For HR Leaders, CFOs, and Business Owners Managing Employee Benefits
Control Healthcare Costs Without Sacrificing Employee Benefits
Hilb Group helps employers with 25–1000 employees reduce benefit cost pressure through smarter plan design, pharmacy cost optimization, population health strategies, and alternative funding models.
Trusted by over 100,500 clients nationwide to design benefits strategies that improve employee wellbeing while protecting the bottom line.
The Challenge Employers Are Facing
Healthcare benefits are one of the largest controllable expenses in your business.
Yet many employers feel trapped in a cycle:
- Renewals increase every year
- Pharmacy costs keep rising
- Employees struggle to understand their benefits
- Chronic conditions drive expensive claims
- HR teams spend months reacting to renewals instead of managing strategy
When costs rise, many organizations are left with only a few choices:
- Shift costs to employees
- Reduce benefits
- Change carriers and hope for the best
Unfortunately, these approaches rarely solve the underlying problem. They often lead to:
- Lower employee engagement
- Higher turnover
- Greater healthcare utilization
- Even higher costs over time
Forward-thinking employers are taking a different approach — addressing the root drivers of healthcare spend instead of reacting to annual renewals.
A Smarter Approach to Benefits Strategy
At Hilb Group, we help employers move from reactive benefits management to proactive cost control.
Instead of relying solely on annual negotiations with carriers, we take a strategic approach that focuses on the underlying drivers of healthcare costs.
Our benefits consulting approach integrates:
- Strategic benefits plan design
- Data-driven population health management
- Pharmacy contract optimization
- Alternative funding strategies
- Employee engagement and benefits education
The result is a benefits strategy designed to:
- Control long-term cost trends
- Improve employee health outcomes
- Deliver stronger ROI from your benefits investment
Our Solution Offers Three Strategic Advantages
Greater Control Over Healthcare Costs
Traditional insurance plans leave employers reacting to yearly increases.
Our strategy focuses on controlling the drivers of healthcare spending through smarter plan design, pharmacy cost management, and funding strategies that align costs with your workforce risk profile.
Predictable Planning for HR and Finance
By improving claims visibility, cost transparency, and employee engagement, employers gain the ability to forecast benefits spending and plan with greater confidence.
A Healthier, More Productive Workforce
When employees engage in preventive care, manage chronic conditions early, and understand how to use their benefits, organizations see:
- fewer high-cost claims
- improved employee wellbeing
- stronger workforce productivity
Our Strategic Benefits Services
Strategic Benefits Plan Design
Your benefits strategy should align with your workforce demographics, business goals, and financial risk tolerance.
We help employers design benefits programs that:
- balance cost control with competitive benefits
- integrate medical, pharmacy, and supplemental coverage
- leverage healthcare claims data to guide long-term decisions
- align benefits strategy with workforce risk management
Instead of short-term fixes, we focus on sustainable benefits strategies that perform year after year.
Population Health & Wellness Strategy
Healthcare costs are often driven by utilization patterns and chronic conditions, not just plan pricing.
Many employers see claims increase because employees only seek treatment after conditions become serious and expensive.
Our population health programs help your business:
- identify emerging health risks within your workforce
- encourage preventive care and early treatment
- address chronic conditions before they escalate
- improve behavioral health engagement of your employees
- support employees in navigating the healthcare system more effectively
The result is often fewer catastrophic claims and more stable renewals.
How We Achieve This
Unlike traditional wellness programs that rely solely on incentives or generic resources, our population health strategy is data-driven and clinically guided.
Our programs are supported by a clinical team of healthcare professionals who help interpret claims data, identify high-risk trends, and guide appropriate interventions to support employee health.
We analyze medical and pharmacy claims data to uncover patterns such as:
- chronic condition prevalence
- high-cost claim drivers
- gaps in preventive care
- rising pharmacy spend
- emerging behavioral health needs
These insights help you understand what is driving your healthcare costs and where intervention can create the greatest impact.
Population health is not a one-time program.
Our team continually monitors claims activity throughout the year to identify:
- emerging high-cost claims
- trends in utilization
- potential catastrophic events
- opportunities for early intervention
By identifying risks earlier, you can often mitigate large claims before they escalate into major financial events.
For employers using self-funded or level-funded models, stop-loss coverage plays a critical role in protecting the organization from large claims.
We help you optimize your stop-loss strategy by:
- analyzing historical claims patterns
- negotiating competitive stop-loss terms
- identifying appropriate attachment points
- monitoring claims activity throughout the policy year
This ensures you have strong financial protection while maintaining cost efficiency in your funding strategy.
Based on those insights, we implement programs that support your business through:
- chronic disease management initiatives
- behavioral health resources and support
- preventive care campaigns
- health coaching and care navigation
Population health initiatives are aligned with the overall benefits strategy, ensuring that plan design, pharmacy management, and employee engagement all work together to help improve outcomes.
Alternative Funding Strategies
(Self-Funded & Group Captive Options)
For many employers, traditional fully insured health plans offer limited transparency and little control over rising costs.
Alternative funding strategies — including self-funded and group captive models — allow qualifying organizations to move beyond the traditional insurance structure and gain greater financial visibility, flexibility, and long-term cost control.
Instead of paying fixed premiums that primarily benefit the insurance carrier, these models allow employers to pay for the actual healthcare their workforce uses, while maintaining protection against large or unexpected claims.
How Alternative Funding Works
Under a self-funded structure, the employer pays claims directly and gains full transparency into healthcare spending.
In a group captive model, multiple employers participate in a shared risk pool, spreading risk across a larger group while maintaining visibility into claims performance.
Both approaches are designed to give employers greater control over healthcare dollars while protecting the organization from catastrophic claims through stop-loss coverage.
Key Advantages for Your Business
By reducing carrier margins and unnecessary administrative layers, alternative funding models allow more healthcare dollars to go toward actual care.
When claims perform better than expected, employers may retain unused funds or share in surplus savings instead of losing those dollars to an insurance carrier.
You gain deeper insight into your claims data, helping you understand:
- what conditions are driving healthcare costs
- how employees are using benefits
- where targeted interventions can improve outcomes
This visibility allows you to make more strategic decisions about plan design, population health initiatives, and cost control strategies.
Both self-funded and captive models include stop-loss protection, ensuring that large or unexpected claims do not derail the organization’s benefits budget.
With better claims visibility and proactive management strategies, you often experience more stable renewals and improved long-term cost predictability.
Level-Funded Health Plans
Level-funded plans offer a smart middle ground between fully insured and self-funded models, combining predictable monthly costs with many of the financial advantages of self-insurance.
Instead of paying fixed premiums that primarily benefit the insurance carrier, your business pays a set monthly amount while gaining greater transparency and potential savings when claims perform well.
How Level-Funded Plans Can Benefit Your Business
By reducing traditional insurance carrier margins, more of your healthcare dollars go toward actual care for your employees.
If claims run lower than expected, you may receive a portion of unused funds instead of losing those dollars to the insurance carrier.
Level-funded plans maintain stable flat monthly costs, making budgeting and cash-flow planning easier while still allowing you to benefit from strong claims performance.
You gain clearer insight into what is driving healthcare costs — from chronic conditions to pharmacy spend — enabling smarter plan decisions and targeted cost-control strategies.
Built-in stop-loss protection ensures that a large or unexpected claim does not derail the organization’s benefits budget.
You are not locked into rigid plan structures and often have greater flexibility to implement pharmacy cost-control strategies.
Plan design can guide employees toward preventive care, early treatment, and high-value care options that help reduce costly claims over time.
Level-funded plans pair naturally with voluntary and supplemental benefits that help reduce employee out-of-pocket costs, often to $0, while stabilizing claims for your bottom line.
Pharmacy Contract Review & Negotiation
Prescription drug spending is now one of the fastest-growing drivers of healthcare costs.
Yet many employers never review — let alone negotiate — their pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) contracts. These agreements are often complex, opaque, and structured in ways that can significantly increase long-term costs.
Our pharmacy strategy team helps employers analyze and optimize their PBM contracts to uncover savings opportunities and improve transparency.
How We Help Employers Reduce Pharmacy Costs
Our specialists review your PBM agreement to identify contract terms that may be increasing costs or limiting pricing transparency.
We evaluate drug pricing benchmarks, rebate structures, and administrative fees to ensure the PBM agreement is aligned with the employer’s best financial interests.
Our team negotiates improved terms that can reduce pharmacy costs while maintaining access to necessary medications for employees.
We help employers implement smarter pharmacy management strategies, such as encouraging lower-cost therapeutic alternatives and guiding employees toward high-value medication options.
Pharmacy spending is continuously monitored to identify cost trends, high-cost medications, and opportunities for further optimization.
Employee Benefits Communication & Engagement
Even the best benefits program fails when employees don’t understand how to use it.
We help organizations improve engagement through:
- clear benefits communication strategies
- enrollment education programs
- decision-support tools and digital navigation resources
- voluntary benefits that reduce employee out-of-pocket costs
The result…
When employees understand and engage with their benefits, employers often see:
- improved preventive care utilization
- reduced catastrophic claims
- stronger employee loyalty and retention
Simple 3-Step Process
Why Employers Choose Hilb Group
Employers partner with Hilb because we provide more than traditional brokerage services.
Our focus is simple: help employers control costs while supporting a healthy, productive workforce.
- Strategic benefits consulting, not just plan placement
- Data-driven insights into claims and cost drivers
- Integrated pharmacy, population health, and funding strategies
- Strong employee communication and engagement programs
- Alignment between benefits, risk management, and financial planning
- National resources with personalized advisory support
Ready to Take Control of Your Healthcare Costs?
Whether you’re planning for your next renewal or exploring long-term cost control strategies, our team can help you evaluate your options.
Schedule a Benefits Strategy Consultation
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