PlanYear Introduces Comprehensive Support for Small Group Employers

We're excited to announce a significant enhancement to the PlanYear Benefits Platform: support for age-banded rates. This new feature empowers brokers and employers to navigate the complexities of health insurance pricing with greater precision and flexibility, especially in markets where age-banded rates are prevalent for smaller employers. 

Unlike other tools, PlanYear fully automates quoting for age-banded, composite and level-funded plans, making it the most comprehensive and efficient solution to manage both small group and large group employers.

Understanding Age-Banded Rates

Implemented with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), age-banded rates in health insurance reflect the practice of adjusting premiums based on the ages of covered individuals. For small group employers, the rates are based on age bands set at the state or county level across all small group employers in that geography. This differs from the rates of large group employers, which are individually underwritten based on the group’s actual health risk profile. 

Age banded rates introduce complexity in quoting, comparing, and administering benefits:

• Rates can be assigned individually or rolled up into a composite rate for the entire population. 
• Contribution modeling oftentimes must account for dozens of additional variables vs large group equivalents. 
• Rates are released quarterly, which gives teams very little time to complete all of the strategic and administrative tasks related to the renewal before moving into open enrollment. 
• It is very challenging to compare small group rates side by side with level-funded or large group alternatives. 
• Last but certainly not least, given these operational challenges it is very difficult to generate enough revenue on small group clients to justify the massive administrative lift required to manage them. Depending on the size of the group and the benefits offered, firms may not even break even. 

PlanYear's new small group functionality speaks directly to these pain points, offering an efficient way to automate the manual work associated with small group renewals and make this market segment economically viable.  

Key Features of PlanYear's Age-Banded Rates Support

1. Streamlined Census Upload for Age-Banded Quotes

Our new feature allows users to easily upload a census to obtain small group quotes, including both age banded and composite rates where applicable. With one easy step, brokers can view, compare, and shop for relevant plans for their clients.

2. Automated Quote Comparison Across Market Segments

One of the most powerful aspects of our new age-banded rates support is the ability to compare age-banded quotes alongside level-funded and composite large group alternatives. This fully automated side-by-side comparison empowers brokers and employers to make informed decisions by clearly seeing how different pricing models stack up against each other without having to create spreadsheets or presentations.

In order to view large group or level-funded plans, users simply upload the quote and allow our AI powered quote reader to extract the plan parameters and rates. Manual plan spreading is now a thing of the past.

This feature allows for a more holistic view of available options, ensuring that employers can select the most cost-effective and suitable plan for their unique workforce demographics and needs without users having to perform massive amounts of manual data entry.

3. Detailed Proposal Creation and Export

With our enhanced proposal creation tools, users can now generate comprehensive proposals that include the full contribution breakdown by employee. This level of detail is crucial when working with age-banded rates, as it allows employers to see exactly how costs are distributed across their workforce.

Brokers can create and present proposals to their clients directly out of PlanYear, so they don’t need to spend hours creating spreadsheets and presentations. And, they can iterate in real-time as their client gives feedback so they can reduce tedious back and forth and get to final decisions more quickly.

4. Seamless Transition from Final Decisions to Open Enrollment

We understand that the journey from final decisions to open enrollment can be time-consuming and fraught with potential delays. PlanYear’s new support for age banded rates extends our leadership in streamlining this process. With PlanYear, once users finalize proposals - including plans and contributions - they can publish them directly into microsites, benefit guides and mobile apps.

This seamless transition significantly reduces the time between final decisions and the start of open enrollment. By automating the creation of employee communications tools based on the finalized proposal, we're eliminating a major bottleneck in the renewal process. This means less time spent on manual data entry and more time focusing on what really matters: ensuring employees understand, appreciate, and get the most value out of their benefits package.

These elevated employee experience tools serve as a key differentiator, allowing brokerage firms to win more clients. And, once these tools get in the hands of employees, it makes them incredibly sticky. In other words, PlanYear is not only a critical sales tool, but it is also your retention strategy.

Interested in seeing a demo? Reach out to sales@planyear.com.