Roughly 160 million people get their coverage from employer group plans, making that line of business critical to an insurer’s long-term success. But carriers have been involved in a “race to the bottom” on traditional levers, engaging in RFP-by-RFP trench warfare for small share gains in a stagnant growth business line with eroding profits. This is especially true in the 60% of the group commercial business that serves self-funded employers who are eager for innovation to control their healthcare benefit costs.
To move beyond the status quo and achieve step function gains in commercial top line growth, insurers need to re-invigorate their approach. We argue that insurers need to “double-click” on the fundamental drivers to enhance core competencies (i.e. detailed analytic methods and evolved approaches across the core top-line levers) as well as be tightly coordinated and aligned across the organization (i.e. across finance, product, network, customer insights) in execution if they are going to build sustained market share growth. Only then will carriers and their partners be in position of strength to break through the status quo and help drive implementation of innovative population health models.
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