拡大する任意加入の福利厚生市場

In preparing for a recent webinar, I read some interesting trends happening in the voluntary benefits market. As employers grapple with rising insurance costs, they are not cutting back on what benefits they offer, but expanding them. This is mainly due to the tight labor market but also changing demographics. They are thinking about all around wellness – body, mind, and wallet.

Even though inflation is slowing in the US, it creates financial stress for employees at all income levels, especially for low-income earners who find it hard to meet normal monthly expenses, let alone medical bills. But even with the increased costs employers face, the tight labor market forces action. Employers are pulling all levers possible to attract and retain employees, and they are finding ways to keep benefits costs at bay. They are looking for opportunities to enhance benefits by adding value through more inclusive benefits and benefits that prevent future medical costs. According to a recent Mercer study, nearly two-thirds — 64% — of employers said they are planning to make enhancements to their health and well-being offerings to support attraction and retention and better meet employee needs, and over a quarter made enhancements within the past two years. Some of things they have doing or planning to do include:

• Changing time-off policies to give employees more flexibility - unlimited PTO, parental leave, leaves for surrogacy, adoption, sick leaves, four day work weeks for work life balance, and even paid and unpaid sabbaticals
• Paying close attention when employees say they need better support for their mental health
• Offering family building benefits that support all kinds of families (fertility treatment, surrogacy expenses, etc)
• Focusing on the special needs of women in regard to reproductive health — from preconception family planning to support during menopause
• Adding mental and behavioral health benefits beyond EAP, which they are expanding to up to 10 visits, such as adding a supplemental provider network for virtual or in-person care
• Services that support the employee when dealing with death (e.g., www.empathy.com) or illness (e.g., www.osarahealth.com)

In early 2023, Celent’s report How Mandatory are Voluntary Benefits Technology Upgrades? discussed some of these changes in product offerings and what it meant for insurers. While many of the new benefits are non-insurance services, we recommended that insurers begin looking at ways of partnering with service providers to amplify their own offerings. We also discussed what technology was needed for insurers to succeed in this expanding space. Our roadmap for insurers included APIs and integration capabilities, open systems, employee and employer engagement, data and analytics, and partnerships, along with product and plan design. Insurers will need to engage directly with employees for some products, partner with others they may or may not have partnerships with today and take an active role in the emerging digitized ecosystem. Their technology must be able to administer the insurance products they offer and integrate with insurtechs, claims systems (especially for absence management), and even the technology that supports some of the non-insurance benefits listed above.

What was missing from our report though was where AI could come in. For example, front end support at the employer or employee level could include offering tools that perform needs assessments. The tool could conduct a thorough needs assessment to understand the diverse needs and preferences of the workforce, informing the selection of voluntary benefits for the employer. Other AI uses cases could

• Support the employee, tools that communicate and educate and inform the employee about the availability, advantages, and enrollment processes of voluntary benefits could act like Amazon, and provide prompts to consider other benefits - “employees like you have added the following to their benefits.”
• Help process the data provided by the employee and improve family understanding. This could help employees bring benefits home to their participating dependents, making sure benefits are not overlooked, like EAP services or even supplemental health insurance that could cover a sports injury.
• Help improve understanding and use of employee benefits by utilization reminders.

In the back end, AI systems can be trained to

• Evaluate forms and auto process them without delay helping employees to know immediately whether evidence of insurability forms will be approved or denied. Claimants could know immediately whether their claim is approved, and when to expect payment. In either case, there may be a need for additional information, such as hospital or physician records, and the customer will be told they are needed before submitting a form.
• Help advisors identify prospects and help employers and their advisors identify gaps in benefit programs. It could be trained to study employee demographics and determine unmet employee benefit needs. Or to analyze claims and identify plan design tweaks with goals of improved plan performance for employees and savings for employers.

As voluntary benefits expand, insurers can be active participants in bringing the right tools and services to their employer clients. While there might be intermediaries for large employers, there are many small to mid-sized employers who can benefit from new insurer driven technologies and partnerships.

Have a happy holiday season and a wonder start to 2024. We look forward to talking to you about topics like these next year!