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Five takeaways: Ancillary quoting and the rise of 3rd-party platforms

Posted on by Ideon

Third-party platforms are modernizing how brokers quote voluntary and ancillary benefits, providing an intuitive digital experience to instantly quote and select multiple carriers and lines of coverage.

Sounds amazing, right? Some carriers have embraced this transformation, partnering with tech platforms to ensure their products are distributed to brokers via today’s growing digital ecosystem. But for others, there’s been hesitancy to adopt a 3rd-party strategy.

What factors are leading to these varied outlooks and strategies?

Ideon, an API company that connects carriers and platforms in an easy and scalable way, recently hosted a webinar where a panel of experts explored the evolution of ancillary benefits quoting, the value of 3rd-party partnerships, the digital demands of today’s brokers, and more.

In this blog, we highlight five key takeaways from the event, which featured:
–   Jeremy McLendon — Sr. Vice President at MyHealthily
–   Hannah Thompson — Sr. Manager of Solution Architecture at Beam Benefits
–   Eric Weiford –– Sr. Relationship Manager at Principal Financial Group

A full recording of the webinar is available for download, here.

1. The fear of spreadsheeting is overblown.

One prevalent reluctance among carriers, as they consider offering their products through 3rd-party platforms: Won’t this just lead to my plans being spreadsheeted?

All three panelists agreed — spreadsheeting is happening regardless, and carriers may as well empower it through distribution and great digital experiences.

“Distribution means some change in tradition,” McLendon said. “You’re probably going to be spreadsheeted as it is. So why not win and do it a little faster?”

Beam approaches spreadsheeting from a similar perspective, Thompson said. “Cool, put us on the spreadsheet, especially if that broker is getting a quote through a digital platform where we’re API-connected. Spreadsheeting is unavailable, but the shift over to API quoting is making it a lot more advantageous to carriers like Beam.”

“If brokers and general agents aren’t doing that, they are going to lose that business at some point anyway,” Weiford added. “From a broker’s due diligence, they have to spreadsheet every now and then.”

2. API-powered, fully-underwritten quoting is the new frontier.

APIs allow carriers and platforms to communicate and exchange information in real time. The technology is becoming favored for a range of benefits-related tasks, including enrollment, EOI decisions, claims, and more.

Recently, APIs have made their way to the ancillary quoting space, allowing users of platforms like MyHealthily to generate instant, underwritten quotes based on group-specific criteria. The platform submits group information via a carrier API, and the carrier’s algorithm spits out underwritten quotes, all within seconds.

“We have prioritized platforms that can connect to our APIs,” Thompson said. “Through API quoting integrations, we can ingest census data, which means we can provide custom, underwritten, real-time bindable rates to these platforms.”

3. There’s untapped potential in the small group market.

Digital quoting solutions were historically available only in the large group space, but according to Thompson, that’s beginning to change.

“That ability to deliver real-time, custom, underwritten rates through an API connection—or even via Beam’s own tools for small groups—it’s huge, it’s an underserved market,” Thompson said. “The ability to provide really sharp rates to small groups, in a way that the large group space has benefited from in the past, is a unique opportunity for our industry.”

Like Beam, Principal has designed its digital strategy to win business down market and bring modern technology to small businesses.

“Our bread and butter is in the small group space,” Weiford said. “We’re constantly having conversations with the intermediaries who are adopting these platforms, looking at what is and isn’t working, so we can be agile in trying to make things work for them and for Principal.”

4. Getting started requires gaining organizational alignment.

Custom underwriting is seen by many carrier reps as a differentiator. So, internally, how do carrier executives get buy-in and explain the value of 3rd-party quoting?

“Distribution via 3rd-party platforms is only going to get more eyeballs to your products,” Thompson said. “And that hopefully means more RFP conversions for your team. The way we position it internally, is if a broker is going to go through a platform, we will still associate a rep to those opportunities. Oftentimes, there’s still consultation that needs to happen, from the rep to the broker, to ensure the broker is positioning the product appropriately. We still plug our reps into that flow.”

Carriers, Weiford explained, can alleviate concerns among their reps by including them in conversations about third-party quoting, explaining that it will lead to more opportunities, and showing them detailed reporting. But, it might take time for total organizational buy-in.

“Adoption isn’t always there at first,” Weiford said. “When reps start seeing that they can get additional swings, then it starts getting a little bit more palpable. And then you start showing them reports, ‘hey, here’s 100 new opportunities, go win that business by working with the broker.’ Platforms are not the enemy—you’re working alongside them.”

5. The right strategy and partnerships can mitigate scalability concerns.

For third-party platforms that have ancillary quoting functionality, scaling up can be challenging. Platforms want to offer brokers lots of carriers and products, but doing so requires partnership discussions, relationship management, and technical integrations.

“We tend to be carrier-agnostic, as we want to offer a large marketplace to our brokers,” McLendon said. “But constantly vetting and integrating with carriers can take time away from our development team. We look for the carriers that are willing to adopt early — from our experience, those are the opportunities where we can grow together.”

Ideon, McLendon explained, has helped MyHealthily solve the scalability problem.

“Working with partners like Ideon, a middleware so to speak, is nice because it allows us to integrate with more carriers more quickly. That way we can take on other projects.”

For carriers, the value of working with Ideon is similar. It enables them to integrate with numerous downstream quoting platforms without building direct integrations to each system.

To watch the full webinar recording, click here. To learn more about how Ideon helps carriers and platforms grow in the ancillary quoting space, contact us and we’ll be in touch.

How BenAdmin platforms turn carrier connectivity into a competitive advantage

Posted on by Ideon

Benefits administration platforms’ (BenAdmins) sales, operations, and product teams have a ton to think about these days: 

  • How do we become a year-round benefits destination for employees? 
  • How do we take advantage of the growing popularity of voluntary benefits? 
  • How do we ensure our employee experience is a competitive differentiator?

One topic that is all too often overlooked: carrier connectivity. On one hand, carrier connectivity has become table stakes — after all, doesn’t every BenAdmin platform communicate enrollments and member changes to carriers digitally, mostly via EDI feeds?

Yes, but leading BenAdmins view carrier connectivity as much more than a technical requirement: done correctly, it’s a competitive advantage, enabling scalability, efficient operations, and a fast, accurate enrollment experience.

In the benefits industry, “fast” and “scalable” are rarely used to describe group setup and implementation. We know from speaking with our customers that it takes most BenAdmins 8-12 weeks — and often longer — to build typical BenAdmin-to-carrier EDI feeds. But that’s all changing now. We’ve seen several platforms reduce their group setup timeline to as few as five days. 

The obvious question: How are BenAdmins reducing group setup to days, instead of months?

The answer lies in a new way of managing carrier connections, a strategic decision to partner with companies that specialize in exchanging enrollment data between BenAdmins and carriers. 

The results for BenAdmins speak for themselves:

  • Group setup completed in five days
  • The ability to send enrollment data in a consistent format
  • Elimination of several manual steps that typically prolong EDI implementation

Our new infographic compares, side-by-side, this enhanced carrier connectivity strategy vs. traditional EDI setup. Fast, accurate, and scalable — it’s a new world of connectivity without complexity. Download the infographic to learn more.

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Ideon Insights: Beam’s Elek Pew talks distribution strategy as a tech-focused carrier

Posted on by Ideon

Welcome to the second episode of Ideon Insights, our monthly interview series featuring thought leaders and innovators driving the benefits industry forward. In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Elek Pew, Head of Digital Partnerships at Beam Benefits, an ancillary benefits provider known for its innovation and digital-first approach.

In this Q&A, Elek provides insights into the evolution of the benefits technology ecosystem and the unique advantages that come with being a digitally native carrier. He also delves into how Ideon complements and enhances Beam’s digital distribution strategy, enabling seamless integration and collaboration within the industry.

For Elek’s complete thoughts on digital distribution, partnership strategy, and more, watch the video here.

Below we’ve highlighted six key moments from the conversation.

 

IDEON: How has the transformation of benefits technology informed your distribution strategy?

ELEK PEW: Technology is really at the forefront of everything today. Efficiency is king, especially in the small group market. We see that brokers care most about being really quick and efficient, so we pride ourselves on meeting those distributors where they are — whether that’s XYZ quoting or enrollment platform, or Beam’s own digital tools.

If they use a third-party system to quote business, we’ll find a way to integrate with that platform whether it’s through Ideon or directly. We’ll meet them where they are.

 

The benefits ecosystem is getting more complex. How do you choose the right partners?

There are a few things we think about when it comes to partnership strategy.

    • Do we potentially have access into a limited marketplace, where Beam is one of three or four benefits providers? 
    • What does the partner’s technology stack look like in terms of their ability to integrate? If a new partner comes to us and says, “we’re already integrated to Ideon” — that’s great for us. We know there’s not a ton of work to activate that new partner, compared to a net-new direct connection.
    • How do they think about API connectivity? Are we living in a file-based world? We’ll meet people where they are, but that’s definitely something we think about.
    • Are they willing to offer all of our product lines? Beam was historically a dental-first company, but now we’re focused on Beam as an ancillary benefits provider.

 

How does Ideon fit into your distribution strategy?

We definitely see the value in the partnership with Ideon from a middleware standpoint. As Beam has transitioned from Beam Dental to Beam Benefits — bringing on voluntary life, accident, hospital, and critical illness — our ability to turn those products on through one connection to multiple players in the ecosystem is game-changing. It’s a powerful thing that we want to continue to invest in.

We’ll connect to third-party platforms directly if that’s their preferred method, but we’ll meet folks where they are. 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, ensuring that our data is presented accurately and the data Beam gets back is in top fashion.

 

What are the advantages of being a newer, tech-focused benefits carrier?

Beam is well positioned in the market because, at our core, we’re a digitally native company. The idea of exposing our core functionality—enrollment, admin, quoting, etc.— and embedding our products into the benefits ecosystem really is inherent in how Beam has built core capabilities.

We’re able to go to market really quickly with new platform integrations because we’ve built our systems with the concept of exposability in mind. Now that the market is moving to third-party platforms, we’re well positioned to be able to connect and meet distributors where they are in the marketplace.

 

Why are rating APIs valuable for Beam and brokers?

Without a rating API, rates could only change once per quarter and it didn’t allow for customization — rates were prepackaged.

With a rating API like the one we’re building with Ideon, we’re able to take in real-time census information and generate a rate based on that specific employee population. We’re able to arrive at much sharper rates because we have more information about the group. It also enables our back office operations to be more efficient because we receive information about the group from that initial employee census.

With an API, we know it will only return rates and plans where Beam will 100% be able to offer the plan — rates are always bindable.

 

What’s a benefits technology trend you’re excited about over the next few years?

Instantaneous policy issuance — Beam is moving there, and I think the benefits industry overall will move that way, following in the footsteps of the P&C space. The group installation process is still painfully manual today.

The industry has made a lot of progress in terms of carriers accepting enrollment information from platforms and loading it into carrier systems, and we’re seeing instantaneous quoting making its way to the market with rating APIs. The next step is to bridge the gap between the two — take a quoted product, win it, turn it into a bindable policy, then have it ready for employees to enroll in coverage. That experience — quote to bind to enroll — we’re now seeing the foundation that will allow us to get there.

Stay tuned for new episodes of Ideon Insights each month. Subscribe to our newsletter below to stay in-the-know about Ideon and receive our latest content directly to your inbox.

Ideon Insights: Selerix’s Lyle Griffin talks LDEx and benefits data exchange

Posted on by Ideon

Welcome to the first installment of Ideon Insights, a new monthly interview series featuring thought leaders and innovators driving the benefits industry forward. In our first episode, we sat down with one of our technology partners, Lyle Griffin, president of Selerix, a leading benefits administration solution for brokers, employers, and carriers.

In this Q&A, Lyle shares his thoughts on the LIMRA Data Exchange (LDEx) standards, how the industry can facilitate more LDEx adoption, and how benefits data exchange will evolve over the next few years. Selerix and Ideon are both members of the Data Exchange Standards Committee tasked with developing the LDEx standards for the workplace benefits industry.

For Lyle’s complete thoughts on all-things LDEx, APIs, and data connectivity, watch the video here.

Below we’ve highlighted five key moments from the conversation.

IDEON: What’s the current state of LDEx adoption?

LYLE GRIFFIN, SELERIX: There are probably a dozen or so carriers that have stepped up and implemented LDEx in a really robust way. We’ve also been pleasantly surprised at the number of technology platforms that have been involved in developing the standard. That dialog between platforms and carriers is something that has been very refreshing.

What are the benefits of LDEx?

One, is just the speed of implementation, being able to set up your data connections quickly. Knowing that they’ll work as advertised is also very important.

As we move to API engagements, you’re really going to see the benefits. If we can move to something where we’re exchanging data in real-time, or as close to real-time as possible, the benefits back to the client or end-user are incredible.

Why is Selerix an advocate for data standards?

We’ve been very committed to implementing the standards since Day 1. What my team is telling me — the people who set up EDI connections with carriers — they’ve been very adamant that LDEx is good for them. They like it any time they can engage with people using the standard because it’s a concise way to start that dialog with the carrier. Having a common language really helps expedite the process.

How does Ideon help carriers and technology platforms use the LDEx format?

One of the most important things that [Ideon] brings to the table, is a fully formed view of how that data exchange ecosystem should work. Having a robust way to work with people on error resolution, initial engagement, data intake, being able to connect with an API or by exchanging files — I can see where this would be a very attractive proposition, not to have to build all of your business processes from scratch to take advantage of what a company like Ideon has to offer.

What’s the future of data exchange in the benefits industry?

In the long run, I think everyone’s vision is one of an interconnected ecosystem, an interconnected market, where trading partners exchange data more frequently and much more reliably than they do today. That’s what this is all about. As an industry, we’re still talking about this stuff, we’re still working on these challenges. So I think it’s going to take a while to realize that vision.

 

Stay tuned for new episodes of Ideon Insights each month. Subscribe to our newsletter below to stay in-the-know about Ideon and receive our latest content directly to your inbox.

Error management with Ideon, Part 1: A centralized, consistent experience

Posted on by Jashan Ahuja

By Jashan Ahuja
Group Product Manager – Enrollment

In Part 1 of a series detailing our enrollment API’s features and capabilities, Ideon’s product team examines error reporting and management — how it works, what benefits platforms can expect, and the advantages of a centralized workflow.

Historically, it’s been an operational and technical nightmare for benefits platforms to exchange group and employee enrollment information with medical and voluntary carriers. No matter the carrier’s method of data exchange — EDI, API, portals, etc. — getting data from platform to carrier was rarely a simple task.

But once connected, it’s smooth sailing, right? Not quite. As benefits platforms’ operational teams know all too well, sending data is only part of the equation. The carrier must accept and confirm the change, and that’s where things start to get really complicated. Usually, the biggest challenge is handling and rectifying enrollment data errors—every carrier sends discrepancies in a different format, and their error reports are rarely human-readable.

At Ideon, we’re powering a new era of connection between carriers and tech platforms. One that’s better, faster, and more secure than the industry status quo. In this blog, we explain Ideon’s error-handling features, from standardizing carrier error messages to resolving errors via API, and how they create a far more efficient and accurate enrollment experience.

What are enrollment discrepancies?

It’s hard to find someone with experience in benefits who doesn’t think that data errors and discrepancies are a problem. Some examples include account set up issues, incorrect employee demographic information (social security number, birth date, etc.), coverage date errors, and more.

Today, most carriers report errors in non-standard formats, often via email and spreadsheets. These reports are usually delivered on a weekly basis, and the information they contain is rarely easy to understand. The result is a slow, manual, and resource-intensive error-handling process that poses a challenge to benefits platforms and their operations teams.

What’s the impact?

We analyzed the data from hundreds of groups and thousands of members and found that about 8% of employee enrollments have a critical coverage issue, i.e. incorrect coverage dates, plan information, or birth date, or they’re missing entirely from either the carrier or platform system. Importantly, more than 80% of groups with 20+ members have critical errors.

And these errors have significant ramifications for the entire benefits ecosystem – from carriers and benefits platforms, to brokers, employers, and employees. The downstream impact ranges from lost revenue and broker commissions, to operational inefficiencies and employee experience issues.

Carriers are missing out on millions in potential premium. In one recent migration of about 200,000 employees onto the Ideon platform, our technology identified errors resulting in nearly $1 million in lost premium for the carrier.

For the employers in that migration, we saved more than 30K employees from potential coverage issues — all from one migration of approximately 200K lives. Ultimately, inaccurate data can cause serious problems for employees. Everyone in our industry can relate to the countless access-to-care issues that occur during open enrollment because of erroneous data. Or, imagine a life insurance claim for an employee who wasn’t enrolled accurately — there would be an emotional and financial impact on a grieving family, while the employer and platform would likely suffer reputational harm.

For a detailed look at how inaccurate data impacts every benefits industry stakeholder, read this recent blog by Ideon CEO Michael Levin.

Enrollment discrepancies via Ideon

The processes outlined above remain the industry status quo: manual error handling through spreadsheets and emails, inconsistent carrier formats, and a barrage of harmful errors that affect all stakeholders.

At Ideon, we’ve developed a revolutionary alternative for benefits platforms where enrollment discrepancies are centralized, standardized, and actionable. Here are three ways our solution differs from the typical process:

  • Many-to-one – Ideon translates all of the enrollment “errors” generated by carriers into a uniform and ingestible format.
  • Standardized messaging – Each enrollment discrepancy has a “message,” which is a standardized version of the carrier error translated into a human-readable format.
  • Centralized communication – Benefits platforms view and resolve all enrollment discrepancies, from multiple carriers, directly through Ideon’s API endpoint, allowing for a streamlined and centralized user experience and eliminating the need for other communication (e.g. e-mails and slack messages).

Centralized error management via Ideon’s API

Ideon’s error reporting solution helps platforms prioritize and rectify discrepancies by providing insight into the severity of each discrepancy and who’s responsible for fixing it. Regardless of the carrier or the original data source, platforms get a consistent, simple API experience.

In this section, we examine Ideon’s key error management features and highlight how platforms interact with our API.

(Image: Example of an API response sent from Ideon to a benefits platform. The response details an unresolved enrollment discrepancy, the party responsible for rectifying the issue, and other pertinent information.)

Severity – For each enrollment discrepancy we expose a Severity (“Info”, “Warning”, or “Failure”) that highlights the impact of the issue. A “Failure” enrollment discrepancy indicates a blocker to a member’s enrollment, whereas “Info” and “Warning” enrollment discrepancies provide visibility into informational updates or future changes required, for example when a dependent is due to age out in a couple of months.

Assignment – Each enrollment discrepancy has a Responsible Party and can be assigned to “Ideon” or “Partner”. This provides visibility into enrollment discrepancies that are currently being managed by our Enrollment Operations team and allows users to easily identify enrollment discrepancies that they need to address.

Status – Enrollment discrepancies have a status of “Unresolved”, “Resolved”, or “Returned”. This allows our teams to stay in-sync on each individual enrollment discrepancy. When we initially surface an enrollment discrepancy, it is in an “Unresolved” status. The status is updated to “Returned” when any comments are added and “Resolved” when a resolution message is provided.

Resolution – Partners are able to add a resolution message to an enrollment discrepancy via a simple API endpoint. This updates the status of the enrollment discrepancy to “Resolved”. If the issue still remains when the carrier re-attempts to process the data then the enrollment discrepancy can be reverted back to an “Unresolved” status so the history is retained.

Comments – Partners are able to interact with our operations team entirely via the enrollment discrepancies API endpoint by threading comments directly on the original enrollment discrepancy. This allows for efficient interaction between our respective Operational teams without needing additional tools or e-mails.

API and webhook transmission – Partners can pull down enrollment discrepancies directly from our API via a GET endpoint. We also provide enrollment discrepancies via Webhooks or a standard periodic CSV report.

(Image: Example of an API response sent from Ideon to a benefits platform. The response details a RESOLVED enrollment discrepancy.)

In summary, managing and rectifying enrollment data errors and discrepancies is a critical aspect of the benefits workflow. At Ideon, we understand the pain points of the industry and have developed a solution that streamlines the process by: standardizing error messaging; delivering a centralized resolution experience for benefits platforms; and helping them prioritize and, ultimately, resolve each discrepancy. Platforms can easily manage enrollment discrepancies, from multiple carriers, directly through our API endpoint, allowing for a streamlined experience without back-and-forth email communication.

Coming soon — Part 2: Auto reconciliation overview

Standardizing errors is a big step forward, but did you know Ideon can proactively identify them whether or not the carrier actually reports them? In the next blog in this series, we’ll dive into Ideon’s auto reconciliation feature, an industry-first capability that automatically compares data in the carrier and platform systems, surfacing discrepancies in near real-time.

Shop-by-doc is now ‘must-have’ for leading InsurTech platforms

Posted on by Ideon

HMO or PPO? Copay vs. coinsurance? What’s the cost-sharing structure for out-of-network specialist visits, mental health services, and home health care? Shopping for a health insurance plan is a notoriously painful process — whether you’re seeking individual coverage, choosing between plans offered by your employer, or examining your Medicare Advantage options, it’s often difficult to identify the plan that best matches your specific requirements. And it’s certainly not getting any easier: more carriers are offering more plans than ever before.

Like modern shopping experiences in other industries, the bulk of health plan selection now occurs online, via digital health insurance exchanges of both the public and private variety. For these digital platforms, used by consumers, seniors, brokers, and businesses alike, it’s critical to deliver intuitive, data-driven user experiences that provide full transparency into the rates, cost-sharing, subsidy estimates, and other features of all available health plans. However, a robust plan library, side-by-side plan comparison, and a modern quoting interface are insufficient to meet the needs of today’s users.

Shop-By-Doctor: provider-centric plan selection

To many consumers, there is no more significant determinant than whether a plan offers in-network coverage of their preferred providers, hospitals, and facilities. This has become even more important in recent years, as out-of-pocket maximums have increased and high-deductible plans have gained prevalence. To avoid the potentially high cost of out-of-network care, most consumers begin their plan shopping process with one question: “Which plans cover my family’s doctors and our local hospitals?”

Multi-carrier digital platforms have made answering this question far simpler than when paper SBCs and carrier-specific portals ruled the plan selection and enrollment landscape. Today, many multi-carrier exchanges and state-based marketplaces have integrated shop-by-doc functionality — the ability to filter available plans to show only the options that cover users’ preferred doctors and providers — into the plan shopping process.

Offering shop-by-doc has material benefits. Consumers avoid out-of-network fees and purchase a plan based on what’s actually important to them. Ideon, currently powering shop-by-doc functionality on several leading private marketplaces and state-based exchanges, has found that about 70% of consumers shopping for health plans will add their providers as a search criterion. For health insurance platforms, shop-by-doc is no longer an optional feature — it’s an essential component of a modern, integrated, fully-digital plan shopping experience.

Integrating shop-by-doc functionality into the shopping experience

Despite shop-by-doc’s obvious benefits, there remain some holdouts among consumer and broker-facing platforms. Adding this functionality was, traditionally, a near-impossible endeavor. The industry lacked a centralized, standardized source of provider-network data from which platforms could power provider-centric plan shopping features. Acquiring this information, in a usable format, from hundreds of health insurance carriers was beyond their operational and resource constraints.

But that technical barrier no longer exists. Ideon has transformed shop-by-doc into a simple addition to any existing platform, by building APIs that enable platforms with quoting functionality to integrate shop-by-doc into their system, without acquiring and maintaining the underlying provider-network data. These APIs are a bridge to better user experiences, and, ultimately, better-informed health and financial decisions and a smoother enrollment process for all.

If you’re interested in delivering shop-by-doc functionality to your platform’s users, reach out to learn how Ideon’s data solutions enable tech companies to build robust decision support experiences.

Three ways benefits platforms can leverage the growing popularity of voluntary benefits

Posted on by Ideon

Executives and decision-makers at benefits-technology (BenTech) companies—HCMs, benefits administration systems, HR platforms, etc.—have a tough job: every few years, new industry trends force these vendors to shift their sales, product, and partnership strategies to align with the latest needs of brokers, employers, and employees.

One trend that has dominated the BenTech ecosystem in recent years: the rise of voluntary benefits. While employers have offered core benefits like medical, dental, and vision insurance to employees for decades, voluntary products are a more recent phenomenon. Voluntary benefits, as a category, includes a broad scope of services, including: 

  • long-and-short-term disability
  • mental health support
  • financial-wellness programs
  • identity theft protection
  • accident insurance
  • cancer insurance
  • hospital indemnity insurance
  • critical illness insurance
  • legal services
  • pet insurance
  • life insurance

These products, for which employees pay at least part of the cost, are increasingly a standard component of competitive, modern benefits packages. In 2021, 55% of voluntary benefits brokers reported higher sales compared to 2020 and 54% reported increased enrollment activity, according to BenefitsPro. Further, LIMRA predicts the nonmedical benefits market will grow 20% over the next few years. And it’s not only that more employers are offering voluntary benefits — employee participation is growing, too.

So what’s a BenTech to do? Platforms that simplify the benefits experience for employers and employees—from choosing benefits products to enrollment and administration—will be best positioned to take advantage of the voluntary trend. 

Here are three ways BenTechs can enhance their voluntary experience:

1. Offer the voluntary benefits employees desire. It’s no secret that today’s employees want flexible, personalized benefits packages that supplement core products—medical, dental, and vision insurance—with newer offerings. BenTechs that stay abreast of employee needs and offer the most popular voluntary products will undoubtedly have a leg up on their competition.

And what, exactly, do modern employees want? According to a recent survey by Buck, it’s all about financial wellbeing and supplemental health coverage: hospital indemnity insurance, critical illness insurance, accident insurance, long-term care insurance, and personal loans are among the fastest-growing voluntary benefits. On average, employers offer 12 voluntary benefits, Buck’s survey revealed.

2. Provide decision-support tools for a better enrollment experience. Gone are the days of employees selecting benefits by skimming printed collateral materials. Today’s workers expect an Amazon-like enrollment experience: easy product comparison, tech-enabled assistance at the click of a button, and personalized recommendations based on data and individual needs.

Leading BenTechs have significantly upped their capabilities in recent years, empowering employees to make more informed decisions and better understand voluntary products. PlanSource, for example, offers employees side-by-side plan comparison and helps calculate per-paycheck cost estimates, while its DecisionIQ feature provides personalized recommendations powered by AI and machine learning technology.

3. Focus on operational excellence to make enrollment and administration a breeze. Offer in-demand products? Check. Build an industry-leading, digitally-advanced enrollment experience? Check. But the final step for forward-thinking BenTechs is to make operational greatness and smooth client service core priorities.

A major operational challenge is the transferring of voluntary benefits elections from a BenTech platform to carrier systems, and confirming groups and employees are enrolled accurately. This is an essential task: data errors can cause critical coverage issues for employees, billing problems to be rectified, and, ultimately, reputational harm and client turnover. That’s why many leading BenTechs now leverage APIs to streamline data exchange with carriers. Indeed, according to Guardian, API-enabled benefits administration can save employers up to 200 hours per year and cut down on data errors.

For BenTechs, building a better voluntary benefits experience won’t happen overnight. But there are ways to make serious progress, without using significant development and operational resources. For more information about how Ideon can help, contact us here.

The health insurance and benefits industry has a data problem

Posted on by Ideon

In today’s world, data quality drives results—for good or bad. And for all the progress that’s been achieved harnessing data in the health insurance and benefits ecosystem, data problems are rampant.

We speak to you from the trenches, which is to say that Ideon is in the business of not only data connectivity, but also data accuracy. And in our experience, about 10% of employee enrollments have existing data problems—from incorrect social security numbers to inaccurate effective dates—that can and often does cause significant issues for members, employers, and carriers.

The fallout of poor data throughout the ecosystem includes: 

  • Members are arriving in doctors’ waiting rooms, only to be told their coverage is not in place. Scenarios like these are all too common. And while these problems are solvable retroactively, they cause undue frustration and time-wasting for members.
  • Employers are paying for coverage for employees who have long ago jumped ship, when termination is not done properly. And new employees may resent their employer when their benefits experience is rife with coverage issues.
  • Brokers and consultants are often responsible for ensuring coverage is intact. They also may be the ones charged with entering enrollment data into a broker portal or enrollment platform. So when there’s a data issue, they often bear the brunt of the blame. Aside from fielding calls from irate HR managers, brokers often take home lower commissions when enrollments are incomplete owing to data issues.
  • Carriers have been forced to set up costly systems and processes—such as large customer service operations—to deal with the consequences of poor data quality. Bad data can also mean significant premium leakage. And importantly, while many look to insurers to solve all data problems, it’s impossible for them to do so without the help of all the other entities involved.

Bottom line: The industry’s “dirty data” problem is pervasive, with detrimental ripple effects at scale. Consider: In our estimation, nearly 9 million employees in the U.S. could have a coverage issue.

What’s being done? Not enough. Many constituencies in the industry see data issues as unavoidable and insurmountable, resigning themselves to addressing the symptoms, not the disease.

We get it: These issues are daunting. They’ve been institutionalized to a startling degree. But with industry-wide collaboration, they’re also eminently solvable.

At Ideon, we have some thoughts on how this can be done. You can learn more about them here.

Benelinx’s Story: Using Ideon to seamlessly provide brokers with data from multiple carriers

Posted on by Ideon

“Ideon cleans up the big mess the industry has built”

With the agency management software Benelinx, employee benefits brokers access health insurance quotes from multiple carriers in a flash. The company was started by Rachel Zeman, who formerly ran a brokerage and was frustrated with the redundancies and errors that were par for the course in the space.

In contrast to the traditional, broken model, brokers using Benelinx’s quoting engine have to enter a client’s parameters just once to quote and compare medical plans from numerous carriers.

Backstage, Ideon’s APIs quietly power Benelinx’s quoting tool through seamless data exchange. (We’re the strong, silent type.)

Benelinx

Helping agencies compete nationwide.

  • The Benelinx system, with data from Ideon, allows brokers to get accurate health insurance quotes from multiple carriers, saving hours on every proposal.
  • Ideon makes it easy for Benelinx to expand into new states and offer additional products without the need to negotiate with and connect to additional carriers.

Background

Rachel Zeman built RiteHealth Solutions into a thriving benefits brokerage based in Boulder, Colorado In 2019, she sold that company and started Benelinx to offer other brokers access to the customized software platform she had built for her own firm. Benelinx relies on Ideon to make it easier for brokers to provide quotes that compare rates from multiple carriers.

Q&A

Tell us more about why you started Benelinx
When I ran a brokerage we had become increasingly frustrated with the industry’s archaic systems, which are littered with redundancies and errors that don’t make sense in the modern world. We’d ask, “Why do we have to enter the same client information five times into five different systems?” And there was never a good answer. So we decided to streamline the process and built applications on the Salesforce platform. I knew this was something the market needed and it wasn’t available.

What problems do brokers face getting quotes for health insurance?
Most agencies are still running their entire business on Excel spreadsheets. If they want to make a proposal for clients, they have to go to the websites of four, five, six carriers, and upload the employee census to each, then download a quote. Then they have to compare them because every carrier’s rates and requirements are different. The only practical alternative they had was to work with a general agent that had relationships with multiple carriers, but as brokers get larger they often want to bring more in-house.

How does Benelinx make that easier?
The broker just enters the parameters for a particular client and uploads the census one time. Then all we have to do is ping Ideon, and we get back everything that is available to the client based on each carrier’s underwriting requirements. Every time we demo the quote function to a broker they are blown away.

Why did you decide to use Ideon to power your quoting engine?
The only other option would be to go to all of the carriers directly. It would have been very painful. When we started, we tried to get carriers to give us their rates electronically, and most wouldn’t give us the time of day. If they did agree, the data they sent would have to be cleaned, verified, and put into a standard format. Every carrier uses its own system and way of transferring data. Ideon cleans up the big mess the industry has built.

Can you describe the experience of integrating Ideon into your system?
My developers would say they have had nothing but amazing support, starting when we were integrating Ideon into our system. The customer service was great, and all their technology was up-to-date.

What’s the biggest advantage of working with Ideon?
Ideon has made it easy for us to grow. They are adding new products, like level funded plans. That’s something our clients have been asking for so now we can plug it into our system. It’s so simple. We’ve also been able to expand nationally. If we didn’t have Ideon we would have to go state by state and convince every carrier to give us rates. I can’t fathom what that would look like.

How does your story fit into the broader industry picture?
Our industry is in the middle of a huge consolidation, and that makes it difficult for many brokers. There is nothing more important than maintaining boutique brokers that can help smaller-size businesses make complicated and expensive decisions about healthcare. Ideon is helping us offer a very affordable solution that lets brokers of all sizes compete.