Key takeaways:
- An overview of the complex benefits technology ecosystem: how third-party platforms have taken over the member experience, creating new distribution channels and partnership opportunities for carriers.
- The tech of tomorrow: Areas of focus and opportunities for benefits tech innovation and investment over the next five years.
- Best practices for carriers to meet members where they are today: Succeeding in today's group benefits landscape requires a combination of agile distribution, flexible third-party partnership strategy, and investment in cutting-edge data exchange capabilities.
Peilin Corbanese (00:12):
Good afternoon. Thank you so much for coming to this session. We appreciate the attendance. This is quite competition with the other panels, and thank you for friends who are here ready to take pictures of us and colleagues. Always thank you support for being here. So today we have this amazing panel, just a little secret. These three are all friends. So I'm the outsider here, so I kind of think I can lay back and just let them moderate themselves. But first of all, let's do around the introduction. So why don't we start with Ted?
Ted Phillips (00:50):
Awesome. Good afternoon everyone. Ted Phillips and welcome to our TED Talk. That's good. I new audience so it gets a laugh. I got a couple colleagues being like, oh my gosh, he used that joke again. Appreciate you coming out Ted Phillips with Sun Life. I head up our benefit technology practice called the Distribution Digital Center of Excellence or DDCOE for short. We're responsible for all of our, Sun Life's Benefit technology partnerships in a couple of different ways. The first way is the go to market sales enablement and distribution. So how would we bring that differentiation to market with our platforms? The second piece is a PI connectivity and the roadmap around that, which we'll get into a lot of information around today and really excited to talk about that. I made my way to Sun Life via Maxwell Health, which was a Ben admin platform, which I started at in 2013. Grew and sold to Sun Life in 2018. So again, very excited to be here. Look forward to having the conversation.
Michael Levin (01:49):
Okay, hey, good afternoon everybody. I'm Mike Levin. I'm one of I Dion's two Co-founders and the company CEO. So I, Dion is a health insurance and employee benefits infrastructure company. We're the pipes for this industry connecting carriers and other benefit providers with a whole bunch of tech companies that are creating great experiences for members, for brokers, employers, and even the carriers themselves.
Sarah Oliver (02:15):
Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for being here. I'm Sarah Oliver. I am joining you today from the Land of Prudential. I lead all things voluntary benefits in our space of group insurance. So I have the product and here's where you're going to see how we all know each other. I also have enrollment in benefits technology on my team as well. So that's how we're all related and very happy to be here with all of you today.
Peilin Corbanese (02:40):
So Sarah, you had some prior experiences that you can share with us, right?
Sarah Oliver (02:45):
Indeed. Okay.
Peilin Corbanese (02:46):
Indeed.
Sarah Oliver (02:47):
Like personal or professional.
Peilin Corbanese (02:52):
Whatever is appropriate for this room and the official. And last, when we were outside, we were talking about how long we have known each other. So between Michael and Sarah was since their first date is three years.
Michael Levin (03:06):
About three years. Yeah, three years.
Peilin Corbanese (03:08):
And these two grown mans.
Michael Levin (03:09):
About five years.
Peilin Corbanese (03:11):
And here it's one week and counting, I'm sorry, and counting and counting. So here they're so good with each other. They gave me an outline what they want to talk about. So here they're talking about, to kick us off, let's start with they even wrote for me a thought provoking question. How far along is the employee benefit industry in terms of digital transformation? And then I said, yeah, we can talk about that or you can talk to us about how that compares to generative AI.
Ted Phillips (03:47):
Your turn. Happy to start with that one. So one thing when we started to talk about this discussion was that we definitely in the group benefits world think there's a lot of value to technologies like generative ai, right? I will say though that we're behind a little bit, and I would say that that's probably true for health and group benefits overall, but that doesn't mean we don't think that there's value. One thing that we want to make sure is how the data is protected and certainly being able to have the controls in place. A lot of the data that we leverage and we use is fairly sensitive in the group health and benefits world. So we want to make sure that those controls are in place, that we're using it responsibly and make sure that we can do that. With that being said, we're definitely putting in the building blocks, right?
(04:31)
Because we do want to create a better client experience. We want to be able to automate some of the routine tasks that we do in our implementation, our claims, our underwriting process. And so we're starting to build out different areas within our organization to be able to do that. For example, not generative ai, we're not there yet, but a building block to that, we're looking at our call center data, our member services data to say, okay, are there common questions? Right? We're using voice recognition technology to do that. We're also looking at it from a new client basis. We're taking technology to examine their old contract that they had with their prior carrier and say, Hey, did we match all of that? Because that's an important thing. We don't want a client to come on board and say, oh man, I had this with my last carrier. Why didn't you put it in my existing contract? We didn't know. And before that, we would literally have to go through 45 page contracts to say, okay, is this provision okay? So we're putting in the building blocks because we do find value and we will see value in that in the future. Not just generated ai, but every type of innovative technology that we're starting to see come into the insurance world. We're just being a little bit more thoughtful and careful around how we're protecting that data because again, it is pretty sensitive.
Michael Levin (05:46):
So Ted started with we're this industry is behind a little bit. I'd say we're behind a lot of it. I mean the modern technology still is forms and Excel. A number of APIs or providers that have API's is in the tens. They're certainly not ubiquitous. And where they exist, they're partial, they, there's certain lines, certain functions, certain geographies, certain group sizes. So when you look at us, the health insurance and employee benefit space versus p and c, there's a pretty big chasm. But that said, we're catching up. There's an incredible amount of energy investment going into this segment to bring us up. So ultimately we can create great member experiences. That's where we started. I Dion, working from the member back.
Sarah Oliver (06:33):
Yep. Yeah, I agree with all that's been said. We are behind, I won't say it nicely, it's not really my jam so very far behind, but one of the things that Ted said I think is really important and our data is about people. And there's a lot of work that you have to do to protect person level information and you have to do a lot of work also to be thinking about, to make sure that the data is accurately representing the people. It's one thing when it's about something that's a little bit more transactional, but people are not. One of the ways that I think it's an interesting opportunity to leverage data is around the point of selection for benefits. In my space, it turns out that humans don't really like to hear words like indemnity on the regular. And so I think I've also read some statistics around how people likened annual enrollment to doing their taxes, which just breaks my little heart, I'm not going to lie.
(07:29)
But with that in mind, we have to find ways to use data to make recommendations and suggestions based on things that are actually meaningful. So back in the day, you'd have maybe, like you say, you're a 43 year old mom of three that lives in Maine, so you should have products like this. It's not enough information usage. It's not going to explain to me how I consume care, how I consume my insurance policies, a high deductible, how I consume products and just what I need for my family. So data has, we really have an opportunity to do better for people and help them out with decisions that they need to make.
Peilin Corbanese (08:10):
So Sarah, I keep on selecting the same benefits year over year. No, because that was the easiest way to go. Yes. And so I no longer know what it is. Yeah. Just that the inflation to me over. So having said that, what are some of the innovations in the past few years?
Sarah Oliver (08:27):
Yeah, absolutely. So there are some products on the market where you'd be able to put in, say you're a member ID for your medical, and it will return to you, Hey, you spent this much in your deductible. And then it will overlay, this is how much you spent, plus this is how you consume care as a family. How many doctor's appointments do you have a high deductible health plan? And then if so, here's a recommendation based on what you've told me about your finances and maybe your debt to income's a little tighter than you'd like based on how you've answered your questions, how you've used your deductible and how you're going to consume care. So might you consider a voluntary product to fill the gap. So decision support tools, totally my jam. I love talking about it. I really think it's what people need right now to make good decisions. The human inertia force is strong.
Peilin Corbanese (09:22):
And I used to do a spreadsheet to do that myself, and that's so painful. So Michael, tell us how popular are some of these innovations in the marketplace?
Michael Levin (09:32):
Well, they're gaining popularity as they're being made more available. I mean, there's had very limited availability. I would still say less than 20% of the experiences actually have some kind of decision support behind it. And then that gets really interesting when you bring in health and wealth because these products, insurance products are financial protection products. And as the industry and employers are moving from defined benefit to defined contribution, allowing folks to have a allocate as they see fit, a bucket of money towards their insurance, their voluntary coverages, their 401K, that type of assistance is really, really helpful and ultimately creates the best package of coverage for the individual.
Peilin Corbanese (10:16):
So you say about 20%?
Michael Levin (10:18):
Yeah, I think right now it's about 20%. Those tools have been very expensive. They're starting to come down. They're being made available across different segments. The market, they've been more available in the group benefit space than the individual space. Interestingly, in Medicare Advantage, there's almost none of this. And you would think that in that area there would be, and there is a need to find the right products for seniors, especially as they have different types of health issues.
Peilin Corbanese (10:47):
So why isn't it there yet for seniors?
Michael Levin (10:51):
Well, senior C M SS is actually a problem there. C M Ss is very protective of seniors with good reason, but that protection extends so far that companies are very limited in their ability to roll out technology to seniors to help them make those decisions. As an example, if you're selling Medicare Advantage to a senior before you go spend time with them, you have to file a form with CM's and you can spend no more than 30 minutes of time with that individual. I think it's 30 minutes. It's that kind of protection that's preventing tools from being deployed to the seniors and seniors are tech enabled. My mother is 87 years old and she texts me, she calls her Uber. She could avail herself of tools when looking at her Medicare advantage.
Ted Phillips (11:42):
Well, and I think one of the things on that is the complexity too, and I don't want to say it all can be tracked back, but a lot of it can be tracked back to the investment that's been happening in our industry. One, my favorite stats right now is in 2012 there was about 420 million of global HR tech investment into what we're talking about. In 2019, that number was up to 5 billion. And then two years later in 2021 it was 17 billion. So you have all of these, this capital coming into an industry that is rife for opportunity of disruption because there's a lot of manual processes. We talked about still using forms and spreadsheets in Excel, but that's created a lot of complexity and point solutions along the entire lens of the client experience for what we do, quoting implementation, sales enablement, lead gen, all that stuff that's happening.
(12:33)
And that is the navigation that a lot of our clients, employers and a lot of the brokers we work with everyday need. It was a simpler time, I don't want to say simple because nothing's ever simple four or five years ago where you had a number of carriers like ourselves, you had brokers, and then those brokers had employers and employees. And so we wanted to make sure we got the employees the coverage they need like yourself during open enrollment. It was a little bit simpler. Now you have all these different layers. You have the benefits on benefit admin platforms, you have human capital management systems, you have payroll, you have some companies that are one, two or all three of those things. You have individuals that are building these platforms and a whole host of other layers, some of which work with us, some of which work with brokers, some of which are brokers.
(13:19)
And so navigating that complexity is really important because at the end of the day, the underlying data we're just talking about this is really the same. It's enrollment, it's eligibility, it's what I need to pay for my benefits, it needs to get to my payroll so I can pay for it. And it's plan design. So how do we come together, make sure that data transfer is simpler and happening real time and making sure that when you go to enroll in your benefits or frankly use your benefits, the place that we create the value for those clients, that it's nice, easy, seamless, and it works.
Peilin Corbanese (13:51):
So tell us about fake PI.
Ted Phillips (13:55):
Alright, so that's the other big thing on this is there's so much speed in the way this happened that I became a buzzword. And we have individuals that would go into an employer and say, well, we have APIs. That was the pitch. And they wouldn't get into the expectation. They wouldn't understand what the client actually needed, what their pain points are, understand that client experience. And at the end of the day, most of the time when they said we have APIs, they weren't APIs, they were fake PIs. So they were some level of data transfer that had individuals manually shift spreadsheets in the back background and trying to project that they were tech forward. And at the end of the day, the client doesn't care, right? APIs are definitely the future and file connectivity is the future, but they just care that their evidence of insurability is going to go over to carrier and they're going to get a back in their bed admin or their eligibility goes from the benefits administration to the carrier in a timely manner so that the individual that just enrolled in dental can go see their dentist. So that fake PI piece is really tweaking the complexity I just talked about and made it even more complex. No one knows what we're talking about and we really have to dig into that client experience.
Michael Levin (15:11):
And I'll just chime in there that the complexity is exacerbated by this move to define contribution. We spoke with a large employer the other day that has 60 unique benefit providers across their base, 60. So you think medical, dental, vision, life, disability, accident, but there's 60 different providers who need all the same information and they've got 40,000 employees that they don't want to provide all the personally identifiable information to 60 different parties and leave themselves open to a breach. How can they do that?
Peilin Corbanese (15:44):
So tell us how.
Michael Levin (15:46):
Well, I was going to hire TED over here. So that's what we do. I mean we're building this connected fiber that translate that connects the industry and translates data between different points. So think of it as a one to many hub so that a benefit provider doesn't have to worry about the complexities of all these different tech platforms that need their data and vice versa. We abstract out that complexity from both sides. So we're building infrastructure for an industry, and this isn't a new concept that exists in ad tech, it exists in finance, it exists in the credit card industry in investment tech. So we're building it for the health and benefits space.
Peilin Corbanese (16:31):
You are being very humble.
Michael Levin (16:34):
Well, it's hard. It's a lot of work. It's got a lot of edge cases. This is a really hairy world built up of systems that are old, antiquated, bought, merged through acquisition. But it's what this industry needs to evolve and that's what we get after every day.
Peilin Corbanese (16:52):
Yeah. All right. So you do that and you coin that fake pi. Yes. Love that. Become trademark. Trademark. And Sarah, please tell us how would you pick a partner in this ecosystem and how would you select the appropriate one? Obvious answer is Michael, but let's not go there.
Sarah Oliver (17:11):
So from the carrier perspective. Okay, so from carrier perspective. So first of all, I would want to fully understand exactly what a PI means and what does that look like end to end, where does it the beginning point and the end point. There are some folks in the market where they have an API that's probably into the front door, which is all you need from a marketing perspective. But then you get it behind the scenes and it's a spaghetti mess of EDI files that require a bunch of hands on keyboards. So maybe I don't care about that if I'm a consumer because all I care about is getting the information and I don't mind the sad souls that are literally working in Excel files all day long. Maybe I don't mind that, but I definitely do. So from that, I want to understand end to end what exactly that looks like and how streamlined is it, and then what specifically can be passed back and forth for information.
(18:10)
I also, from working with Mike and understanding what his company does from the carrier perspective, we're always under resourced. Don't, there's not a lot of time from an IT perspective, the roadmap to be able to build everything ourselves is 100% foolish. And if I wanted to build something myself that I might be on a roadmap for like 2026 to be able to deliver that value to the market, which just isn't going to cut it. So I would want to look at solutions that Mike offers and work together to figure out what do we do internally from a carrier perspective? What do we need to do to be able to service our customers better? And how do we connect to one to connect to many, therefore eliminating a whole bunch of work that would be on our tech roadmap. So that's how I think about it. I mean it's currently how I think about it. So it wasn't hypothetical at all.
Peilin Corbanese (19:08):
It sounds like a strong partnership. So what are some of the innovative products you see in the marketplace, what you would like to develop for us?
Sarah Oliver (19:17):
So I think about the end user most of the time being in the voluntary benefit space. The stats that rattle around my head are 60% of working Americans a thousand dollars high deductible health plans are up to 55.7%, which has gone up every year for eight years. When you put those things together with the alarming rates of medical bankruptcy, that tells the story that the 20% VB participation, meaning eight out of 10 people say no, doesn't make sense. The math doesn't make sense. Folks are in a really fragile position financially. So I think about those end users and I think about the people that don't understand that they have a high deductible health plan and what that means. Interesting enough, I was at an event last week with and chitchatting over drinks with one of my peers who's been of this industry for a really long time, and he had an AHA about a high deductible health plan and what that actually meant for his family that led to a significant bill that he's receiving.
(20:20)
Luckily he's able to take care of that, but the average working American is not. So those are the people that I think about when I think about problems to solve. I want to have an ecosystem where we think about how to solve for people in their events. For example, people don't have absence disability in hospital indemnity claims. They have babies. And I want to be able to be the carrier, be the person that has ecosystem set up that when someone shares or we learn through medical information that this family has now welcomed a child. I can tell you the person that just had a human exit, their body doesn't know if it's day or night and they don't know what a hospital indemnity is. So I want to be able to say the medical information suggested that there's a new human here. Congratulations. Here's your hospital indemnity check. Here's your S T d check, here's your absence information. Because we already know that that's what happens. We don't need to make them fit into our very old siloed ecosystem of product. So that's my dream. That's the stuff that I literally dream about. Perhaps I need to get a life, but that's what I'm thinking about.
Michael Levin (21:29):
I love that. I love it. No, I just, it's your turn that we talk about this. So it's something near in gear. And tell me a story where I think someone stepped on a rake and went to the hospital, that's husband. I wanted to get a, that's my husband, that's p I didn't even know. And I think you said six months later, you know were talking with a colleague and said, oh, did you put in an accident claim? And you're like, huh, I forgot about that. Now this is a woman who's in charge of enrollment for the carrier. So these, it's just not the top of mind. And utilization is very low, which has adverse effects on the carrier, obviously on the individual, the broker in terms of churn, all of those folks are adversely affected and let's how, let's create a great member experience. Let's auto adjudicate or auto notify or whatever term you want to use, and it endures to the benefit of everyone in that chain. This shouldn't be that hard, folks.
Ted Phillips (22:32):
It's a good point. It shouldn't be that hard. We we've in some levels, complexified our industry. I just made that word up. I like that word. And it can be simpler, and I'll take an example. This is an employer example, but evidence of insurability, and we're talking about connectivity and the pipes that Mike talked about earlier today with the proliferation of benefit technology, it's made it a little bit complex, but it actually could be simpler. What I mean by that is if you have an employee enrolling in a plan that requires evidence of insurability, they go into the Ben admin platform or HCM, they enroll, then at some point they have to go to a carrier's website or a form like we were talking about earlier and complete it, which then goes to the carrier. Then that carrier makes a decision on whether they should or shouldn't be approved for that EV or that additional amount of coverage and sends a note email letter most likely back to the benefits administrator and the employee.
(23:29)
Then someone at the employer needs to go into that ben admin system or HCM and update their coverage amount so that it flows through potentially to payroll or making sure they just understand they have the right coverage. All of those different things with connectivity for you can build it out so that the employee goes into the BEN admin, they are signed on to a carrier page, all of their information pulls through. So there's no potential fat fingering or anything along those lines. And it's a better experience because they don't have to do it. It's there That goes to the carrier when that decision's made an a PI brings that decision back to the benefits administration platform, it's automatically updated. So when you start to think about those two scenarios, what we've done versus where we can go, that's the innovation and it saves time. It certainly saves effort and the experience for both the employer and the employee is better. And that's to your point, what we're trying to get to, right? The coverages we're offering are valuable to humans. And so being able to use that at the time of, or being able to actually enroll in it easily is important.
Peilin Corbanese (24:36):
So quantify.
Ted Phillips (24:38):
That's a very long pause.
Peilin Corbanese (24:40):
Because I was trying to link two different dots together. You guys sound like dreamers and we know how it works and it sounded like we need to have more insured techs in the room so they can go start building these things. So the question I have for you is have you imagined how much this would change you, the industry and how much money it will bring?
Ted Phillips (25:04):
It's a great question and yes, we have Imagine, by the way, I am a dreamer, but I do think that what we're talking about here isn't that far away. It was far away five, six years ago because we didn't have the connection. I think within some of the Insurtechs, some partnerships that we have now with Mike's firm and we didn't have the technology. So we started off with generative ai. That's the technology of the future, right? We're talking about now. For us it's the future, sorry, but we're now able to leverage some of the things we're talking about with connectivity with APIs and it's more real, right? So yes, definitely a dreamer, but we're getting closer and closer to that place where what we're talking about is going to be a reality in two to three years, whereas before it seemed like it was much further out.
Peilin Corbanese (25:56):
So next year, same time, same stage.
Sarah Oliver (25:59):
Same batch channel.
Peilin Corbanese (26:04):
I believe that concludes our session other than Sarah and Michael and Ted, why don't you leave us with a couple words of wisdom.
Ted Phillips (26:15):
You start.
Peilin Corbanese (26:17):
I'll start, always go to the women first.
Sarah Oliver (26:19):
Yes. So what I think is really important to consider right now, especially in the smaller end of the market for the carrier space, and I'm saying it, I know I probably wasn't supposed to, but I'm going to do it anyway. Folks are craving a connected experience for their people and for the ease of their HR teams more than they are craving some bell and whistle in the product. So I think the role in the smaller end of the market, the role of providing a really great technology experience to people is usually, I hear all the time we're going to install these products because they enable us to be able to bring in this tech or to create this enrollment scenario that people desperately need. They don't understand the products, the role of the product's important. I spend my days thinking about provisions that are going to be good for people and I, I read about medical innovations and medical trends so that we can try to be ahead of things that we could bake into our products just to better take care of working people. But all of that said, it's going to continue to be a focus of mine, but where I'm super laser focused is creating a great tech experience because that's usually why they're coming to the door.
Michael Levin (27:41):
So I would say let's all not be complacent about the current state of the employee benefits, health insurance and employee benefits. I think we've been pounded into submission. We select the same benefits year on year. All of us has a story of someone they know who got to the doctor and where they weren't covered. This doesn't have to be, but the industry has almost institutionalized some of this as normal. So let us all just continue to push forward. It can change.
Ted Phillips (28:12):
Yeah, I agree and I completely agree with your comment. I think we're transitioning from the conversation, the sales conversation from being price, product, client experience, and frankly the client experience would come in during implementation, right? Which is not the place you want it from a technology standpoint to flipping that on its head where we start with that client experience in tech overall. But the other thing that I think we need to continue to watch and we'll see how this evolves, is I mentioned before that we have a very complex ecosystem with a lot of different point solutions and players. That investment, we all know that kind of capital is harder to get now than it was two or three years ago. In fact, those numbers before the HR tech investment dropped to 12 billion. So still a huge number, but a pretty but a significant decrease. And so we're starting to see consolidation there, which is leading to more one-stop solutions. So we'll have to continue to monitor that to see how we go from all of these different point solutions and connectivity to building experiences with potentially all in one or both for some time period, which I think will be interesting to continue to watch as well.
Peilin Corbanese (29:15):
So let's give a round of applause to these dreamers. Thank you very much for your attention.