Latest news with #OneDigital
Business Journals
19-05-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
The case for self-funding: A solution to rising healthcare costs
Today, about 37% of covered workers are enrolled in fully-insured healthcare plans. But what does that really mean? In a fully-insured health plan, the employer pays a fixed amount – also known as a premium – to an insurance company. In return, the insurance company takes on the responsibility of paying for employees' medical claims. It's like buying a subscription to cover all healthcare costs, except it comes with a hefty price tag and very little control. In comparison, in a self-funded insurance plan, the employer assumes the financial risk for providing healthcare benefits to its employees. Instead of paying premiums to an insurance company, the employer sets aside funds to cover medical claims. Fully-insured plans are typically 10%-15% more expensive than self-funded plans, according to OneDigital. That difference adds up fast – and the ripple effect has dire consequences on American families. The average family has just $6,700 in liquid assets. Meanwhile, out-of-pocket maxes often climb past $10,000, leaving many just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. Employers are making every effort to control rising costs, but it often feels like an insurmountable challenge. In 2025, they will contribute nearly 12 times more to employee healthcare than they did in 2000. Despite this, many employees still struggle to afford healthcare, without a corresponding improvement in quality. Families shouldn't have to delay care or risk financial ruin to get the treatment they need. That's not just unfair, it's unacceptable. And it's time we do something about it. The players in the healthcare cost game When healthcare costs soar year after year, it's natural to wonder who's responsible. But the reality is more complex than just 'insurance companies' or 'hospitals.' At OneDigital, we've made it our mission to dig into the data and uncover what's going on beneath the surface. According to a RAND Corp study, employers pay hospitals an average of 254% of the Medicare rate. For perspective, that's approximately 100% more than what half of those hospitals need to break even. These inflated charges don't just bloat costs – they block access. They especially hurt people facing emergency medical needs, when shopping around simply isn't an option. Worse yet, today's system does not align incentives with employee needs or member outcomes. Most network contracts do little to protect the people actually using the care. Up to 80% of medical bills contain errors, and under these contracts, many carriers pay them without reviewing them. That leaves patients footing the bill for services they never received. Instead of focusing on getting people healthy, our current model treats symptoms, overprescribes medications, and leans heavily on surgeries and tests. The result? High costs, low value, and poor long-term outcomes. For employers, this is a wake-up call. If we want to control costs and improve outcomes, we can't just keep shifting expenses around. We need a better strategy – one that reduces costs at the source. The case for self-funding Employers can make their benefits an asset and align with their incentives by choosing a self-funded, customizable plan. Many employers fear the only way self-funding works is if they have over 500 employees. But that's not the case at all. Employers just need a willingness to learn and to understand how to manage risk to succeed with this type of health plan. Self-funding also allows employers to implement innovative cost-containment solutions – including reference-based pricing – to reduce overall healthcare costs while maintaining quality for employees. Some worry that self-funding creates disruption. Yes, there might be a learning curve. Yes, there may be changes. However, I believe the level of disruption is often influenced by how the plan is managed. Teaching someone how to read a new ID card is a small price to pay to ensure that, if they ever face a medical crisis, they won't have to drain their savings or lose their home just to stay alive. And this isn't theoretical, it's personal. In one year, I had a baby, needed emergency surgery for appendicitis, and was diagnosed with cancer. We paid $15,000 out-of-pocket, which wiped out my and my husband's Health Savings Accounts (HSA). It was a financial punch at a time when we were already overwhelmed. That experience changed how I see health benefits, and why I'm so passionate about helping employers build plans that protect their people. A smarter strategy starts now Employers have more power than they realize. When you invest in employee health, you're not just doing the right thing, you're doing the smart thing. Healthy employees are more productive and engaged. They take fewer sick days, perform better, and tend to stick around longer. At OneDigital, we help employers reimagine what healthcare can look like. We don't offer cookie-cutter solutions. We build customized, data-driven, and people-focused plans designed to meet the unique needs of your workforce. With our proprietary Impact Studio, we can transform data and technology into actionable insights – helping our clients to build benefits that deliver real impact to their employees and their bottom line. It's time to break away from outdated models, challenge the status quo, and build a better future for our people. Let's start now. Stop overpaying for healthcare. Contact me at cschlarb@ to explore a smarter, self-funded solution that protects your people and your bottom line. Cassie Schlarb leads the Risk and Underwriting department at OneDigital for the West Region. Her career has been focused on helping clients achieve high level benefits at competitive costs, utilizing innovative strategies on the market and her team is focused on achieving the best financial outcomes for our clients. This team of analysts and underwriters has several decades of experience in both the carrier and broker side and is skilled in providing the necessary insights for OneDigital clients to make the right decisions for their business.
Forbes
09-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI HR Is Going To Rock Our Worlds As AI Adoption Soars
BASED ON IIA Vinay Gidwaney E14-633 -AH - Google Drive Businessman touching to virtual screen with infographic and HR wording , Human development and ... More recruitment concept. How do you deal with a human resources department that's run by robots? It's a big question that one that many of us will have to consider as the weeks and months go on. AI automation is now a fact of life. It's not science fiction. It's not theory. It's happening. And that is being felt in the field of human resources – by the people who run these departments, and by the people who trust them to manage their affairs as employees. How does AI assist in HR? Or to put it another way, what does AI do in HR departments? Well, obviously, there's talent and recruitment. There's onboarding and offboarding. There's, for lack of a better term, employee decommissioning, and the entire employee life cycle. It's more than just computers calculating your payroll. Increasingly, the AI agents are going to be doing the kinds of things that Nancy or Susie from HR used to do back when HR people had human bodies and human backgrounds. This resource from the Academy to Improve Human Resources will give you a flavor of the various instances of AI that can add to HR departments. Vinay Gidwaney has experience at the MIT Media Lab and with his company, One Digital, in figuring out how HR for AI works. In a recent talk at Imagination in Action, he talked about a 'lowest common denominator' in HR, and challenges coming down the pike. 'HR departments across the country are unprepared and woefully underskilled in the impact that AI is going to have on the American workforce,' he said. He quoted Jensen Huang of Nvidia saying 'IT will become the HR of AI.' I'm not sure exactly what that means, but in any case, he brought his own analysis that's a bit different. 'We're in the advice-giving business,' he said of his work at One Digital. 'We sit down with small businesses owners, and we help them figure out their benefits and retirement plans for their employees, insurance and so on. And we sit down with American families and help them deal with their financial concerns and find success.' AI, he said, gives 'mediocre advice,' which is one reason that people have to be involved. 'People need to drive it,' he said. Here's a really interesting part of Gidwaney's presentation. He revealed that his company actually has AI coworkers – deep personas that are built for the AI parts of the HR department. 'We have a variety of AI co-workers that we deployed across the organization, and each coworker actually has a biography, they have a resume, they have experiences, they have skill sets, they have qualifications,' he said. 'They even go through regular assessments. So we test them. They have continuing education plans. They even have human supervisors.' He introduced us to Ben, Piper, Artie, Oliver, and a whole slew of AI entities that have their own human avatars, human back stories, and other characteristics, and explained that the human coworkers actually treat them as if they were humans in so many ways. There's even an AI hiring pipeline, where the company either discards AI interns, or promotes them to be apprentices. It's all part of a human-based approach, he said, that has its advantages. 'We want our AI to act and behave like humans within our organization,' he said, 'and it's incredibly important to design and model them in a way that replicates how humans act and behave in the company.' One Digital advises 100,000 HR departments around the country. Gidwaney talked about a system that's ideal in maintaining HR as a discipline. 'How do you have a merit-based process of hiring and promoting people when people use AI and you don't even know about it?' he asked. 'These are the kinds of questions that we want to start to ask when AI comes into the company. It does fundamentally change the culture of your organization. All of a sudden, the work in your organization is being done by something that you as an HR department don't have any control over.' As a CTA, he appealed to the concept of proactive interpretation of how AI will help, and a real reckoning within company culture. 'HR needs to do what they do best, which is help humans succeed at work,' he said, adding that the AI questions shouldn't just be left up to technologists, but asked all of the way through the enterprise. 'And if they're going to do that, we need to own the AI conversation in the company.' You can view the rest of the video from IIA where Gidwaney gets asked about bias and other areas of IT. In answering these questions, he continues to explore how we're going to deal with AI in our ranks – not just on the computer, but in our Slack conversations, and in meetings, and as digital coworkers who we need to acknowledge and recognize. Presumably, not everyone will be happy about sharing the break room and the conference room with various AI 'people,' but again, it's going to be a fact of life rather soon. A while ago I wrote about Toby Lutke's memo to Shopify employees telling them that AI is now mandatory. That is likely to become a pretty across the board reality pretty soon. Now you can also look back at recent blogs I've done on approaches like Alvin Graylin's manifesto, talking about replacing work with dignity as a human identity. We're going to need to do that, too. But we can't stick our heads in the sand and pretend that AI isn't going to be next to us at the table.
Associated Press
06-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
OneDigital Selects Wealth.com as the Exclusive Estate Planning Partner for Its Advisors
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 2025-- the leading digital estate planning platform for financial advisors, today announced it has been selected as the exclusive estate planning solution for OneDigital, a national strategic advisory firm providing insurance, wealth management and employee benefit services to small and mid-sized businesses. The collaboration provides OneDigital advisors with access to personalized estate planning solutions, enabling them to offer more comprehensive financial planning to their clients. With OneDigital advisors can quickly provide access to estate planning documents at a fraction of the cost associated with external attorney services. 'Estate planning is an important but often overlooked part of comprehensive financial plans as well as overall health and wellness,' said Gretchen Hilton, wealth field success manager at OneDigital. 'We needed a solution that our advisors could easily incorporate into their existing workflows without additional complexity and expense. allows us to provide a more accessible, affordable and personalized approach to accessing estate planning services that meets the needs of today's clients.' OneDigital's advisors can now invite clients to create, manage and update estate planning documents directly through the platform, powered by Ester™ AI —the first and most advanced AI agent purpose-built for estate planning. In the last 12 months alone, Ester has analyzed over 4.5 million unique data points to surface key insights and streamline the estate planning process. Clients benefit from intuitive visualizations and a clearer understanding of how their estate strategies align with their broader financial goals. This collaboration also lays the foundation for OneDigital to make estate planning services a core, integrated offering across its platform—meeting the growing demand to connect estate plans with insurance and employee benefits. 'OneDigital is equipping its advisors with best-in-class technology to better serve the evolving needs of their clients,' said Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at 'Estate planning has traditionally been out of reach for many—overly complex, expensive and siloed. We've built a modern, accessible solution that makes estate planning a natural extension of financial advice. With OneDigital's scale and advisor relationships, we're excited to bring that experience to more families across the country.' Currently, more than 60 percent of Americans do not have a will in place. For many, the cost of traditional legal services has been a significant barrier to creating comprehensive estate plans. The collaboration with OneDigital will make estate planning more accessible to a broader range of clients, addressing the growing demand for cost-effective solutions. 'As advisors and advocates, we're always looking for ways to enhance the value we deliver to clients,' said Andrew Jefferys, national vice president of wealth management solutions at OneDigital. ' gives us the ability to integrate estate planning services into the broader financial picture, reinforcing our role as collaborative partners and supporting our clients' goals—today and in the future.' modern platform helps advisors address every step of their clients' estate planning journeys, while providing full coverage across all U.S. jurisdictions. Since its inception in 2021, has achieved rapid growth, further accelerated by a $30 million Series A round last year. It now serves as the preferred estate planning platform for more than 1,000 wealth management firms. To learn more about advanced, end-to-end estate planning platform, please visit About is the industry's leading estate planning platform, empowering 1,000+ wealth management firms to modernize the delivery of estate planning guidance to their clients. As the only tech-led, end-to-end estate planning platform built specifically for financial institutions, helps drive scale and efficiency, meeting client needs across the wealth spectrum. Financial advisors ranked as the #1 estate planning platform in the 2024 T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey. In 2024, was honored by as the 'Best Technology Provider' in the Trust category, and CEO Rafael Loureiro received the Advisor Choice Award for Technology Providers: CEO of the Year. About OneDigital OneDigital's team of fierce advocates helps businesses and individuals achieve their aspirations of health, success and financial security. The insurance, financial services and HR platform provides personalized, tech-enabled solutions for a contemporary work-life experience. Nationally recognized for its culture of caring, OneDigital's teams enable employers and individuals to do their best work and live their best lives. More than 100,000 employers and millions of individuals rely on OneDigital's teams for counsel and access to fully integrated worksite products and services and the retirement and wealth management advice provided through OneDigital Investment Advisors. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Atlanta, OneDigital maintains offices in most major markets across the nation. For more information, visit View source version on CONTACT: MEDIA CONTACT:StreetCred PR [email protected] Dixon 317-590-0915 [email protected] Farmer 415-377-3293 [email protected] KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA ARIZONA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES TECHNOLOGY SOFTWARE FINANCE ASSET MANAGEMENT FINTECH PERSONAL FINANCE SOURCE: Copyright Business Wire 2025. PUB: 05/06/2025 11:00 AM/DISC: 05/06/2025 10:59 AM
Business Wire
06-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
OneDigital Selects Wealth.com as the Exclusive Estate Planning Partner for Its Advisors
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- the leading digital estate planning platform for financial advisors, today announced it has been selected as the exclusive estate planning solution for OneDigital, a national strategic advisory firm providing insurance, wealth management and employee benefit services to small and mid-sized businesses. The collaboration provides OneDigital advisors with access to personalized estate planning solutions, enabling them to offer more comprehensive financial planning to their clients. With OneDigital advisors can quickly provide access to estate planning documents at a fraction of the cost associated with external attorney services. 'Estate planning is an important but often overlooked part of comprehensive financial plans as well as overall health and wellness,' said Gretchen Hilton, wealth field success manager at OneDigital. 'We needed a solution that our advisors could easily incorporate into their existing workflows without additional complexity and expense. allows us to provide a more accessible, affordable and personalized approach to accessing estate planning services that meets the needs of today's clients.' OneDigital's advisors can now invite clients to create, manage and update estate planning documents directly through the platform, powered by Ester™ AI —the first and most advanced AI agent purpose-built for estate planning. In the last 12 months alone, Ester has analyzed over 4.5 million unique data points to surface key insights and streamline the estate planning process. Clients benefit from intuitive visualizations and a clearer understanding of how their estate strategies align with their broader financial goals. This collaboration also lays the foundation for OneDigital to make estate planning services a core, integrated offering across its platform—meeting the growing demand to connect estate plans with insurance and employee benefits. 'OneDigital is equipping its advisors with best-in-class technology to better serve the evolving needs of their clients," said Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at 'Estate planning has traditionally been out of reach for many—overly complex, expensive and siloed. We've built a modern, accessible solution that makes estate planning a natural extension of financial advice. With OneDigital's scale and advisor relationships, we're excited to bring that experience to more families across the country.' Currently, more than 60 percent of Americans do not have a will in place. For many, the cost of traditional legal services has been a significant barrier to creating comprehensive estate plans. The collaboration with OneDigital will make estate planning more accessible to a broader range of clients, addressing the growing demand for cost-effective solutions. 'As advisors and advocates, we're always looking for ways to enhance the value we deliver to clients,' said Andrew Jefferys, national vice president of wealth management solutions at OneDigital. ' gives us the ability to integrate estate planning services into the broader financial picture, reinforcing our role as collaborative partners and supporting our clients' goals—today and in the future.' modern platform helps advisors address every step of their clients' estate planning journeys, while providing full coverage across all U.S. jurisdictions. Since its inception in 2021, has achieved rapid growth, further accelerated by a $30 million Series A round last year. It now serves as the preferred estate planning platform for more than 1,000 wealth management firms. To learn more about advanced, end-to-end estate planning platform, please visit About is the industry's leading estate planning platform, empowering 1,000+ wealth management firms to modernize the delivery of estate planning guidance to their clients. As the only tech-led, end-to-end estate planning platform built specifically for financial institutions, helps drive scale and efficiency, meeting client needs across the wealth spectrum. Financial advisors ranked as the #1 estate planning platform in the 2024 T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey. In 2024, was honored by as the 'Best Technology Provider' in the Trust category, and CEO Rafael Loureiro received the Advisor Choice Award for Technology Providers: CEO of the Year. About OneDigital OneDigital's team of fierce advocates helps businesses and individuals achieve their aspirations of health, success and financial security. The insurance, financial services and HR platform provides personalized, tech-enabled solutions for a contemporary work-life experience. Nationally recognized for its culture of caring, OneDigital's teams enable employers and individuals to do their best work and live their best lives. More than 100,000 employers and millions of individuals rely on OneDigital's teams for counsel and access to fully integrated worksite products and services and the retirement and wealth management advice provided through OneDigital Investment Advisors. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Atlanta, OneDigital maintains offices in most major markets across the nation. For more information, visit
Associated Press
20-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
OneDigital Expands Impact Studio Nationwide
AI-powered platform revolutionizes workforce strategy, equipping employers with real-time insights, greater control over costs, and the ability to drive long-term impact through data-driven decisions. ATLANTA, March 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- OneDigital, the nation's leading insurance brokerage, financial services, and HR consulting firm, today announced the full national launch of Impact Studio, a platform that consolidates the analytics, benchmarking, surveying and workforce data tools used by OneDigital consultants to deliver strategic workforce solutions to its 75,000+ business clients nationwide. By integrating data across benefits, retirement, and employee value data, Impact Studio enhances productivity, drives data-driven outcomes, and delivers a modern consulting experience that seamlessly connects sophisticated technology with human capital. A recent McKinsey study highlights the growing demand for AI-powered solutions that drive smarter workforce decisions. Impact Studio equips OneDigital clients and consultants with AI-driven insights across benefits, retirement, and more—enhancing decision-making, simplifying processes, and delivering a comprehensive view that helps businesses plan for the future. Built on a scalable cloud-based architecture, Impact Studio offers advanced integration capabilities, and seamless data exchange across employee benefits and retirement into a single, intuitive platform—allowing OneDigital consultants to deliver deeper insights and more strategic counsel to their clients. By consolidating multiple systems into one cohesive platform, Impact Studio enhances employers' ability to control costs, maximize investments, and stay ahead of workforce trends. 'As organizations navigate evolving economic pressures, they need a partner who can not only advise on today's challenges but also help them stay 4 to 5 steps ahead for what's next,' said Bill Carew, Chief Operating Officer at OneDigital. 'They need disruptive solutions, especially when it comes to controlling cost and reducing risk.' This launch builds on the successful beta rollout in October 2024, which introduced Impact Studio in five markets. Following its beta launch, consultants using Impact Studio reported a 25% reduction in workforce planning time, allowing them to reallocate time towards identifying enhanced cost-saving opportunities and developing dynamic, forward-looking workforce strategies. The platform enhancements for this full launch include a five-year savings projection model for employee benefits and retirement clients, integrated Employee Perceived Value Study data combined with an enhanced user interface that delivers more easily digestible ai-driven insights. 'OneDigital's approach to technology is centered on supercharging the consulting power of our people,' said Vinay Gidwaney, Chief Product Officer at OneDigital. 'Our product is our people and the strategic consulting they bring to clients—we're not looking to replace them. Instead, we identify ways to make it as easy as possible for them to continue doing great work for our clients. Impact Studio is a great example of how human capital and technology can intersect for a better client outcome.' Impact Studio is designed to evolve continuously, adapting to the changing needs of employers and expanding its capabilities to address future workforce challenges. In addition to its integrated view of health, benefits, and retirement strategies, the platform will soon introduce new features to further enhance its value. Upcoming enhancements include: Human Resource Consulting Tools, such as salary benchmarking and workforce planning solutions, to support dynamic HR strategies. Property & Casualty Insurance Integration, offering a more comprehensive risk management approach for employers. Advanced AI-Driven Insights, leveraging real-time market data to provide proactive, actionable recommendations for workforce optimization. Impact Studio is now available to 75,000+ OneDigital business clients nationwide. To learn more, visit About OneDigital OneDigital's team of fierce advocates helps businesses and individuals achieve their aspirations of health, success and financial security. Our insurance, financial services and HR platform provides personalized, tech-enabled solutions for a contemporary work-life experience. Nationally recognized for our culture of caring, OneDigital's teams enable employers and individuals to do their best work and live their best lives. More than 100,000 employers and millions of individuals rely on our teams for counsel and access to fully integrated worksite products and services and the retirement and wealth management advice provided through OneDigital Investment Advisors. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Atlanta, OneDigital maintains offices in most major markets across the nation. For more information, visit
