One case file for everything a renewal touches.
Aelana is being built to do one job well: help an employee-benefits broker turn the information a renewal produces into a more accurate, more explainable and more defensible recommendation for an employer client. This page describes what that means in practice.
The product concept has been shaped by conversations with practising employee-benefits professionals.
The inputs, in the formats they actually arrive in.
The design goal is that a broker doesn’t have to clean data before the software is useful. These are the inputs the platform is intended to take in and reconcile into a single analytical model.
- Carrier renewal letters
- Quote PDFs and spreadsheets
- Census files
- Current plan documents and SBCs
- Claims summaries
- Pharmacy and specialty-drug detail
- Contribution history
- Stop-loss terms
- Network and disruption information
- Carrier responses
- Vendor proposals
- Prior-year renewal history
The factors it is being built to surface.
Not every factor matters for every employer. The intent is that the platform shows which ones moved for this group, and where the movement concentrated — so the consultant spends their time interpreting rather than assembling.
- 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.
- Medical and pharmacy trend
- Specialty-drug exposure
- High-cost claimants
- Inpatient, outpatient and emergency utilisation
- Chronic-condition prevalence
- Dependent mix and demographics
- Geographic concentration
- Network adequacy and disruption
- Out-of-network use
- Plan-design sensitivity
- Employer and employee contribution levels
- Risk transfer and stop-loss exposure
- Administrative cost
- Implementation complexity
The alternatives worth putting side by side.
A renewal decision is rarely a choice between two premiums. The platform is designed to model the strategies a broker would genuinely weigh, on the terms that decide them — employer cost, employee cost, disruption, risk transfer and implementation.
It does not pick a winner. Which tradeoff a given employer should accept is a judgment about that employer.
- 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.
- Renew with the incumbent carrier
- Negotiate with the incumbent
- Re-bid the business
- Compare alternative carriers and networks
- Adjust plan design and deductibles
- Adjust employer and employee contributions
- Move from fully insured to level-funded
- Evaluate self-funding and stop-loss structures
- Assess pharmacy carve-outs
- Assess behavioural-health, specialty and point solutions
A recommendation with its assumptions attached.
The deliverable a broker owes an employer is not a spreadsheet. It is an explanation: what changed, what is driving it, what was considered, what was assumed, what is still uncertain, and what you recommend as a result.
Aelana is being built so that package assembles from the analysis rather than being rebuilt in a deck each time — and so the broker edits and approves it before anyone else sees it.
- 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
Above the stack, not inside it.
Aelana is not intended to replace the systems a brokerage already runs. It reads what they produce and is designed to sit above them, at the layer where the recommendation is actually formed.
- 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.
What Aelana is not.
Being specific about this matters more than usual, because the thing a brokerage should fear from a software vendor is that the vendor becomes a competitor.
- A replacement or competing brokerage
- A carrier, or a carrier marketplace
- A benefits-administration or enrolment system
- A payroll system
- An employee navigation or care-navigation product
- A general claims dashboard
- A quoting or RFP workflow tool
- A system that presents recommendations to an employer without broker review
See how it fits together on one renewal.
Step through a fictional employer’s renewal, from the documents arriving to the recommendation being assembled.