Todd Katz, head of group benefits at MetLife shares how benefit managers can ease the process of open enrollment this year, and boost benefits utilization across their organizations. MetLife's research finds more than half of all employees (52%) don't fully understand their benefits and wish they were better informed about their benefits to get more value out of them (56%). The upcoming open enrollment season offers benefit managers a critical opportunity to address these employee needs and shift their approach to benefit experiences.
Transcription:
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Alyssa Place (00:10):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Leaders. My name is Alyssa Place. I'm editor in chief of Employee Benefit News, and joined me today is Todd Katz, executive Vice President Group Benefits at MetLife. Today we're going to be talking about the upcoming open enrollment season and what benefit managers and advisors will need to know for this year's enrollment. Todd, thank you so much for joining me today.
Todd Katz (00:30):
Thank you, Elizabeth. So happy to be here.
Alyssa Place (00:33):
So open enrollment is fast approaching and obviously benefit managers are dealing with some of the same problems that they've always dealt with and also they might have a whole new slate of new problems specifically for some of the challenges upcoming in 2026. So can you walk me through some of those challenges and pain points that benefit leaders might be facing as they get started on open enrollment this year?
Todd Katz (00:56):
Yeah, open enrollment is an exciting time and benefit managers have a lot on their mind right now. Certainly some of the trends are things that we've seen for a little while, and then there are some new ones. So certainly we are seeing a big focus on healthcare costs. There is no doubt that healthcare inflation has absolutely pressured employers budgets and for that matter, employees budgets too. So I think every employer is thinking about what can we do with our health plan to optimize benefits in the most cost efficient way? Second, we're seeing employers very focused on engaging their workforce. How can I use my benefit plan in a way that creates real value for my employees? And then third, as most employers move into this open enrollment season, is how do I make sure my employees understand their benefits? Our most recent study showed that almost 60% of employees indicate that they don't really understand their benefits well enough. So employers from a benefits perspective are very focused on how do you deal with that during open enrollment.
Alyssa Place (02:04):
And as you mentioned, despite those efforts to educate employees around the benefits, there's still these major gaps in engagement and utilization. You mentioned your study. I also saw something where employees spend just around 30 minutes making these benefit decisions that are going to impact them potentially for years down the line. So what do you think is driving this disconnect between employees and their understanding and also the disconnect between the effort that employers are putting in and the effort that employees then put into this process?
Todd Katz (02:35):
Yeah, first of all, I would say if they spent 30 minutes, that wouldn't be bad. I've seen some studies that say they spend less than 10 minutes, so let's get at it and talk about how do we change that dynamic. But I think the first thing is that point on time, are people putting enough time in to understand what those benefits are and what are they doing in that time? What are the tools that they're using? What's the communication approach? How can people optimize that time? Second, benefits are complex. As I mentioned earlier, people have indicated they don't really understand them well enough, so how can we drive up understanding of those benefits? And then third, as we think about where are people in their lives, stress levels are pretty high. Employees have indicated their holistic health is lower than they'd like it to be, whether it's like I said, mental health or financial health. So you kind of put all of that together and the easy thing for employees to do is just default to what they had last year. And sometimes that's really not the best answer for them.
Alyssa Place (03:46):
And when you're talking about some of the other pain points, especially around healthcare costs, I just recently wrote an article where it's anticipated that employers are going to see again, a double digit increase in those healthcare costs. What kind of strain is that putting on benefit leaders and just employers in general when they're dealing with these double digit healthcare increases and also other budgetary pressures?
Todd Katz (04:10):
It's a real balancing act because the healthcare cost increases are real. And I think benefit managers are in some ways between a rock and a hard place because you certainly can change benefit design, you can do things around access networks, et cetera. You can shift more cost to employees, but that's also challenging in that employee budgets are challenge too. What we are seeing a number of benefit managers do is really think more holistically around the overall benefit program. What do I surround the medical benefits with? What type of voluntary offerings can I allow my employees to select that will allow them to meet their unique needs and maybe position themselves to select a healthcare plan that might be a little bit less expensive as long as they have those other benefits that surround that healthcare program?
Alyssa Place (05:11):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like benefit managers have to be super strategic. They're really thinking these things through. But again, if employees aren't responding, if they're not knowing what's available, it's sort of pointless all this work that they put in. So I wanted to talk about MetLife's efforts to bridge some of these knowledge gaps. You have a platform up wise that's striving to address some of these challenges of benefits comprehension and help employees make better benefits decisions. So talk me through this platform and what you're hoping to tackle with it.
Todd Katz (05:41):
Yeah, UP wise has two modules. The first one we call it up wise choose is all about providing employees with tailored personalized recommendations based on their unique situation matched against the benefits that are offered by their employer. So lemme just give you a little sense of how it works. Employees have an opportunity to give us permission to get information on their prior healthcare claims and their financial information. They also answer a short questionnaire. And then what the FYIs tool does is it goes through their benefits that their employer is offering to them and provides them with options that make sense based on their unique needs. What we have found is when employees go through that experience, which by the way doesn't take a long time, they are much more satisfied with their benefit elections. They indicate that they understand their benefits more. And what's also exciting is they are selecting benefits more aligned with what their employer would expect them to select. So we think this is really important because the days of sending people big books of material to read are behind us making it easy for employees to get personalized recommendations, we think is at the heart of getting more benefits engagement.
Alyssa Place (07:03):
And you mentioned words like unique and personalized. Why are those sort of like the magic words when it comes to employees experience, experience, their benefit selection process?
Todd Katz (07:13):
Yeah, I think the concept of people like me is not that exciting. What employees want is to select the benefits that work for them. And what we have found is that when employees see real value in the tools, they'll use them. And all of our data tells us that personalization is really core to employees engagement in their benefit program. So it's exactly that. If I can see something that's generally or specifically going to benefit me, I'm going to use it.
Alyssa Place (07:50):
And I want to talk a bit about the role that technology is playing with up wise and also just other open enrollment tools and how benefit leaders can, if they haven't already really start to embrace the benefits that technology brings. So can you share with me a little bit about how you might be doing that at MetLife and then just some general advice for other employers to really tap into the power of technology in this process?
Todd Katz (08:15):
So Wise is a really great benefits engagement tool, but whether an employer selects our tool or any tool, the key is to make sure the tool is bringing the information in to some form or algorithm that allows employees to use their own information combined with whatever information the system can take in about the plan, and then come back to those personalized recommendations. And this is important if you go back two or three years ago that tooling wasn't available and what kind of the AI does, is it all that information together in a way that creates that tailored recommendation? And we think that's where the real value sits.
Alyssa Place (09:05):
And when you're thinking about the role of technology too, and just some of these more strategic activities that benefit managers are engaging in, how could technology or how is technology easing that process? I mean, what are some of the things that used to be a real human touch that now benefit managers can say, I'm going to let technology take some of that.
Todd Katz (09:25):
Yeah, I think the things that we've been talking about, so communication, there is no doubt that technology is well positioned to communicate. Some of it's the tooling that we spoke about, but even the benefit election itself, I mean for the most part what employees are doing is going through a self-serve guided experience and they're not all the same. So it's really important for employers to take a look at how are my employees enrolling? Are they using contemporary tooling? Does the tooling allow employees to input information about themselves so that they're making better elections? And what we tend to say to our clients is, if you're using the same capabilities you've been using for the last five, six years, you probably want to take another look at that.
Alyssa Place (10:15):
And that's a good segue to just thinking about what we're talking about today. Obviously open enrollment is fast approaching. Is it a little too late to start implementing some of these tools now? Or if a benefit manager is watching this and saying, I don't have anything set up to evolve my process, what would your advice be for them on really when to start rethinking and evolving their benefits program and their approach to open enrollment for the future?
Todd Katz (10:44):
Yeah, so the good news is they're probably not too late. So here's how I would think about it by now. Most benefit managers have selected the benefits for next year. They've designed those benefits in a way that meet their employees needs. They've determined their contribution strategy along those lines, and a lot of them are deep into that communication approach. Most benefit administrators out there have some form of advice and guiding tooling built within their capabilities that exist now. So at a minimum, make sure you leverage what's there now, but we would suggest as people think out into the future, it is worthwhile to just evaluate do you have best in class capabilities? And I would say we're coming upon the end of that cycle for open enrollment for 2026, but that cycle will be upon us really soon for 2027.
Alyssa Place (11:46):
And thinking about the future and thinking about some of the pain points that we talked about in the beginning, it's unlikely that those are going to go away next year or the year after, the year after. So how can benefit managers continue to manage some of these persistent stressors without losing sight of the point of what you said that the employees come first and they want to support employees. What would be your long-term advice for them?
Todd Katz (12:13):
First thing I would say is why open enrollment is really important. They need to think about benefits, communication as an always on all year journey for their employees. And that gets to not only being focused on helping people make the right selections during open enrollment, but also being focused on making sure that once employees enroll in the benefits that make sense for them, that they're using them in the right way, that their capabilities give them nudges to access their benefits at their time of need. And also to really make sure that they listen to their employees, understand what their employees like and don't like, understand that the unique needs of their workforce may be changing over time and regularly visit not only how do I communicate the benefits and what tools do I use to help people make choices, but also what's on the shelf. And making sure as the offerings evolve, they're staying contemporary in what they're offering to their employees.
Alyssa Place (13:18):
Great. And if you can share what's on the shelf at MetLife, what are you excited about for your own open enrollment season and how are you getting employees engaged in the benefits that you're offering?
Todd Katz (13:30):
Yeah, so we put a lot of energy into, as a provider of benefits to our clients, a broad product set, broad product set. So our products, we don't do medical insurance, we don't do pharmacy, but what I like to say is we do everything else. And that means products like life insurance, time away from work, disability leave, dental, vision, and a broad set of supplemental health products like accident, critical illness, cancer, even products that are very uniquely specialized for certain parts of the workforce. Pet owners love pet insurance. We offer a legal product, we offer an identity theft product. And the real point is not, I mean, we do believe we have best in class products, but what we really recommend employers to think about is the shelf broad enough so that the unique needs of my employees are being met by those products that are available. And then making sure that they communicate them in a way that really gets people to understand what they need and make really good choices.
Alyssa Place (14:38):
Great. Well, listen, Todd, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And obviously best of luck to you and to all the benefit leaders going through this open enrollment and just navigating all the challenges. I really appreciate your time, and thank you again for joining us.
Todd Katz (14:53):
Thanks so much, Alyssa. It was my pleasure.
