Every year, group benefits pricing can leave insurance professionals feeling a bit like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day – stuck in a loop of reworking Excel models, back-and-forth negotiations, and the same manual processes that seem to repeat endlessly.
For actuaries and underwriters, this process isn’t about choice; it’s simply how things have always been done.
The Group Benefits Pricing Cycle
To break free from this cycle, let's first understand how group benefits pricing typically unfolds today:
- Census Data Collection – The cycle begins when employers submit their census files through brokers. Already, version control issues and data formatting differences create the first delays.
- Initial Pricing & Rating – Actuaries and underwriters transfer this data into their trusted Excel models. While these models contain valuable IP built over years, the manual data entry process introduces both delays and risks.
- Employer Feedback & Re-Rating – When employers review the initial quotes, budget realities trigger requests for adjustments. Each modification means another round of manual updates.
- Multiple Rounds of Negotiation – What should be a smooth back-and-forth becomes a time-consuming process of re-running calculations, updating spreadsheets, and generating new documents. This can take weeks – sometimes months.
- Final Pricing (For Now) – Once a price is finally agreed upon, it seems like the process is complete until...
- Open Enrollment Surprises – When actual enrollment figures arrive, they rarely match projections perfectly. This triggers yet another round of last-minute pricing adjustments, often under intense time pressure.
Why Excel Alone Can't Break the Cycle
Excel remains the workhorse of group benefits pricing because it’s powerful and universally understood. But while it’s great for modeling, it’s not built for real-time collaboration, version control, or dynamic pricing adjustments.
Relying solely on spreadsheets can create more friction than flexibility:
- Isolated Models – Each carrier, broker, and employer might maintain their own version, leading to discrepancies and making collaboration difficult.
- Manual Data Entry – Every update, from census figures to pricing adjustments, requires hands-on input, which is both time-consuming and increases the risk of errors.
- Version Control Challenges – Without a centralized system, maintaining consistent, accurate versions of spreadsheets is a constant struggle.
- Slow Turnaround Times – Because the entire process is so reliant on manual updates, even small changes can lead to significant delays.
While Excel remains essential to group benefits pricing, it becomes the bottleneck in a system that demands speed, accuracy, and efficiency.
Where Automation Can Make the Biggest Impact
The good news is that fixing these inefficiencies doesn't require abandoning Excel altogether or a complete technology overhaul.
Instead, there are three key areas where automation can dramatically transform these trusted tools from bottlenecks into accelerators:
- Initial Pricing & Rating – Automating census data input and pricing calculations can generate quotes almost instantly.
- Employer Negotiations – Real-time pricing updates eliminate the need for days-long delays caused by manual updates.
- Final Repricing & Enrollment Adjustments – Automated recalculations based on actual enrollment data ensure pricing remains accurate without last-minute scrambling.
Supercharge Group Benefits Pricing with Coherent Spark
Picture Excel as “speed bumps” in the pricing process. Now, imagine transforming those same Excel touchpoints into turbo boosts. That's what Coherent Spark does.
Rather than replacing actuaries' trusted Excel models, Coherent Spark makes them exponentially more powerful, eliminating manual inefficiencies while preserving familiar workflows.
Coherent Spark enables a pricing process that moves at the speed of modern business, not the speed of manual updates.
Here’s how Coherent Spark accelerates Group Benefits pricing:
- Automation That Enhances (Not Replaces) Legacy Processes – Coherent Spark integrates directly with existing Excel models, allowing actuaries and underwriters to keep using their familiar tools – but without the repetitive, error-prone manual work.
- Real-Time Adjustments Without Manual Effort – Coherent Spark’s API connects Excel models to pricing and sales systems (e.g., Salesforce) eliminating copy-paste errors and ensuring instant updates for faster negotiations and better decision-making.
- Scalability That Goes Beyond Case-by-Case Adjustments – What was once a slow, manual process now becomes a repeatable, scalable automation – eliminating the need for manual recalculations on every deal.
- A Living, Dynamic Pricing Model – Instead of redistributing updated Excel files every year, carriers can adjust parameters in real time, compounding efficiency gains and increasing ROI year over year.
Escape the Group Benefits Pricing Loop for Good
Beyond the frustration and friction felt by carriers, brokers, and employers alike, the current pricing cycle is costing time, money, and business. Luckily, breaking the cycle doesn't have to require a massive tech overhaul.
There's a practical step forward with Coherent Spark, allowing insurers to make the tools already in use more powerful and automated.
By enhancing your existing Excel models with automation, insurers can transform a repetitive, manual workflow into a streamlined, automated system – finally escaping the Groundhog Day experience that has defined the industry for too long.
