Top trends in the benefits industry in 2014

Benefit advisers and their employer clients have spent much of the year trying to inform themselves about the rules, requirements and looming deadlines of the Affordable Care Act ; a task made more difficult by further deadline delays and rule changes announced by the Obama administration in 2014. Most notably, President Obama announced in February that employers with fewer than 100 employees will not be required to provide health insurance to their employees until 2016. The benefit broker/agent industry is “constantly in a state of change. Every day we’re expected to morph into whatever is necessary to accept the change the alphabet soup of federal agencies and the ACA throws at us,” says Ronnell Nolan, president and CEO of Health Agents for America Inc.

As health care costs continue to increase, employers are increasingly turning to wellness programs to target some of the high-cost claims that hurt their bottom line. Innovative ways to approach wellness have continued to gain popularity in 2014. Wellness programs are also moving away from limited incentives in favor of more targeted incentive programs designed to support long-term lifestyle changes that lead to a real return on investment. “I really believe the successful wellness programs are not going to be the status quo, we’ll reimburse you for smoking cessation, we’ll reimburse you for three months of a gym membership. It’s going to be like, what are we actually doing with biometrics? What are we doing to make people healthy and actually change the claim curve? That’s where I think wellness is going to go and I think we’re getting there,” says Vinnie Daboul, a partner with Sage Benefit Advisers.