PlanYear AI Newsletter - February 2025

Welcome to the PlanYear AI Newsletter for February 2025! The goal: to help you understand artificial intelligence within the context of employee benefits.  Each issue, we’ll provide articles, case studies, and insights about what's going on in AI for Employee Benefits (EB). 

Before I start, I first want to say that I'm thrilled to see so many new subscribers of this newsletter. It's been exciting to get the opportunity to share insights on AI's impact for such a unique industry.

The momentum we saw around AI in brokerage in 2024 only seems to be getting stronger in 2025. This is driven both by the ease of use of the technology as well as the massive economic upside for industries such as employee benefits. With that in mind, here are a few things I'll cover in this month's edition of the AI Newsletter:

• Why AI is changing the speed people (and in our case firms) adopt technology.
• The practical use cases specifically for employee benefits.
• The implications for the economics of brokerage with this technology being used.
  
  

Value to the end user: ChatGPT gained 100 million users in 2 months: by January 2023, it became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, eclipsing TikTok (9 months) and Instagram (2.5 years) (Source)

But why did so many folks start using ChatGPT so quickly?

There are several compelling reasons why AI has seen such rapid adoption:

Immediate practical value: Unlike many technologies that require significant setup before delivering ROI, AI tools like ChatGPT provide instant utility from the first interaction. The immediate practical value trickles down to every department within an organization. This isn't a top-down initiative you need to force employees to use. Everyone gets value out of using an AI-native solution.

To illustrate what I mean, here are a few examples of this value we’re seeing in brokerage:

The Implementation Problem

Traditionally, onboarding new technology meant months of manual data migration. Now, with AI, users can bulk upload documents - in any format - to onboard a new employer group in a fraction of the time (yes, we're talking about PlanYear here). AI reads the data and puts it into structured data fields. Then, the system uses that data to automate downstream workflows. This means users can onboard in a matter of seconds and get value out of the system immediately.

The Inbox Problem

Another immediate value-add lives in our inboxes. Most of the work done by benefits teams today is handled in an inbox. AI is uniquely poised to support this type of work. Training on past email history and plan documents, AI can generate suggested replies for benefits teams directly within their inbox, saving hours lost digging through COC’s for answers as an example. Using an AI email assistant, response times for benefit teams are being cut dramatically, and the interaction with AI is almost entirely “in the background” (like automating RFP emails to carriers).

Low barriers to entry: Adding to the exaggerated adoption curve, most consumer AI applications have intuitive interfaces that require minimal training. You don't need to understand the underlying technology to benefit from it.

"Chatting" with ChatGPT has become normal. There is very little skill gap for people who have never interacted with AI previously. Just log in and type. More recently, models such as DeepSeek have also added transparency into how AI operates by adding text to each step explaining how the model is thinking.

Integration into existing workflows: AI’s boom has also been aided by the fact it’s been placed into tools people already use (Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, Photoshop).

Why does this matter for brokerage: 

AI can sit atop your normal workflows without requiring you to change how you operate day-to-day. You don't need to learn new systems or alter how you reply to clients, carriers, or employees.

For example, PlanYear is designed to enhance your existing processes rather than disrupt them. When you send out RFPs from your inbox like you normally do, PlanYear's email tracking feature works quietly in the background, automatically monitoring all communications without requiring additional steps from you.

This seamless integration offers several key advantages:

• A single dashboard showing every RFP's status, due date, lowest bid, and last response
• Automated carrier follow-ups via email using AI
• Automatically spreading plans directly from the attachment you receive in your inbox

The beauty of this approach is that it decreases training time for your team while building muscle memory through familiar workflows. Your team continues working as they always have, while gaining powerful AI-driven insights and automation behind the scenes.

Rapid improvement cycles - The visible month-to-month improvements in AI capabilities (even since January), have created excitement and encouraged continued adoption. It’s been a nearly constant stream of updates in the world of AI since my last newsletter. If you’re curious about what’s been happening week to week, I’ve found this newsletter by Zain Kahn to be incredibly insightful.

Why does this matter for brokerage: 

We built PlanYear so that it could adapt to any AI model. This means firms using PlanYear get the efficiency gains of new AI models as soon as they are released. Six months ago, we had to do a colossal amount of pre-processing of documents to ensure the models could read them accurately. Jump to February - we're seeing newer AI models handle these documents much faster with less processing, resulting in improvement to our clients' experience.

Network effects: as more people use AI tools, they improve through additional training data, creating a virtuous cycle of better performance and increased adoption.

(Let me indulge in one more PlanYear reference)... Once you add current plans by simply uploading plan documents and letting AI spread all of the data for groups into PlanYear, the real beauty of the system lies in the fact that you're setting up a self-perpetuating cycle of efficiency and organization.

The initial investment of uploading documents through PlanYear's AI-powered system standardizes your workflow right from the start. Every plan document is then stored with consistent naming conventions and in a centralized location accessible to your entire team. This means if someone is out of office, other team members can seamlessly access client information without digging through scattered emails or folders.

Where the magic really happens is in subsequent renewal cycles. On your next renewal, instead of starting from scratch, you already have all the data you need in the system to compare the incoming quotes to. Need a benefits microsite? Simply clone last year's and have it ready in seconds.

This compounding efficiency means that what might take a few minutes the first time becomes instantaneous in future renewals—transforming what was once a tedious process into a streamlined, predictable workflow that improves with each cycle.

AI's Impact on Brokerage Operations: Creating Visibility Across Regional Offices

One more piece I found interesting in the past few months relating to brokerage is the ability for AI to create transparency across distributed teams. For large brokerages with multiple regional offices, a persistent challenge has been gaining visibility into what's actually happening on the ground.

The issue isn't just about identifying best practices. It's about answering fundamental operational questions: how are renewals progressing across different offices? Are teams quoting preferred carriers? Where are the potential fires that need immediate attention? Most importantly, how can leadership gain these insights when each regional office has its own way of doing things?

This is where we're seeing AI have a pronounced impact. Because people actually want to use these new AI-powered tools, firms are achieving much wider adoption than with previous technology initiatives. And, because the solutions are easier to adopt, leaders are finally able to gain clear insight into regional operations without forcing standardization first.

The visibility encompasses critical business metrics:

• Renewal insights - tracking which carriers are quoted and which carriers clients end up going with
• Renewal progress - identifying which accounts are on track versus those at risk
• Carrier distribution - ensuring teams are appropriately quoting strategic partners
• Account Log - capturing and tracking client communication from a firm- level perspective

Interestingly, these larger firms continue to come to us asking for help standardizing their systems and processes. Our industry has historically moved slowly with technology adoption, but AI seems to be "forcing the hand" of many firms. The concern is clear: falling behind the AI wave may have a significant impact to EBITDA as competitors gain operational efficiencies and insights that were previously impossible to achieve.

Looking Ahead:

At PlanYear, we're thrilled by the opportunity to shape innovation in the benefits space. There’s nearly limitless potential to innovate in benefits. Our recent webinar on our 2025 roadmap offered a glimpse into how our AI-first approach is set to transform how brokers interact with clients and carriers alike.

Curious about how AI can transform your firm? Click here to join our upcoming webinar demo’ing our latest feature release!

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more insights as we continue to redefine what's possible in the employee benefits landscape. Talk in Q2! 

Best,

Nick

About PlanYear
PlanYear is a benefits platform built by former brokers using AI to automate all the painful parts of insurance. Benefits consultants can instead focus on creating the best experience for their clients and sustain valuable, long term relationships with employers and carriers alike.

Want to learn more about the PlanYear Benefits Platform? Contact us now to learn how you can quickly modernize the employee benefits experience with PlanYear.