How this new AI tool is taking the stress out of open enrollment

Every year, employees dread open enrollment because of the stress and the confusion around understanding and choosing the right benefits. A new tool from employee benefit platform SAVVI Financial aims to make the process easier than ever.    

Over one-third of employees avoid thinking about benefits enrollment, according to data from SAVVI Financial, and 42% feel they overspend on health insurance — much of it due to enrollment mistakes they make by manually inputting information themselves. In an effort to address some of those pain points, the platform expanded on their services to include benefit selection support. 

"Decision support or financial guidance applications will often take employees through in-depth questionnaires for the data they need to be able to give good guidance and advice," says Brian Harrison, president of SAVVI Financial. "But a lot of that information is already in a system somewhere, so we built this integration to remove that friction and drop them right into the experience."  

Read more: Sick of answering the same benefits questions from employees? Let AI do the work

SAVVI's new feature uses data employers already have to deliver personalized recommendations to employees instantly. Users can now see plans side-by-side, where the tool will compare things like coverage, cost, health accounts and even how each option would perform during a really tough year. There's also a "Hold Steady" plan that shows employees how their current benefits compare to what the tool recommends, making it easier to stick with what's working or switch with confidence. Throughout the process employees can even mix and match customizable bundles — even including a spouse's plan — and compare everything in one place. 

The impact of picking the wrong benefits

Misinterpreting their benefits doesn't just keep employees from coverage they're owed, according to Harrison — in many cases, it's a significant financial strain, too. More than a third of employees say that healthcare-related costs leave them with little to no room for unexpected expenses, SAVVI's data found, with 29% having dipped into savings to cover health costs in the last year. 

"People don't even know that they could be better off," Harrison says. "What if they don't have the right supplemental coverage for a healthcare event they'll experience this year? Or what if there's a benefit that could have helped them keep an additional $600 in their household's pocket? The right tool at open enrollment could have headed off that potential risk." 

While  SAVVI focused their feature on improving the employee experience, it also improves the process for  HR and benefit leaders who were previously responsible for guiding employees through the experience individually. Open enrollment is a critical part of leaders' role, and tending to employees' comments and concerns is incredibly time consuming, often taking away from the tasks they should be focused on.

Read more: This AI chatbot is helping employees pay off their student loans

"This will always be a crazy time of year, but we tried to put ourselves in their shoes," Harrison says. "If we can give their people clarity, then the phone doesn't ring, the emails don't pile up, the Slack and Microsoft Teams messages don't come in and employees are happy because they understand and can move forward."

As new tools emerge to help with HR and benefit-related functions, Harrison urges leaders to be proactive when it comes to integrating them into systems. It's normal to still feel some skepticism, but investing the right tech could revamp the process for everyone involved. 

"We already ask too much of employees in annual enrollment to understand the high stakes decisions that they have to make," Harrison says. "We're in an age of AI where we can simplify things to make those choices easier."