A double-digit renewal increase is about to land on your desk, and someone will tell you the market did it.
Here is a test. Picture any other vendor in your business raising their price 20% and answering “that’s just the market” when you ask why. You would want the math. You would get the math, or you would get a new vendor.
Health insurance is the one line where owners accept the shrug. The renewal shows up like weather, you brace, you pay, you move on. The big benefits consultants are forecasting somewhere around 9 to 10% for 2027 (Aon says 9.5%, pushing the average cost past $19,000 per employee). That is the market average. Midsize employers without leverage routinely see worse.
The average is not the story. Whether you can see the math is the story.
I have fully insured clients this year staring at increases north of 20%, a few north of 40%. I also have self-funded clients, same size, same headcount, whose renewals are barely moving. Same market. Same year. Wildly different letters. The difference is not luck and it is not size. One group can see exactly what their claims did and why the number moved. The other gets a number and a shrug.
That is the whole game. A renewal you can explain is a business decision. A renewal you cannot explain is a bill someone handed you. When claims run high in a plan we can see into, the increase makes sense and I can live with it (it doesn’t matter if I can live with it or not… the client needs to be able to live with it – rephrase). When the increase arrives with no visible math, that is not a market problem. That is a visibility problem, and it is fixable.
What to do this fall when the letter comes: do not ask “can we get it down.” Ask “show me the math.” Ask what drove the number. Ask what you are paying for and who gets paid inside it. When nobody can answer in plain language, you have found the real problem, and it is not the market.
You negotiate every other number in this building. This one is not weather. It is a decision someone made, and you paid for it.
Want to know what your renewal is actually telling you? Let’s talk.
