Straight Answers to Hard Questions.

Traditional group health insurance pools your employees into a small, company-specific risk group. When your workforce is small, that pool is volatile — one or two high-cost claims can push your entire renewal rate up significantly, year after year, with no real mechanism for you to stabilize costs.

The approach we use moves your employees out of that small pool and into far larger national insurance markets. This changes the pricing dynamic fundamentally. Your employees gain access to a wider range of carriers and plan options, often at better rates — and you gain predictable, defined-contribution control over what you spend on benefits.

An Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) is an IRS-approved mechanism that allows employers to reimburse employees for individual health insurance premiums on a tax-advantaged basis. ICHRAs became available in 2020 and have seen rapid adoption nationwide — but most employers haven't heard of them because most brokers don't offer them.

The reason is straightforward: implementing an ICHRA properly is complex. The compliance requirements are significant, the operational structure is different from a traditional group plan, and it requires expertise that most conventional benefit brokers simply haven't built. That's why awareness remains low despite growing adoption among employers who do have access to experienced guidance.

We hear this often. The skepticism is healthy — and it deserves a direct answer.

The savings aren't the result of cutting coverage or shifting costs onto employees. They come from a structural change in how insurance risk is pooled and priced. When a small group of employees is moved into much larger national markets, the economics change. It's basic insurance math applied at scale — not a workaround or a loophole.

That said, this approach isn't right for every employer. There are situations where the structure doesn't produce meaningful savings, and we'll tell you that upfront. The Feasibility Study we run before any engagement exists precisely so you can see the numbers for your specific workforce before making any commitment.

Health insurance is the structural starting point, but it's not the endpoint. The capital freed by restructuring how health benefits are funded doesn't disappear — it gets redirected into other areas: retirement contributions, HSAs, life and disability protection, and personalized financial wellness planning for each employee.

Our approach treats health, retirement, payroll, and personal financial planning as one interconnected system rather than separate line items managed by different vendors. That integration is what produces outcomes that a health insurance change alone cannot.

In most cases, employees gain access to more choices — not fewer. Moving into individual insurance markets means each employee can select a plan that fits their household's specific situation: their doctors, their medications, their family size. They're no longer limited to the two or three options their employer negotiated for the group.

The enrollment process is guided. We conduct employee education sessions — in person, virtually, or both — so every member of your team understands their options and knows exactly how to choose a plan. Nobody is left to figure it out alone.

Resistance is a legitimate concern, and we take it seriously. Change in benefits is rarely welcomed initially — especially when employees are unfamiliar with how individual insurance markets work.

Our experience is that when employees are given a clear, honest explanation of what's changing and why — and especially when they see that their employer's ICHRA contribution makes their individual premiums lower or comparable to what they were paying before — the resistance fades quickly. The key is education and communication, which is a core part of what we provide during implementation.

ACA-compliant individual market plans — which are the plans available under an ICHRA — cannot deny coverage or charge higher premiums based on health status or pre-existing conditions. This is federal law. An employee with significant ongoing health needs has the same right to coverage as any other employee.

In many cases, employees with specific health situations benefit from the individual market because they can choose plans that are optimized around their actual needs — particular specialist networks, specific drug formularies — rather than settling for a group plan designed around the average employee's needs.

This is a reasonable concern in theory, but in practice the individual market in most areas offers a wider selection of carriers and plan types than what a single employer can access through a group plan. The issue isn't typically a lack of options — it's navigating them.

That navigation support is built into our process. Employees have a guided enrollment experience and access to support to help them evaluate their choices and select coverage that actually works for them. We don't hand employees a marketplace link and wish them luck.

Yes. ICHRAs are an IRS-approved, ACA-compliant mechanism established by federal regulation in 2019 and available to employers starting January 1, 2020. They were created specifically to give employers a legally sound way to move employees into individual insurance markets while satisfying employer coverage obligations.

Properly structured, an ICHRA satisfies the ACA's employer mandate for applicable large employers and counts as minimum essential coverage for employees. Compliance requirements must be met — the structure must be designed correctly and administered properly. This is exactly why working with experienced specialists matters.

No — and any firm that suggests otherwise should be approached with caution. Applicable large employers (generally those with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees) still have obligations under the ACA's employer shared responsibility provisions.

A properly designed ICHRA satisfies those obligations — it offers affordable, minimum value coverage that allows employees to obtain ACA-compliant individual market plans. The structure replaces the group plan as the vehicle through which you meet your obligations; it doesn't eliminate those obligations.

The concerns you may have encountered typically apply to poorly designed or poorly implemented ICHRAs — and they're not unfounded. There are firms that attempt ICHRA implementation without the depth of expertise required, produce non-compliant structures, or fail to support employees through enrollment. Those situations produce bad outcomes.

The regulatory framework itself is well-established and continues to receive bipartisan support. The issue is execution, not the mechanism. This is why the experience and methodology of the firm you work with matters significantly — and why we'd encourage any prospective client to ask hard questions about a firm's ICHRA track record before engaging.

We typically see employers save $4,000–$5,000 per employee per year compared to their prior group plan costs — but that number varies based on your workforce's age distribution, location, current plan structure, and how your ICHRA is designed.

We don't ask you to take our word for it. Before any engagement, we run a Feasibility Study using your actual employee data — ages, wages, current plan costs — and produce a side-by-side comparison showing projected costs under your current structure versus the Individual Platform model. You see the math before you commit to anything.

No, and we'll tell you directly if your situation isn't a strong candidate. The model produces the most compelling results for certain workforce profiles and market situations. If the Feasibility Study doesn't show meaningful savings for your company, we'd rather tell you that than pursue an engagement that doesn't deliver value.

We work with a limited number of clients at a time, and we only take on engagements where we're confident we can produce real outcomes. Our reputation depends on results, not volume.

Compensation structure is discussed transparently during the engagement process. Like most benefits advisors, our compensation is tied to the plans and products we help implement — but we believe you should understand exactly how we're paid before we begin working together, and we're happy to walk through that clearly.

What we'd note is this: our interests are structurally aligned with yours. We have no incentive to maintain an expensive group plan year over year. Our model is built around delivering savings, which is only possible if the structure we implement actually performs.

No. One of the structural advantages of this model is that you're not locked into the traditional group renewal calendar. Employers can transition to an ICHRA structure at any point in the year — not just during the November–December open enrollment window.

Your employees will enroll in individual plans through a Special Enrollment Period triggered by the transition, which gives them access to the market regardless of when in the year the change happens. Savings begin from the point your ICHRA takes effect.

Timeline varies depending on your company's size and complexity, but most implementations move from signed engagement to employees enrolled in coverage within 60–90 days. Payroll integration, employee communications, and enrollment support are all coordinated by our team — your HR team's lift is deliberately kept minimal.

We walk with you through every step. The implementation isn't a hand-off — it's the beginning of an ongoing relationship.

One of the goals of our model is to reduce administrative burden on your HR team, not add to it. We handle ICHRA design, compliance documentation, employee communication and education, enrollment support, and ongoing employee questions. We also coordinate the payroll integration so contribution flows happen correctly from day one.

After the transition, your team's day-to-day involvement in benefits administration is significantly lighter than with a traditional group plan. New hire enrollments, mid-year life events, and annual re-enrollment are all managed through our process.

There are no permanent traps here. Employers retain the ability to offer traditional group coverage in the future. However, it's worth noting that going back to a group plan after employees have experienced individual market coverage — with its broader options and often lower employee premium contributions — is rarely something employers want to do once they've seen the outcomes.

We're transparent about this upfront: we wouldn't recommend this transition for a company where we don't believe it will work. The Feasibility Study process exists to establish confidence before any commitment is made.

The best starting point is the Executive Brief — a detailed overview of the model, how it works, what it produces, and what implementation looks like. You can read it without speaking to anyone, at your own pace.

If the model resonates, the next step is submitting your workforce data through our Ages & Wages form so we can run a Feasibility Study. That gives you real numbers for your specific company before any conversation about moving forward.

No. Health insurance is one component of what we do, but it's not the full picture. OneAdvocate is structured to handle health benefits, retirement planning, payroll services, and personal financial wellness under one roof — because those disciplines are interconnected, and disconnected systems produce disconnected outcomes.

We're also an Indiana-registered investment advisor, which reflects the breadth of our engagement with clients' financial architecture — not just their insurance.

We deliberately limit the number of new client engagements we take on at any given time. The model we deliver requires genuine attention during implementation and ongoing support after — we can't produce that quality at unlimited scale.

This means there are periods when capacity is limited, particularly during the fall open enrollment season when employer interest peaks. If you're evaluating this approach, earlier engagement gives us more flexibility to work within your timeline.

We're headquartered in Indianapolis, but we serve employers across the country. The individual insurance markets we work within operate nationwide, and our team has experience working with employers in multiple states.

As an Indiana-registered investment advisor, our ability to provide investment advice is subject to registration requirements in the states where we operate — but for benefits and health insurance engagements, geography is generally not a barrier.