Flexibility, Choice, and Compliance? Top Benefits Trends in 2025

In this episode, Council VP of Health Policy & Strategy Katie King sits down with Dave Kerrigan, founder and CEO of benefits solution aggregator BenefitPitch, to get his take on the trends driving brokers and employers to prioritize solutions that thread the needle on controlling costs and retaining employees.

From AI in benefits to the growth of individual coverage HRAs, Kerrigan discusses which solutions are top of mind, which are falling out of favor, and where we might see the most trend growths in 2025.

Read the Transcript 

Disclaimer: Podcast transcriptions are computer generated, please excuse errors. For the most accurate version of the conversation, please refer to audio. 

 
Dave Kerrigan: What’s interesting is AI in a clinical setting is actually still very much in its infancy in my opinion, because there’s a lot of risk. But where AI has proliferated, go to a website and the little bot pops up in the corner. What are you looking for? Think about a decision support tool that has data and information fed to it about the benefits that are in that particular employer’s benefit plan.  

 
Katie King: Welcome to the Leader’s Edge podcast. I’m Katie King, VP of Health Policy and Strategy at the Council. In this podcast I sit down with Dave Kerrigan. He’s the founder and CEO of Benefit Pitch. That’s an aggregation tool pulling together the world of health and benefits vendors. We cover everything from the top searched solutions on his platform, AI in the benefits space, the onset of individual coverage HRAs and the impact of employers squeezing ROI from their point solutions. Dave kicks off with a bit about his background in the insurance space and what led to the creation of Benefit Pitch. Take a listen.  

 
Dave Kerrigan: My name is Dave Kerrigan, and I am the founder CEO of Benefit Pitch. My background is in the health and healthcare space. Throughout the course of my entire career almost, I’ve worked at hospitals, home care organizations and then spent the bulk of my career in the insurance side, having worked for two different insurance companies. I worked for the State of Massachusetts Health Connector, the Public Exchange. I worked for two different brokerage firms, Willis HRH before it was WTW, Buck Consultants, before it was acquired by Gallagher, and when I ventured off on my own, I do both business consulting now and I’ve got the Benefit Pitch software company. What I set out to solve was the challenge I saw as a former consultant, having all these really cool solutions being, you know, at my fingertips, so to speak, entering the space, a lot of VC dollars funding companies to do different, better things for our health care and health insurance system.  

And yet, the benefit brokers and consultants who play such an important role in finding and evaluating and vetting these solutions didn’t have a really good central location to do it. Benefit Pitch kind of came out of that need and we’ve grown it to more than 1500 vendors and I think we just surpassed 19,000 benefit professionals on the platform. We’re excited.  

 
Katie King: That’s awesome. And thanks for the background, Dave. Let me jump in here and talk about Benefit Pitch advanced insights. That lets you look at all of this data, all of these vendors in different ways so you can look at the top searched benefits, how those have changed over time. The most searched vendors or keywords things like that. And I’m curious, looking back at the past year, is there any statistic that’s jumped out at you or really surprised you?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: In some ways there are things that don’t surprise you, so I’ll start with that. So if I look at the last 12 months, some of our top categories are EAP, behavioral health, wellness. Those are generally mainstays, they’re staples. Some of the things that are a little bit more surprising but also understandable: Pet services. I think a lot of people really love their fur babies. And that has become a perennial top searched, which is something that always puts a smile on my face.  

And then there’s things that you’d be surprised that they are consistently in the top 10 over the last 12 months and in some cases even longer. COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), ACA compliance and reporting, benefit administration, third party administration. Those are actual top searched every, you know, at least in the last year.  

And we recently did a look back over the last four years, 2021 to 2024, and it’s also been pretty consistent. Those categories are regularly searched. Outside of that, I think you start to see trends that over time weren’t there two, three years ago, but they’re there now. Things like, you know, leave management is a great example of that. Leave management wasn’t on anyone’s radar years ago, but it is now a regularly or top searched benefit. And I think that’s fascinating to think about the evolution of our industry and why employers are now focusing on this, right? Benefits have always been a combination of kind of like how do you protect and control costs and then how do you offer solutions and benefits that attract and retain.  

And I think clearly folks are really looking at and leaning into the leave management and how do we provide bereavement leave and you know, paternity leave and all different types of leave. And then is there software to manage all of these? And the fact that states have different rules and regulations around it’s just becoming more of a focus for employers.  

 
Katie King: That makes a lot of sense. And it’s reminding me of a conversation that some of our membership and I had with McKinsey earlier this year. They talked about some insights from an employer survey that they conducted. And specifically, they talked about employers really zeroing in on some of their vendor relationships. They want more ROI out of those point solutions because they’re, you know, having to absorb some cost increases in other places. And so I’m curious, have you seen this play out among your vendors at all?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: This is an interesting one. Not so much that the data in benefit pitch from our advanced insights tells us a story. But I think it was about a year ago or maybe earlier this year, a business group on health did kind of look of like what are employers focusing on in 2025? And one of those things was the volume of solutions, the points of solution points, solution fatigue, the how do we effectively measure and evaluate. And when you consider the billions of dollars that were pumped into the digital health solutions over the last X number of years, this is a natural, call it correction of the market where the firms that are not performing are either getting acquired, merging, going out of business.  
The solutions that are still there are starting to be scrutinized more because the employers don’t have all the benefit dollars in yet. There are new solutions that are out there that they need to focus on. So it’s become to the point I made earlier about benefits being the cost containment and cost management alongside the attraction and retention. What I think you’re seeing is the left side of that equation, which is the cost containment is if you are a solution that declares we can impact your spend, your feet will be held to the fire. Either the contracts will change, the way it’s measured will be changed. You are going to need to deliver on those ROI metrics or you’re out. And the flip side of that, however, is those soft benefits. When I say soft, meaning it’s not about ROI, it is about attraction retention.  

This is where leave management and pet services and other things come along that aren’t going to have an ROI number. But I guarantee you they will continue to be trends at least for the next year or so while this economy stays where it is. And while attraction retention remains an important piece for any employer to, you know, attract, retain, put those best benefits together, they’re going to need to stay current. And part of the current packages includes categories that were not in play three or four years ago.  

 
Katie King: This goes back to my earlier question a little bit, but have you seen some of the cost containment vendors try to put some more skin in the game, so to speak, like are they tying outcomes to financials in any way?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: I haven’t seen it, but I think this is the next evolution. So when you think about a solution that is in place today, or selling into the employer channel today, as those solutions are being scrutinized, there’s options, right? You can either get out of the game, you can decide to create, we’ll say contracts with more teeth. You know, we will deliver on these engagement numbers or these hard dollar savings numbers or your money back, right? Two to one roi, whatever they’re doing. But in some cases I think you’re starting to see more vendors talk to the carriers. Because if it’s hard to sell to individual employers via the broker channel, is there an opportunity to go to a broader, you know, I say aggregator, but the idea is an employer has thousand, two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand lives.  

 
A health plan has hundreds of thousands of lives. And it’s not the same deal. You don’t get all of those lives. It might be an activation that drives the revenue for the vendor. When the individual user of the insurance plan that offers this benefit uses it. That’s where the money comes from. But those relationships are interesting because the costs actually could potentially go in a different direction where the carrier could arguably mark up the cost of it. And so as an employer, you know, what are you doing? Are you buying it directly? Are you buying it via the carrier? And I actually had this conversation with someone recently and likened it to, you know, you can buy the pre cut strawberries or the diced whatever that’s already prepared so you don’t have to do it and it costs more.  

Or you can buy the raw vegetables, peel them, chop them and do it yourself. And it’s up to you to decide which one is more important and would you prefer the cost savings of doing it yourself or you don’t mind paying a little extra, getting it another way. So I think that, you know, that is some of the, some of what I’m seeing is they’re going down the route of the carrier and I think what we should be seeing is more performance based contracts, fees at risk, which by the way, just a side question on this or beside point I should say, I think that there’s a challenge for vendors to really claim a cost savings if they can’t drive the engagement.  

 
And if they can’t drive the engagement because they don’t control communications and you’re starting that vendor out in a way that they’re behind the eight ball, they’re just not really going to have a good opportunity for success. So I, when I talk to companies, I always say if you’re going to put fees at risk, if you’re going to do any performance based contracts, I really think it’s in your best interest to demand a couple of things. Minimums from a carrier, from a employer, control the communication channel so that you have a fighting chance to get in front of the population that you’re trying to get in front of. And have them use your service. So I think that what we should be seeing is more of that. And what I’d like to see is more of that.  
I don’t know that I’m bullish that you’re going to see a lot of it in 2025, maybe 2026, maybe down the line. But to this point I’m not seeing as much of it as I’d like.  

 
Katie King: I think it’s an interesting point about the communication and engagement piece because it’s true a lot of times the vendor is not controlling what that engagement looks like. I started my career in benefits communication, so I, I understand that and that it’s just, it’s hard get people’s attention. You’re talking, especially when you’re talking about benefits. So that’s definitely a challenge. Let me, yeah, let me kind of maybe zoom out and talk about this stat that I saw recently about the fact that almost 70% of the commercial market is now self insured. And it just made me think that there’s potentially a connection there between, you know, wanting to manage financial risk in a different way and maybe some of the top searched benefits on your site.  

And I don’t know, have you seen anything, maybe an uptick in looking for stop loss or any other kind of cost containment solution?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: Great question. And I’d say that the answer is no, not really. You know what I think, you know, falling out of favor a little bit is the advocacy programs, which I think are expensive and there’s a reason why. So there’s a cost containment which is maybe we’re not looking as much at the, you know, resource intensive cost containment, but decision support tools that are more digital or an AI based, something that’s going to make it easier. I think solutions like that might be rising. But when you look at benefit pitch and what’s being looked at pretty consistently, I mean you could say dependent eligibility audits, that is one that again surprisingly shows up more than you think. And that is in a way a cost containment tool.  

But a lot of what we see are, you know, student loan services, child care, fertility, lifestyle spending accounts, financial wellness, you know, these are things that come back to the attraction, retention, not as much the cost containment. So I think that if, I mean outside of what I talked about earlier, benefit administration, third party administration, if any of those solutions are somehow baking in, cost containment into those equations where the TPA has vendors that are working with them and they’ll drive the cost containment short of that, which we don’t see that sort of data. We don’t have the details of what the TPAs are doing with their vendor partners. But not, not a whole lot more stop loss over prior years.  
And I haven’t dug into that category in any great depth, but looking at the top 10, 20, 30, 40, you’d be surprised at how many are those softer benefits. Yes. Things like cancer care and, you know, PBM and things still come up and they’re in those top 30, 40, 50 MSK. But I don’t think that’s a surprise.

What is interesting though, is looking at what trends, you know, have changed year over year. So one of the categories or things that we track is rising and falling benefits. So if I look at 20, you know, the last year and see which categories are rising versus the prior year’s period, cancer care is in that top five, fertility top five, transparency, navigation top 10. And then interesting ones, cybersecurity, ICHRA.  Those are things that are sneaking up into the top 10, meaning they’re searched more this year versus the prior one year period.  

 
Katie King: Can you talk a bit more about ICHRAs? It’s been more regularly searched on benefit pitch, but do you see them shifting the group coverage landscape at all?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: I talked to a broker friend of mine at a conference and I asked him about it. He was working kind of in the small group space and he told me that it’s one of those things they really don’t want to talk about, but they have to, because if their employer really is looking for solutions, options, costs, containment. And one of the things is, I don’t know that we can continue to do what we’re doing, offering an ICHRA. You know, as he put it, he’s like, it gets us out of the group game, but if that’s what our employer needs, then that’s what we give them, because that’s what we do. We’re the trusted advisor. And I thought that was a, a nice way of saying it. But also, you know, these benefit brokers, consultants, reluctantly introducing the topic more and you’re seeing the growth.  

So I don’t know if that’s going to be a continuing trend or not. And maybe it’s only for certain size groups or even certain segments, but to me it’s fascinating to consider what does the landscape look like in another year or two if this continues?  

 
Katie King: That’s a question that we get to, you know, is this are ICHRA is going to be something that really start to encroach on the group benefit space. And you know, right now that’s obviously not really the case. I mean, it makes sense in some situations to your point to introduce them as an alternative because there’s really just nowhere left to go from a cost perspective. But I saw a statistic saying that, you know, 17% of all the new ICHRA adoption is large employers switching from group coverage. But the rest is really, you know, smaller employers or others who maybe weren’t offering benefits before. But the, with the incoming Trump administration, I mean, they were obviously a big proponent of, of ICHRAs. And it’s really one of the only things that the Biden administration has left untouched.  

 
And so I’m curious what’s going to happen, whether we’ll see just some more ways to try to bolster those in the marketplace. And I’m not sure what’s going to happen related to the aca, but it’s definitely something that we’re watching.  

 
Dave Kerrigan: Yeah, I’ve had this conversation with multiple folks. As somebody who’s been in the benefits industry a long time, very much a political independent, but watching how each side has done what they’re doing, I do feel like despite Senate, House and presidency being on the Republican side, I think that filibuster is a very important thing when it comes to trying to make a sweeping change by eliminating the Affordable Care Act. Right short of the budget reconciliation. There’s not a lot without the filibuster that can be done. So I think that it’s safe. Now, other topics in this space, I mean, we predicted that student loan services is going to see a big boost in 2025 because I think that the Biden administration was very friendly towards, you know, forgiveness and all of these other things.  

 
And if that is going to be removed from the agenda of the incoming president, then does that mean employers are going to start seeking solutions and services related to student loan that they hadn’t prior? And so that was one of our predictions for what we see that coming next. And not that it’s the same as a ICHRA, but I think lifestyle spending accounts, you know, it’s this choice-based sort of tool that I think a lot of employers are considering as younger generations enter the workforce. They want more solutions specific to what they want. It begs an interesting question. Between that and ICHRA is what we see happening in the next five to 10 years in a group benefits, you know, segment, do we start to see more individual choice getting out of group game? I don’t know, but time will tell.  

 
Katie King: Yeah, I think ICHRAs in particular kind of sit at this interesting intersection politically just because they are about individual choice. And so Republicans tend to really like that. And it also is helping to bring folks to the individual markets which Democrats tend to favor. So yeah, it will be interesting to see kind of how that takes off next year and beyond. But looking ahead to 2025, what do you expect to see as some of the more searched benefits besides lifestyle spending accounts and student loans?  

 
Dave Kerrigan: Yeah, I would say that it’s going to be a continuing trend related to some of those softer benefits. So we mentioned leave management has been rising. I don’t think there’s any reason that’s going to slow down. I think that child care services and caregiving in general, I think is going to be a continual perennial winner, especially as, you know, younger generation employees getting married, having kids and realizing, boy, is it really hard to manage having a job and having kids. I mentioned the student loan piece and I think I teased this earlier, but when you think about allowing folks to choose the right plans, you know, I look at this is my own kind of linear way of looking at it.  

 
But when I talked about earlier advocacy solutions, you know, dropping in popularity on benefit pitch as it relates to searches, part of me thinks that if you’re thinking full blown advocacy, meaning it is the, or alarm, you know, they’re doing everything. It is a, it is a resource intensive call center. They know everything about your benefits, they’re guiding you. Wonderful solution, can be very resource intensive. What do I mean by that? Is there’s a lot of bodies involved and a lot of costs associated with it. Decision support always feels a little bit more to me like a technological solution to solve a similar problem or challenge helping people make decisions.  

So if there are, if there’s more technology and AI being used at time of plan selection and maybe throughout the year, I think that’s why we’ve seen it grow in past months and I think we’re going to continue to see it.  

 
Katie King: That’s an interesting point. Just to talk about the continuous injection of technology and how it’s altering or shifting some of these benefits that have been around for a long time.  

 
Dave Kerrigan: I think that everyone’s talking about AI and what’s interesting is AI in a clinical setting is actually still very much in its infancy in my opinion because there’s a lot of risk in suggesting a course of action for me clinically because if it’s wrong and it’s causes me harm, I mean, that is just the last thing in the world any provider doctor, et cetera, wants. But where AI has proliferated is, you know, chatbots related to service, right? You go to a website and the little bot pops up in the corner. What are you looking for? And you start to type and it starts to kick out things you might want to look at. Think about a decision support tool that has data and information fed to it about the benefits that are in that particular employer’s benefit plan.  

 
And I go to my microsite or my, you know, Ben admin portal to select my benefits and there’s a little bot that helped me out saying, tell me about yourself. And it’s like, well, I’m a, you know, single male of this, or I’m married with kids, or I’m with this. And based on a Persona based approach, it has education and, you know, I’ll even go as far as to say recommendations based on other people like me. And I think that’s where you’ll see more of this playing out from an AI standpoint in decision support and technology.  

 
Katie King: That was Dave Kerrigan of Benefit Pitch.  

I hope you enjoyed listening.  

For more Leader’s Edge podcasts, go to leadersedge.com.