Automation simulation on a laptop.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. employers have faced escalating costs in employee benefits, from medical to voluntary benefits. For example, health care costs alone are expected to increase by 7.7% in 2025, compared to 6.9% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2023, according to WTW’s 2024 Best Practices in Healthcare Survey. Rising costs are pushing employers toward ways to manage benefits spending while maintaining quality coverage for their employees and families. This places additional pressure on brokers, who are not only responsible for helping companies manage and control these expenses but also for navigating the cumbersome administrative tasks associated with managing a diverse range of benefits.
With benefit costs on the rise, companies are dedicating additional time and resources analyzing bills each month to understand their bills, along with making sure they are accurate in the first place. Many are relying heavily on their brokers for help and juggling multiple, manually created spreadsheets. This administrative burden can draw attention away from initiatives like optimizing benefits offerings.
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Brokers play a crucial role in helping organizations navigate these challenges, but the growing complexity of benefits billing presents challenges for both brokers and their clients. To efficiently support their clients and ensure accuracy, brokers need to leverage automation tools that can streamline bill collection and reconciliation. By adopting automation, brokers can provide valuable client support, focusing on competitive policy management while reducing errors, saving time, and helping employers maintain control over their benefits budgets.
Brokers: Trusted partners in benefits billing
Brokers have long been trusted advisors when it comes to managing benefits, but now have a real opportunity to take their support a step further by leveraging automated tools that simplify the entire billing process. By taking over the tedious task of invoice collection and consolidating various formats into a single, standardized bill, brokers can reduce the administrative load and make it easier to keep benefits spending on track.
Additionally, by auditing benefits data using advanced tech rather than human-powered processes, brokers can quickly catch discrepancies without the need for extra hands on deck or creating room for error. As 83% of brokers report that their clients depend on them to manage benefits expenses, automation becomes a must-have for delivering fast, error-free support in all billing operations. Especially for employers managing multiple carriers and plans, automation lifts several administrative burdens off their plate, helping brokers become even stronger partners in benefits management.
Most organizations lack the resources to audit every invoice by hand or reconcile bills with employee data, and even brokers can get overwhelmed by the volume of information they need to sift through. This is where automation comes in, empowering brokers with the toolset to streamline billing from end-to-end. From collecting invoices across different carriers, standardizing bill format, and reconciling data, an automated system allows brokers to simplify processes and ensure that billing aligns with actual employee enrollment.
By automating every aspect of benefits billing, brokers reduce the burden on their clients while supporting greater accuracy and transparency. This approach positions brokers as proactive partners who can help clients cut hidden costs and better manage their health care spending before it becomes a bigger problem.
The hidden cost of billing errors
Billing errors may seem like small discrepancies, but over time, they can significantly impact an organization's budget. In fact, administrative complexities such as billing mistakes account for an estimated 25% of overall U.S. health care spending. This represents a massive opportunity for brokers to step in and help their clients regain control of their benefits budgets.
Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average cost of total benefits per civilian worker is approximately $26,226 annually. With that in mind, companies managing thousands of employees across multiple plans, even minor discrepancies in billing can quickly add up. Errors in invoices, like overcharges for employees who have left the company or incorrect enrollments, can go unnoticed for months, leading to substantial overspending, especially when relying on traditional manual processes.
Automation: A powerful tool for brokers
Simply speaking, manually managing benefits billing is inefficient and slow and opens organizations up to a myriad of human errors. With multiple carriers and formats, managing discrepancies is challenging, even for experienced brokers. Adopting automation tools allows brokers to completely transform their approach to benefits billing and provide clients with more than just advice.
Automated invoice collection and standardization alleviate the headache of managing multiple bills. By centralizing all charges, brokers help their employer clients manage it all in one place. One standard bill minimizes the chances of oversight and helps ensure that clients only pay for the coverage their employees are actually receiving, reducing the risk of overpayments, missed deadlines and improving accuracy in benefits spending.
Additionally, automated cross-references of carrier invoices against a business’s enrollment data allow brokers to provide clients with detailed, customized reports that offer full visibility into their benefits budgets. Whether breaking down costs by department, benefit type, or carrier, brokers can offer personalized reporting to help clients understand their spending and optimize it.
There’s no question that automation is a powerful tool that can help brokers deliver greater value to their clients. By reducing errors, increasing efficiency, streamlining complex processes, and providing detailed insights into benefits, brokers can help their clients save money and ensure that every dollar spent on health care is used effectively.
Rick Hirsh, CEO, Beneration
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