I recently spent two days in Chicago at the second annual Women in RAD event and came home with pages of notes.

The conversations ranged from leadership and individualized benefits to AI-powered care navigation, PBM transparency, and the investment behind emerging benefits companies.

Different topics, but I kept seeing the same thread: the benefits industry doesn’t lack new ideas or technology. The challenge is identifying what actually improves the experience for employers and employees, and helping clients navigate an increasingly complicated marketplace.

Here are a few things that stuck with me.

 

Expertise Doesn’t Mean Having All the Answers

Elise Madrick opened the day talking about reinvention, and one comment immediately landed with me:

Be comfortable being an expert who doesn’t have all the answers.

I’ve spent more than two decades in HR technology, and experience has made me more aware of how much there is to continually learn. Technology changes. Vendors change. Business models change. Client expectations change.

Expertise isn’t knowing everything. It’s knowing the market well enough to ask better questions, recognize when something has changed and keep learning.

Individualized Benefits Have to Start With the Individual

Brandy Thompson of benefitbay led a fascinating conversation around ICHRAs and designing benefits around the individual.

One point I particularly appreciated: an ICHRA isn’t a silver bullet. It’s another tool in the benefits toolbox.

Plan design can’t start with the solution. It has to start with the population.

Who are the employees? What can they afford? Where do they live? What access to care do they have? What happens to an employee who can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs even if the employer’s overall benefits spend looks better?

Another takeaway: distribution matters.

You can build incredible technology, but if you can’t educate advisors, reach employers and drive employee adoption, the technology alone isn’t enough.

AI Should Make the Experience Easier

Nicole Semeraro of Karias Health approached healthcare navigation from an interesting direction: timing.

A lot of healthcare technology engages the member after something has already happened. Karias is thinking about how to get involved earlier and support members while healthcare decisions are actually being made.

What interested me wasn’t simply the AI.

The best use of AI in benefits may not be giving employees another AI tool. It may be using AI behind the scenes to make an already difficult experience dramatically easier.

We’re asking employees to navigate providers, insurance, prescriptions, referrals, deductibles and benefit programs while they’re often dealing with an illness themselves or caring for someone they love.

The goal shouldn’t be more technology. The goal should be less friction.

That’s increasingly one of the questions I want answered when evaluating technology: What did you actually make easier for the employee?

PBM Transparency Is Also a Communication Problem

The MedImpact discussion may have produced the most notes in my notebook.

Pharmacy is extraordinarily complicated, and employers increasingly want to understand not simply what they’re paying, but where the money goes and how “savings” are being calculated.

But transparency doesn’t accomplish much if nobody understands the information being provided.

One of the comments I wrote down was essentially:

Help us become better translators.

I think that’s exactly right.

Advisors need to understand administrative fees, pricing arrangements, rebates and other compensation, reporting and how savings are defined—and then explain those things to a CFO without requiring the CFO to become a pharmacy expert.

PBMs can help with clearer reporting, better advisor education and actual case studies. Advisors have a responsibility to keep learning enough to ask the right questions.

We don’t need to become pharmacists. But we do need to understand the economics well enough to challenge the numbers we’re given.

 

Great Idea Isn’t the Same as a Scalable Company

The final panel gave us a peek inside the investment world through investor, founder and broker perspectives.

Advisors usually encounter innovation after a company has raised money, built a product and started selling. It was fascinating to look behind the curtain.

Early investment may be driven heavily by the founder’s vision. As companies mature, investors increasingly expect traction, referenceable clients and evidence that the business can scale.

And once again, distribution came up.

Great technology can still struggle if the company doesn’t understand how this industry buys, sells and implements solutions.

That’s something advisors should consider when evaluating emerging vendors. Who founded the company and what problem were they trying to solve? Do they understand this industry? Who is backing them? Do they have referenceable clients? Can they scale? And is this truly solving something differently—or another version of a problem that’s already been addressed?

That’s not a reason to avoid emerging technology. It’s a reason to perform better due diligence.

 

“Agnostic” Doesn’t Mean Having No Opinion

This discussion particularly resonated with me because vendor agnosticism is central to the work I do.

I don’t think being agnostic means pretending every solution is equally good. Clients hire advisors precisely because they expect us to develop informed opinions.

To me, being vendor agnostic means the client’s needs determine the recommendation—not a financial incentive, preferred relationship or predetermined answer.

You can know vendors well. You can believe strongly in a solution. You can have relationships throughout the industry. And you can say, “Based on what I know, I think you should take a serious look at this.”

The obligation is transparency.

Objectivity shouldn’t mean having no opinion. It should mean knowing why you have one.

The Bigger Opportunity for Advisors

I left Women in RAD thinking that our role as advisors may become more important as benefits technology gets better—because more innovation also creates more choices.

Employers are being approached with ICHRAs, navigation platforms, AI, point solutions, pharmacy strategies and new models promising lower costs and better outcomes.

Some will be transformational. Some will solve a specific problem extremely well. Some will be right for one employer and completely wrong for another. And some won’t survive.

The value isn’t simply knowing what’s available.

The value is understanding the employer well enough to know what deserves consideration, the market well enough to evaluate it, and the technology well enough to translate it.

That’s the part of this industry I find increasingly interesting.

And after two days with the women of RAD, I came home with plenty more to investigate.