10 Questions Every Employer Should Ask Their Benefits Broker Before Renewal Season

The benefits renewal conversation that most employers have with their broker is reactive: the broker presents renewal rates from the incumbent carrier, the employer asks how the rates compare to the prior year, and the conversation focuses on whether to accept the renewal or shop the market. This pattern produces predictable outcomes — modest year-over-year adjustments to a benefits program that drifts slowly from market norms, with limited strategic input beyond carrier negotiation.

A more productive renewal conversation looks different. It is initiated by the employer rather than the broker. It is framed around the employer’s strategic objectives rather than around the carrier’s renewal proposal. And it asks specific questions designed to surface information the broker has but typically doesn’t volunteer — about market alternatives, plan performance, emerging risks, and opportunities the current program may be missing.

This article covers the 10 questions every employer should ask their benefits broker before renewal season begins. Asking them well in advance — typically 90 to 120 days out — produces materially better outcomes than asking them during the renewal cycle itself.

Question 1: What does our plan’s claims experience look like, and what does it suggest about renewal?

This is the foundation. Before evaluating any renewal proposal, the employer should understand what the plan’s actual performance has been. The broker should be able to provide:

• Per-member per-month claims trends
• Top diagnostic and procedural cost drivers
• High-cost claimant analysis (de-identified)
• Pharmacy spend breakdown including specialty drug utilization
• In-network vs. out-of-network utilization patterns

A broker who can’t produce this analysis — or who produces only a high-level summary without underlying detail — is signaling either limited carrier data access or limited analytical capability. Either is a meaningful concern.

For fully insured employers, claims data access is more limited than for self-funded employers, but most carriers will provide aggregate utilization reports upon broker request. The broker should know what data is available and have requested it.

Question 2: How does our renewal rate compare to market alternatives?

The incumbent carrier’s renewal rate is one data point. The relevant question is how that rate compares to what other carriers would offer for the same coverage on the same risk profile.

Most brokers will quote the market periodically — typically every two to three years — to validate that the incumbent pricing remains competitive. Employers should specifically ask:

• When was the last time the market was quoted on our coverage?
• What carriers were included in the quote process?
• How did the incumbent compare to alternatives?
• Should we be quoting the market again this year, and if not, why not?

Annual market quoting is generally not necessary and can create disruption costs that exceed potential savings. But market quoting that’s too infrequent allows incumbent pricing to drift from market norms. The right cadence depends on employer size, market dynamics, and incumbent performance.

Question 3: What changes should we be considering to our plan design?

A capable broker brings strategic input on plan design — not just renewal arithmetic. Questions worth asking include:

• Based on our claims experience and workforce, what plan design changes should we evaluate?
• Are there benefits we’re not currently offering that would deliver meaningful value to our workforce?
• Are there benefits we’re currently offering that have low utilization or limited value?
• What plan design changes are competitors in our industry making?

Brokers who treat plan design as the employer’s responsibility — rather than as an area where they bring analytical input — provide limited strategic value beyond carrier procurement.

Question 4: What’s happening with our pharmacy spend, and what can we do about it?

Pharmacy is the fastest-growing component of healthcare costs for most employer plans, driven by specialty drugs, GLP-1 medications, and other high-cost categories. Questions to ask:

• What does our pharmacy spend look like, broken down by category?
• What’s our specialty drug exposure, and which conditions are driving it?
• What’s our PBM contract structure, and is it competitive?
• For self-funded plans, should we evaluate PBM carve-out?
• What utilization management strategies could reduce inappropriate pharmacy spend?

For self-funded and level-funded employers above 200 employees, pharmacy strategy is among the highest-leverage areas of cost management. A broker who can’t engage substantively on pharmacy is missing one of the most important conversations for employer cost management.

Question 5: How are we positioned on compliance, and what’s coming?

The regulatory environment for employer benefits is complex and evolving. Specific compliance areas worth confirming:

• ACA reporting and employer mandate compliance status
• Mental Health Parity Act compliance with 2024 final rule requirements
• CAA 2021 compliance including gag clause attestation, broker compensation disclosure, and RxDC reporting
• ERISA compliance including plan document maintenance and required notices
• State-specific compliance for the states where your workforce operates

A broker who has not proactively raised compliance items with the employer in the past 12 months is likely behind on emerging requirements. Compliance reactivity exposes employers to risks that proactive guidance would prevent.

Question 6: How is our broker compensation structured, and what does it total?

Under CAA 2021 Section 408(b)(2), brokers servicing ERISA-governed group health plans are required to disclose their compensation — both direct and indirect — to plan sponsors. Employers should:

• Confirm receipt of a complete compensation disclosure
• Understand all sources of broker compensation including commissions, override commissions, and any payments from carriers or vendors
• Evaluate whether total broker compensation is reasonable for the services received
• Document the review as part of fiduciary responsibility

This question often surfaces information employers didn’t have visibility into and can drive compensation structure discussions that benefit the employer. It is also a fiduciary obligation under ERISA — not an optional inquiry.

Question 7: What benefits administration platform issues are we experiencing, and are they being addressed?

The benefits administration platform — whether provided by the broker, by a separate vendor, or built into HRIS — significantly affects employee experience and HR efficiency. Questions worth asking:

• What integration issues are we experiencing with our current platform?
• What employee complaints have surfaced that relate to platform issues?
• Are there capability gaps in our current platform that should be evaluated?
• Should we be considering a platform change before the next open enrollment?

Platform issues often persist because no one is actively driving resolution. The renewal-season conversation is a natural moment to identify and address them.

Question 8: What’s our utilization of voluntary benefits, EAP, telehealth, and other programs, and how can it improve?

Many employer benefits programs include components with substantially below-potential utilization — EAPs at 5%, voluntary benefits with low enrollment, telehealth with limited use, wellness programs without engagement. Questions:

• What utilization data do we have for each of these programs?
• How does our utilization compare to benchmark employers?
• What’s driving the gap between offered benefits and used benefits?
• What changes — vendor, design, communication — could improve utilization?

A broker who treats utilization data as a vendor responsibility rather than a strategic concern is missing one of the largest sources of unrealized benefits program value.

Question 9: What should we be communicating to employees, and how can we improve communication?

Benefits communication often produces the gap between offered benefits and recognized employee value. Questions:

• What benefits communication has happened this year, and how was it received?
• What patterns in employee questions to HR suggest communication gaps?
• Should we be using decision-support tools that we’re not currently using?
• What total compensation communication is occurring, and could it be strengthened?

Communication strategy is often outside the broker’s direct execution responsibility, but a capable broker should engage with it as part of overall benefits program effectiveness.

Question 10: What’s our three-year roadmap, and how does this renewal fit?

The most important strategic question, and the one most often skipped in renewal conversations. Renewals are best evaluated against a multi-year strategy rather than as isolated annual decisions. Questions:

• Where are we trying to go with our benefits program over the next three years?
• What plan design, funding structure, or vendor changes might be part of that path?
• How does this year’s renewal fit into the longer trajectory?
• What should we be doing now to set up next year’s options?

Brokers who can engage on multi-year strategy bring substantially more value than those who only handle annual renewal mechanics.

How to Use These Questions

Timing matters as much as content. Asking these questions during the renewal cycle — when the broker is focused on processing the renewal — produces shallower engagement than asking them 90 to 120 days in advance.

The practical sequence:

120 Days Before Renewal

Schedule a strategic review with the broker. Provide these questions in advance so the broker can prepare substantive responses.

90 Days Before Renewal

Review the responses and identify areas requiring deeper analysis — claims data review, market quoting, plan design evaluation, compliance follow-up, or other strategic work.

60 Days Before Renewal

Complete strategic analysis and decide on plan design and structural decisions to inform the renewal process.

30–60 Days Before Renewal

Execute the renewal with carrier negotiation informed by the strategic decisions already made.

Post-Renewal

Document the strategic decisions, set objectives for the next year, and schedule the corresponding strategic review 120 days before the next renewal.

This cadence converts renewal from a transactional event into a strategic discipline. The questions are the structural starting point; the multi-year benefit comes from making the conversation routine.

What the Answers Reveal About Your Broker

How the broker responds to these questions reveals a great deal about the relationship’s strategic value.

Brokers who engage substantively across all 10 questions — bringing data, analysis, recommendations, and multi-year perspective — are operating as strategic advisors. Brokers who can engage on some questions but not others have gaps that may or may not be material depending on what matters most to the employer. Brokers who consistently treat these questions as outside their scope are operating as transactional intermediaries.

None of these patterns is inherently wrong. Some employers want strategic advisory relationships; others want efficient transactional intermediaries. The mismatch between what the employer needs and what the broker provides is the problem, not either model in isolation.

For employers whose broker relationship is not delivering strategic value at the level the benefits program warrants, the response is either to elevate the relationship — sharing these questions and the expectation of substantive engagement — or to consider whether a different broker would better fit the strategic role.

Bottom Line

The renewal conversation is the most important benefits decision moment of the year. Treating it as a transactional event focused on rate negotiation captures a fraction of its potential value. Treating it as a strategic discipline anchored in substantive questions and multi-year perspective converts it into one of the most leveraged moments in benefits program management.

The 10 questions in this article are not exotic — they are basic strategic questions that capable brokers should be prepared to engage with. Asking them deliberately, in advance, and across multiple years produces better benefits outcomes than the reactive renewal conversation that most employers default to.

Taylor Benefits Insurance Agency operates as a strategic advisor to employer clients, engaging substantively on the questions in this article as part of standard renewal preparation. If your current broker relationship is not delivering this level of strategic engagement, contact our team for a conversation about what a different relationship could look like.

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Broker compensation disclosure requirements referenced in this article are governed by ERISA Section 408(b)(2) as amended by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.