Your systems record what happened. Aelana is being built to help decide what happens next.
Most brokerages already own several pieces of software. Almost none of them address the part of the year that actually determines the client relationship: the renewal recommendation, and the analysis behind it.
Administration software runs the plan. It doesn't choose it.
Benefits-administration and enrolment systems are built to execute a decision that has already been made — elections, eligibility, deductions, carrier feeds. They are essential and they are not analytical. Nothing in that stack tells a consultant whether this employer should re-bid.
Quoting software moves proposals. It doesn't set strategy.
Quoting and RFP tools compress a genuinely painful back-and-forth between brokers and carriers. But a faster quote is still a quote. The harder question — whether to quote at all, against which alternatives, and what the tradeoffs are — sits upstream of the tool.
Claims dashboards show what happened. They stop before the decision.
Reporting tools surface utilisation, trend and large claimants. That is genuinely useful, and it is where most analytics stop. The gap is between the observation and the recommendation: connecting a specialty-pharmacy trend to a funding decision is still manual work done in a spreadsheet.
A replacement brokerage solves it by taking the account.
AI-native brokerages do close this gap — by becoming the broker. That is a real answer for the employer and no answer at all for the incumbent firm, which is asked to hand over the relationship, the economics and the advisory seat to get it.
This is not a small decision made often. It is a large one made once a year.
- 165 million
- people under 65 are covered through an employer health planSource: KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey
- 67%
- of covered workers are in self-funded plans, rising to 80% at large firmsSource: KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey
- $26,993
- average annual premium for family coverage in 2025Source: KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey
A brokerage shouldn’t have to become a software company to compete with one.
The capability that AI-native firms are competing on is analytical infrastructure. Building it internally means hiring engineers, maintaining data pipelines and owning a roadmap — which is not what a benefits practice is for.
Aelana’s intent is to make that capability something a brokerage buys rather than builds, and to stay firmly on the brokerage’s side of the table while doing it. We are not a distribution channel. We do not hold the employer relationship. The commission, the methodology and the final recommendation stay where they are.
- 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.
Tell us where this is wrong.
We’re early, and the fastest way to build the right thing is to hear from people who run this workflow every year. If our read on the problem doesn’t match yours, we’d genuinely like to know.