Turn fragmented renewal data into a recommendation you can defend.
Aelana is building a platform for employee-benefits teams. It organises the documents behind a renewal, surfaces what is driving cost and risk, compares the strategies actually available, and keeps the reasoning behind your recommendation in one place.
- Incumbent renewal letterPDF
- Census — benefits eligibleXLSX
- Claims experience, 24 monthsXLSX
- Current plan documents & SBCsPDF
- Large-claimant summaryPDF
The same field means the same thing across every source.
- Renew with the incumbent
- Negotiate, then re-bid
- Change plan design and contributions
- Move to level funding
The analysis narrows the field. The call stays yours.
Early product preview. Illustrative example using fictional employer data.
The data isn’t missing. The analysis just has to be rebuilt every time.
A renewal arrives in pieces — a carrier letter as a PDF, a census as a spreadsheet, claims experience in a different format, quotes in a third, stop-loss terms buried in an email. Before anyone can advise the client, someone has to reconcile all of it by hand.
That work gets done again for the next client, and again next year. Depth ends up depending on who staffs the account. The strongest thinking stays with a few people. The smallest clients get the least analysis. And when a recommendation is questioned twelve months later, the reasoning behind it has to be reassembled from memory and old files.
- renewal_letter_final_v3.pdf
- census 2027 (updated).xlsx
- claims experience — 24 mo
- SBC_plan_A.pdf
- contribution history
- stop-loss terms (in email)
- quote_carrierB_rev2.pdf
- large claimants Q3
- ancillary summary — missing
Benefits brokerage doesn’t need another place to move paperwork.
It needs a system that helps you make the call.
The systems a brokerage already runs are built to administer benefits, move enrolments, collect quotes and answer employee questions. They record what happened. None of them decide what should happen next — that work still lands on a consultant, a spreadsheet and a deadline.
Aelana is being built for that layer: the analysis, and the recommendation that comes out of it.
- Benefits administration
- Enrolment
- Quoting and RFP workflow
- Employee support and navigation
- Claims reporting
These systems record what happened. Aelana is being built for what happens next.
Five steps, one case file.
Organise
Bring the renewal letter, census, claims summary, plan documents, quotes, stop-loss terms and contribution history into one case file — and show what hasn't arrived yet.
Understand
Surface what is moving cost and risk: trend, pharmacy and specialty exposure, high-cost claimants, utilisation, dependent mix, geography and network match.
Compare
Set the real alternatives side by side — renew, negotiate, re-bid, change plan design or contributions, move to level funding, evaluate self-funding and stop-loss structures.
Recommend
Turn the analysis into a recommendation you control, with the assumptions and tradeoffs stated rather than implied.
Preserve
Keep the evidence and the decision history, so that next year the reasoning behind this year's advice is still there.
Built for the broker, not to become the broker.
A brokerage evaluating software should know exactly what the vendor wants. We want to sell you a tool. We do not want your client.
The client stays yours
Aelana is software you run. It doesn't hold the employer relationship, the commission, or the seat at the table.
Judgment stays with you
The platform is designed to lay out evidence and tradeoffs. What gets recommended, and what reaches the client, is your call.
The reasoning stays visible
Every figure should trace back to the document, assumption or edit it came from — including yours.
Your methodology compounds
The longer-term intent is to let a firm encode how its strongest teams evaluate a client, so that approach travels across accounts.
One renewal, start to finish.
Northline Manufacturing is a fictional employer used throughout this site: 640 benefits-eligible employees across two locations, currently fully insured, with an incumbent renewal well above trend. Every figure below is invented to show how the workflow is intended to fit together.
The sequence ends where it should — at a recommendation the broker controls, not at a result we can’t claim.
- Incumbent renewal letterPDF
- Census — benefits eligibleXLSX
- Claims experience, 24 monthsXLSX
- Current plan documents & SBCsPDF
- Large-claimant summaryPDF
- Contribution historyXLSX
- Stop-loss termsnot received
- Ancillary lines summarynot received
- Specialty pharmacy
Concentrated in a small number of therapies; the fastest-moving line year over year.
- High-cost claimants
Four claimants above the stop-loss attachment point in the prior period.
- Inpatient utilisation
Admissions flat, average cost per admission up.
- Dependent mix
Dependent enrolment rising against a stable employee count.
- Out-of-network use
Concentrated at the second location, where network match is weaker.
- 01Renew with the incumbent
No disruption to members or administration. Accepts the full increase and leaves next year's baseline higher.
- 02Negotiate, then re-bid
May recover part of the increase. Consumes calendar time and needs the claims story assembled before the conversation.
- 03Change plan design and contributions
Direct effect on employer cost. Shifts more to employees, with enrolment and morale consequences worth stating plainly.
- 04Move to level funding
Introduces claims risk and stop-loss terms to evaluate. Depends on the group's credibility and tolerance for variability.
No option is marked “best”. Which tradeoff this employer should accept is the broker’s call.
- 01What changed since last year
- 02What is driving the change
- 03The alternatives considered
- 04The tradeoffs between them
- 05The assumptions the analysis rests on
- 06What remains uncertain
- 07The recommended strategy, and why
- 08Implementation considerations
New brokerages are competing on analysis. Established firms should own that capability too.
A new class of brokerage is using technology to do analytical and administrative work that used to require people, and is competing on the depth and speed of its advice.
Established firms hold the advantages that are hardest to build: the relationships, the market knowledge, the judgment earned over many renewals. What they generally don’t have is the analytical infrastructure — and building it in-house means becoming a software company.
Aelana’s intent is to make that capability something a brokerage can adopt without giving up the client, the economics, or the final call.
Designed for decisions that have to be explained.
Source traceability
Outputs should point back to the document they came from.
Visible assumptions
Every model runs on assumptions. Ours are meant to be shown and edited.
Broker review
Nothing reaches an employer without the broker approving it.
Minimum-necessary data
Designed to work with de-identified or minimum-necessary data wherever the analysis allows.
Evidence kept apart from advice
What the data says and what you recommend are different things.
Stated uncertainty
Where the data doesn't support a conclusion, the product should say so.
These are design commitments for a product in development, not certifications. Aelana does not currently hold a security or compliance certification, and we’ll say plainly what is and isn’t implemented when you ask. Data and product principles
Why we started with the broker.
The broker sits in the middle of the annual decision — assembling the information, weighing the options, and explaining the result to the employer. It’s where the hardest analytical work already happens, and where better tools would change the most.
We’re building for that seat, not around it. Aelana isn’t becoming a brokerage.
Help us build a better decision workflow for benefits advisory.
We’re speaking with employee-benefits professionals about how they evaluate plan performance, compare alternatives and prepare recommendations. Request a conversation to see the current product concept and tell us how your team works today.