Notes from our expert team.

AI is starting to take over the busywork of benefits compliance: tracking ACA and COBRA deadlines, catching enrollment data errors, and flagging outdated plan language. It can't take over the judgment calls, and with ACA penalties rising again in 2026, those calls still carry real financial risk. HR leaders considering AI compliance tools should start with one task, keep a person reviewing the output, and expand only once the tool proves it can be trusted. That's the same principle behind Nava HQ: AI does the watching, but a dedicated advisor still owns the outcome.

Before you evaluate a single renewal option, get clear on what you're optimizing for. There are six priorities at play in every renewal decision: costs, benefits quality, bandwidth, employee satisfaction, employee disruption, and risk tolerance: Knowing where you stand on each one changes everything. HR leaders who know their priorities in advance make faster, better decisions when the pressure hits.

Renewal season turns into a defensive scramble when leadership only sees the number after it's already final. Bringing your CFO in months earlier, and translating claims trends and funding risk into language finance already uses, changes that same number from a surprise into a decision people helped shape. Self-funding isn't the riskier option: walking into a renewal with no claims data and no shared read on risk tolerance is. A fixed premium doesn't remove that risk, it just hides where it shows up. A simple exercise, ranking cost, benefits quality, team bandwidth, employee satisfaction, disruption tolerance, and risk tolerance against both a mild and severe renewal scenario, shows an organization exactly where its real flexibility sits before the number ever arrives.

Fully insured employers often assume they have no leverage at renewal, since they can't see claims data the way self-funded groups can. That assumption is costing them money. Carriers will share medical loss ratio even with small, fully insured groups, and that number is often enough to show whether a renewal increase actually holds up. One fully insured group used a 54-57% loss ratio, well under the carrier's target, to turn a proposed 10% increase into a rate pass. The real barrier for fully insured employers isn't a lack of leverage, it's not knowing what to ask for.

Most self-funded employers are paying more for prescription drugs than they realize, not because drug prices are opaque (though they are), but because the companies managing their pharmacy benefits are built on compensation models that aren't required to be disclosed. That's changing. New federal rules are putting pressure on pharmacy benefit managers to show their work, and employers who understand what to ask for are in a much stronger position at renewal than those who don't.

This blog breaks down the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and state paid family and medical leave (PFML) programs so HR leaders can understand who’s covered, how long employees can take leave, and which rules apply in each state. You’ll find a complete A–Z guide to state laws, including leave durations, wage replacement details, and special provisions that go beyond the federal baseline. It also includes practical compliance tips to help employers manage leave consistently, avoid costly mistakes, and support employees during life’s most important moments.

Employee benefits brokers are typically paid through carrier commissions or flat fees, and federal law now requires them to disclose that compensation to you. This guide breaks down how broker pay works, what a complete CAA disclosure should include, and how to use that information to evaluate your broker at renewal.

Most companies benchmark their benefits once a year, buried inside a renewal conversation. This post argues that's too late. A renewal tells you what your benefits will cost; benchmarking tells you whether that cost is buying competitive value — and those are two very different questions. Using free public data sources like KFF, BLS, SHRM, and IFEBP, HR teams can compare their health plans, contributions, leave policies, and emerging benefits against peer companies by industry, region, and size. The post walks through a five-step process for doing that analysis, introduces Nava HQ as a tool that makes live benchmarking data accessible without waiting for a broker, and closes with a framework for translating findings into three types of action: plan redesign, carrier negotiation, or budget reallocation.

Most companies start with a PEO for good reasons. At a certain point, usually around 75-150 employees, the math changes. This post gives HR leaders a practical, phase-by-phase checklist for exiting a PEO without disrupting employee benefits, including what to do 6-9 months out, 30-60 days out, and after the transition is complete. It also covers the biggest risk most teams underestimate: benefits coverage gaps.

Student loan debt is a financial pressure point for a large share of the workforce, and most employers still aren't doing anything about it. That changed meaningfully in 2025: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made employer student loan repayment assistance a permanent tax-free benefit under Section 127, removing the expiration date that had kept many employers from building real programs around it. Combined with the SECURE 2.0 401(k) match provision, which lets employers make retirement contributions on behalf of employees who are paying down loans instead of saving, there are now two distinct and complementary tools available. With only 14% of employers currently offering student loan assistance, this is still a genuine differentiator for recruiting and retention.

CFOs don't see benefits as a business investment by default. That's HR's job to change. This post gives HR leaders a practical framework for quantifying benefits ROI in financial terms, covering turnover costs, absenteeism, health plan spend, and what finance teams actually want to see when you walk into that conversation.

Most self-funded employers have access to more data about their health plan than they realize, and most of them aren't using it. Claims data shows exactly where your money is going, which cost drivers are structural vs. one-time, and where there's room to intervene. This guide breaks down what's actually in a claims report, how to spot what matters, and how to work with your broker to turn findings into concrete action before your next renewal.