Most employers renew their benefits year after year without truly questioning whether their carrier is still the best fit. Over time, that habit becomes expensive, not because anything changes dramatically in a single year, but because small inefficiencies compound quietly in the background.
At BSI, we take a different approach. We go to market every year on behalf of our clients. Not as a procedural step, but as a disciplined strategy to validate performance, reintroduce competition, and ensure every dollar spent is still working as hard as it should.
A renewal should never be treated as automatic. It should be treated as an opportunity.
The Cost of Staying the Same
Carrier continuity often feels safe and predictable, but it can mask gradual cost erosion that is easy to miss in year-over-year renewals.
Industry benchmarks consistently show that employers who do not actively re-market their benefits tend to pay 5–15% more in premiums over time compared to those that engage the market. Despite this, only a minority of mid-market employers formally rebid their benefits on a regular cycle, allowing pricing drift to go unchallenged.
There is also a structural dynamic at play. Traditional brokerage compensation models can include carrier-aligned incentives that are not always visible to employers. While not necessarily problematic on their own, they can create misalignment between what is easiest to renew and what is actually most competitive.
And beyond pricing, there is performance. Employers who rely only on carrier reporting often miss deeper opportunities that only become visible through claims-level and vendor-level analysis.
The result is simple: doing nothing feels neutral, but it rarely is.
How BSI Approaches It Differently
BSI is independent by design. We are not owned by carriers, we are not steered by volume incentives, and we do not operate within a single funding or network ecosystem. That independence allows us to evaluate the market objectively, without competing interests in the background.
Every year, we run a full market process that treats the renewal as if the program were being built from scratch. That includes:
- A formal RFP process supported by claims analytics and utilization data
- Line-by-line benchmarking of all carrier and administrator proposals
- Financial modeling to test funding strategies and long-term sustainability
- Ongoing evaluation of vendor performance throughout the plan year
- A full market sweep designed to ensure no viable option is overlooked
The goal is not just to negotiate. It is to revalidate the entire structure of the program.
What We Evaluate Each Year
When BSI goes to market, we are looking far beyond premium changes. We are evaluating the full system that drives cost, performance, and member experience:
- Cost efficiency and long-term financial sustainability
- Claims accuracy, processing quality, and vendor performance
- Plan design competitiveness and employee experience
- Network strength, access, and geographic adequacy
- Stop-loss structure, rate protection, and risk alignment
- Administrative service levels and responsiveness
- Market competitiveness of pricing relative to peers
- Financial stability and underwriting practices
Each renewal is treated as a full diagnostic, not a price check.
Real Results
The impact of this approach is best understood through outcomes. For example, the City of Bethlehem, a BSI client since 2017 with approximately 700 employees, underwent a comprehensive market evaluation at the start of our partnership and, like all BSI clients, has reexamined every component of its benefits program annually since. In year one, the result was not just modest savings, but a structural improvement in both cost and coverage.
Through the process, BSI secured more than $500,000 in contractual pharmacy savings, strengthened stop-loss protections by introducing rate caps and eliminating lasers, and enhanced ancillary benefits with improved guaranteed issue coverage.
Since the initial RFP, these efforts have generated an estimated $4–5 million in cumulative savings. Notably, this was achieved in an environment governed by multiple union contracts, meaning 100% of the savings were realized without changing benefits, copays, the formulary, or the network. Importantly, it required reintroducing competition and challenging the assumption that the incumbent arrangement was still the best option.
Importantly, none of this required reducing benefits. It required reintroducing competition and challenging the assumption that the incumbent arrangement was still the best option.
Why This Matters
Employee benefits are typically the second-largest expense after payroll. Even small inefficiencies scale quickly:
- A 5–10% overpayment in premiums can significantly reduce flexibility in compensation and investment decisions
- Strong plan design modeling (including stop-loss analysis and funding strategy review) can reduce avoidable overpayment by 8–18%
- Employers who actively benchmark vendor and carrier performance annually often see 10–20% better administrative outcomes over time
The difference is not just cost. It is control over how that cost behaves.
The BSI Difference
At the core of our process is a simple question we ask every year: “Is this still the best possible solution for this workforce at the best possible price?” If the answer is yes, we prove it with data. If the answer is no, we change it. That is the value of an annual market process done right. Not reactive. Not passive. Intentional, structured, and independent. Because benefits should not simply be renewed, they should be re-earned.