurance carriers, powering an amazing benefits experience for all. To learn more, please visit ideonapi.com.
Ideon’s 2025 ICHRA Map is Available here
More than 60% of the U.S. is ICHRA-friendly in 2025
This year, our interactive map reveals exciting new insights into the ICHRA landscape:
📍 For bronze-level plans, 33 states are now “ICHRA-friendly” — up from 31 last year.
📍 Looking at silver-level plans, 21 states have market dynamics favorable to ICHRAs, up from 17 in 2024.This map is an essential tool for benefits professionals to pinpoint where individual health insurance premiums are more affordable than small group market rates, suggesting opportunities for ICHRA adoption.
🔗 Explore the map here. Plus, you can see how the market has shifted since the inception of ICHRAs.
Explore Ideon’s ICHRA solutions here.
Ideon and Prudential explore a new, proactive approach to uncovering EOI errors—before they cause claims issues.
Managing Evidence of Insurability (EOI) data has become a critical—and challenging—priority for group benefits carriers. Traditional EOI processes often result in errors that expose carriers to significant risks, from Department of Labor (DOL) fines to reputational harm and poor member experiences.
This guide dives into the risks hiding within routine EOI data processing. We’ll examine why carriers struggle to identify missing EOI before it’s too late, and reveal how advanced EOI data auditing prevents errors, mitigates risk, and helps carriers stay ahead in a competitive market.
Most carriers can’t effectively detect and resolve instances where a member has enrolled in coverage that requires EOI but hasn’t completed the EOI process. This problem is more common than many realize and has far-reaching implications.
Simply put, the status quo is no longer sustainable for carriers looking to remain competitive and compliant in the modern benefits landscape.
The consequences of mishandling EOI are extensive. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel — carriers, with the right auditing technology, can solve EOI data challenges and mitigate risk. Here’s why it should be a top priority:
Better technology is the only way to minimize the financial and reputational risk of EOI errors.
Ideon’s EOI Audit solution offers a unique, automated approach to solving this industry-wide challenge. It addresses two key areas: data auditing and decision return. Here’s how it works:
This process not only improves data accuracy but also prevents costly errors that lead to DOL fines and poor member outcomes.
By implementing Ideon’s EOI Audit solution, carriers not only improve compliance and enhance claims experiences, but also strengthen their competitive position by offering a more reliable EOI process. Here are the key benefits they can expect:
Carriers like Prudential are already seeing positive results with Ideon’s EOI Audit solution. As Sherri Bycroft, Director of Benefit Technology Partnerships at Prudential, shared in a recent Ideon Insights interview:
“We’re really excited about the fact that it’s going to flush out issues much earlier on,” she said. “We can have full confidence that we have the right information about the members in our system, and at the time of claim, be able to pay that without delays.”
See how Ideon’s EOI Audit solution can help you reduce risk, identify missing EOI, and provide a better claims experience. Schedule a demo below.
How are quoting platforms transforming the ancillary and voluntary benefits space?
Carriers and brokers are rapidly evolving their engagement—and third-party quoting platforms are at the heart of this shift. Join this webinar as experts from Guardian, Acrisure, and Ideon explore how these platforms are shaping the future of group benefits quoting.
🗓 Date: Tuesday, Oct. 22
🕒 Time: 1:00 PM ET
👉 Register here.
What you’ll learn:
IdeonEOI detects missing and incomplete EOI, protecting carriers from unrecognized risk.
Welcome to Episode 5 of Ideon Insights, our monthly interview series featuring thought leaders and innovators driving the benefits industry forward. In this episode, we sat down with Sherri Bycroft, Director–Benefit Technology Relationships at Prudential, to discuss how carriers are prioritizing certain APIs, partnerships with technology platforms, and how Ideon and Prudential developed an advanced solution for EOI auditing and decisions.
In this insightful Q&A, Sherri shares how Prudential is approaching the future of partnerships and technology, and why connected experiences are the key to growth and member satisfaction in the benefits space.
Watch the full episode of Ideon Insights. Below, we’ve highlighted key moments from the conversation.
IDEON: Why are technology partnerships so important for carriers like Prudential today?
SHERRI BYCROFT, Prudential: 15, 20 years ago, we often didn’t know who the platform was that housed data for that customer until after they were sold. Now, it’s on the RFP. If we don’t have a relationship with a group’s technology partner, we could be dead in the water on the sale before we even get to quote it. They’re going to look at that and say, ‘we’re going to choose a carrier that wants to work with our partner.’
It’s just so important in today’s world to be able to exchange data and have a connected experience. My team is being invited to finalist meetings all the time now. They want to hear from the technology team: What are you offering? How are you connecting? What does that look like for me? Connected technology experiences are where they’re making decisions today.
How has the role of brokers evolved in this more connected benefits landscape?
10 plus years ago, you didn’t really see brokers being engaged in how or who a group was choosing for their technology partner. Now brokers are actually bringing technology solutions directly to their customers. It’s creating some stickiness for the broker.
We’ve seen it on the carrier side, that customers are now more committed to their technology solution than they are to a carrier or their broker. The loyalty now is to ‘what is the hardest part of my life to change, and that’s the technology.’
What technologies and APIs are carriers prioritizing now?
Decision support is definitely a huge point of interest right now. Another is quoting APIs. The quote process wasn’t even in conversation five years ago, but now it’s a huge point of interest.
Plan data is another area where we’ve seen progress. We’re finally at a point where carriers are rolling out solutions to send plan configuration data into the technology system.
Everybody’s working toward their own roadmaps and some are very strong in one place and maybe not so much in another. We used to just be so focused on enrollment and eligibility information. But now, our eyes have been opened a bit as to what we can do to make the experience better, and be more proactive in preventing issues with that enrollment data. And so that really leads to plan build and Evidence of Insurability (EOI), and even quoting, all being an interconnected technology experience from quote to claim.
Why did Prudential choose to partner with Ideon?
One of the main reasons Prudential decided to partner with Ideon is because the folks at Ideon understand there’s more opportunity than just what’s being accomplished today. That willingness to say, ‘hey, there are opportunities to do things that have never been done before–let’s find a way to do it together.’
It gave us a lot of excitement for what we could do together, instead of being so siloed in, ‘the technology partner versus the carrier and whose roadmap is more important’. Instead, we have a partner like Ideon, where we are really both committed to delivering something new and better to the market.
How are Ideon and Prudential working together to solve EOI data challenges?
The EOI audit process that Ideon is creating for us is really taking the EOI rules that we have around our plans, and applying them to the enrollment data that’s received from the technology partner. The solution looks at how many of these folks have an amount approved over a guaranteed issue amount, and whether they actually went through the EOI decision process.
By having this EOI audit in place, we can uncover problems before claims time, and prevent a negative claims experience. It’s really important to us to ensure that we’re doing that right. But we just didn’t have the mechanisms in our toolbox to create this. So, Ideon has helped us build this from the ground up. We’re really excited about the fact that it’s going to flush out issues much earlier on.
It also ensures that the EOI decisions that we’ve made have been correctly updated into that technology platform. This actually serves in between as that connectivity, and reports back if we’ve approved something and it’s not updated in that downstream system. It’ll flush out issues and report it back to the platform, so we can make sure that it’s corrected.
How does Ideon help improve data quality for carriers?
The only thing that solves data quality issues is having robust validations on that data. Ideon has applied a more robust set of validations to all of our transactions. If the data is not in good order, Ideon catches it at the time they receive it and doesn’t pass it on to us. This helps keep bad data out of our system and reduces operational costs.”
What’s the state of API adoption in the benefits industry?
I think we’re still in our infancy, maybe toddler stage, but we certainly have a long way to go. I remember sitting in a room full of carriers and we were having discussions around APIs in 2016, and it was like everybody wanted to be there by 2020. We’ve learned a lot since and we’ve seen how long this has taken, but I think like all technology, you’re going to see it start to accelerate. But how far along are we going to be? We might be getting ready to enter our teenage years.
Learn more about how Ideon’s EOI Audit solution can helps carriers reduce risk, identify missing EOI, and provide a better claims experience. Schedule a demo below.
Stay tuned for more episodes of Ideon Insights each month! To get the latest updates and industry trends, subscribe to our newsletter below.
Market-leading ancillary and voluntary benefits carriers are leveraging digital quoting platforms to increase sales and expand their reach. These platforms simplify the quoting process for brokers, particularly in the small group market, and connect carriers to new opportunities, By integrating with these platforms, carriers are ensuring their products get more visibility and fostering stronger broker relationships.
A growing number of carriers selling ancillary products for employee benefits are overcoming initial concerns about third-party quoting platforms, embracing them and discovering a significant source of incremental sales.
In the earliest days of these platforms — which enable brokers to gather quotes from multiple carriers — some insurers were concerned that their products would be reduced to a line on a spreadsheet. They wanted brokers to continue to get quotes from their reps or their websites, allowing them to build a relationship with agents and highlight the unique benefits of their products.
Brokers, though, resisted the time-consuming process of gathering multiple quotes one at a time. Many had already used quoting platforms in personal and commercial lines and wanted the same convenience when pitching benefits plans. The platforms make preparing a client proposal much faster, and typically integrate quite well with agency management systems.
Although brokers initially used the benefits quoting platforms to manage the complexity of group health policies, many appreciated how the platforms also streamlined quoting for ancillary products. They could find the right plans and add them to a proposal in a few clicks.
The result: Carriers that chose to work with the quoting platforms discovered that they’re generating incremental sales. Rather than undercutting their existing relationships, the platforms connected carriers to brokers they had never worked with before.
Success stories: Carriers are thriving by partnering with quoting platforms
Principal Financial Group, for example, began distributing through quoting platforms as part of a strategy to convince brokers to add its ancillary products to group medical proposals. “A lot of brokers are finding their medical compensation is getting squished, so we can make it easy for them to add more lines of coverage,” said Eric Weiford, a senior relationship manager at Principal, in an Ideon webinar.
“Platforms are not the enemy,” he added. “They get more eyes on our products from people who don’t know us today but will in the future.”
The advantage is particularly powerful in the small group market, where the efficiency of quoting through platforms radically improves the economics for both brokers and carriers.
“Efficiency is king, especially with small groups,” Elek Pew, Head of Digital Partnerships at Beam Benefits, told Ideon. “We pride ourselves on meeting distributors where they are. If they use a third-party system to quote business, we’ll find a way to integrate with that platform.”
Beam’s modern, digitally-native systems and APIs allow it to generate custom quotes for any size group, even when it is connecting to brokers through a third-party platform.
“There’s a huge opportunity to deliver real-time, custom underwritten rates to small groups, especially through quoting platforms,” said Hannah Thompson, a Beam senior solutions architecture manager, in the webinar. “We can provide really sharp rates that only large groups could benefit from in the past.”
Exploring the quoting platform landscape
More quoting platforms are entering the market each year, bringing a range of tools designed to enhance the quoting process for brokers and carriers alike. Some of the existing platforms in this space include:
Additionally, some brokerages, such as Word & Brown, have developed their own proprietary platforms to further streamline the quoting process.
Getting started: Integrating with quoting platforms
Before carriers start working with benefit quoting platforms, they must decide how they will distribute their product details and rates. Those with up-to-date systems can connect in real time over an API. Carriers can also send their rates to the platforms in spreadsheets or other formats. Some have found that juggling communication with multiple platforms and keeping rates up-to-date can get cumbersome.
A more efficient alternative? Carriers can work with data solutions companies like Ideon. A carrier simply provides its rates — in whatever format is convenient — and Ideon will distribute them to dozens of platforms over its proprietary API connections, providing brokers with a seamless quoting experience. Whenever carriers upgrade their systems to support quoting over APIs, Ideon can facilitate two-way communication to enable customized, underwritten quoting and other advanced services.
Even for technologically advanced carriers like Beam, working with Ideon to get its products on quoting platforms provides the broadest possible distribution. “We’ll connect to third-party platforms directly if that’s their preferred method,” Thompson explained. “Some will say, ‘We want to connect through Ideon,’ and we’re more than happy to make that happen.
“It makes our jobs a lot easier knowing we have a trusted player in the middle.”
Expand your reach to today’s leading quoting platforms, without any technical development. Carriers can reach out to Ideon here to get started.
