Protect Your Clients from Catastrophic Plan Risks

When renewals rely on spreadsheets and email chains and individual experiences, errors become invisible until they show up, Andy. And sometimes they'll never show up and the plan goes and the whole year goes by and there was no issue. But there are times where misplanned differences, incorrect contributions, and outdated assumptions, they do end up showing up. And that brings a substantial amount of risk and that compounds.

Hey, hey, welcome back to The Broker's Voice. Andy Neary. CEO and founder of Complete Game Consulting. Uh, I'm excited for this episode because, uh, I go back a little ways with the crew, uh, this company that we're going to highlight today. Today we're talking about PlanSite, and I have CEO Weston Lundford joining me. Weston, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Andy. Excited to be here with you.

Yeah, no, this is going to be a fun conversation. Um, before we dive into PlanSite and all things PlanSite, you actually kind of have an interesting path to becoming the CEO of PlanSite.

Yeah.

And you came at it from the VC side of things. Share that story if you can.

Well, early on, I started my career in the accounting world. I began as a— I started a CPA practice. It seems like decades and decades. Well, this has been decades ago. But that gave me a really good exposure into a wide range of businesses and business models and various markets because we were a public firm. And so I worked with a lot of different organizations, but more importantly, it helped me understand where systems tend to break down in organizations. So that eventually pulled me into software innovation because I wanted to automate where you can automate. And so I started a company, Dental Intelligence. Dental Intelligence, it's become the leading analytics platform in the dental space today. Ultimately grew into a company over $500 million now. I'm still on the board of that company, just not involved in the day-to-day operations. I stepped back about 5 years ago, I guess now, to start Kaizen Investments Partners, which is a VC firm. That invest in early-stage tech companies like Plansight. We focus in fintech, healthcare tech, and insurtech, which is what really introduced me into Plansight and how I got introduced to Steve and that founding team. And they asked if I was starting on their board because I was one of the investors in that company and asked if I would come and help them operationalize things. And so eventually I took on the CEO role there. So, outside of that, I've been married to Andy for 25 years. I've got 5 kids. They're all doing great. Just recently, 6 months ago, had one grandchild.

Congratulations.

Family. And that's where I want to spend all my time.

Yeah. And you guys are in Salt Lake City, right?

Yeah. Just outside of Salt Lake, just close to Lehigh area. So, it's pretty cool.

Oh, okay. Awesome. It's amazing how fast that area continues to expand.

Crazy. A lot of innovation, a lot of smart people out there.

I feel like every time I go to Salt Lake, there's a new suburb.

It's growing. Growing. We've got, we've got a lot of people coming in from all around.

Yeah, for sure. Beautiful place though. Um, well, let's dive into Plansight.

Yeah.

For those that are unfamiliar with Plansight, what is it you guys do?

Well, the, the, we are an end-to-end benefits renewal and marketing platform built specifically for brokers. So we help brokers take what, as everyone knows, I guess is traditionally a very manual and fragmented renewal process, and we turn that into a very repeatable, structured, automated workflow. So I would say today at the core, we're purpose-built AI, Andy, where we can read carrier documents, quotes, and plan designs. We normalize that data and we turn that really into clean, usable outputs in like their side-by-side presentations that are client-ready. And really that means that brokers that use Plansight are spending a lot less time in spreadsheets, a lot less time chasing emails back and forth with carriers. And they're spending a lot more time advising clients and being more strategic conversations and helping them close business. So, it's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I remember I shared with you offline, I started working with one of the founders, Steve Overton. I think it was back in 2021. I still remember him. He was spending all his time, you know, behind the scenes, you know, writing the code and all that stuff. And I think now he's actually the Chief Technology Officer.

He is our Chief Product Officer.

Product Officer. Okay. Um, I'd be curious because I remember looking at seeing PlanSite back then over the past 5 years. What would you say are some of the areas where PlanSite has matured the most over the last 5 years?

Such a great question. I, you know, Steve is a broker by trade and he comes from generations of brokers. So he's been in that world for a very long time, especially in the benefits specifically in that world. And He originally started building this to help him with just automating these mundane tasks. But I would say the biggest shift is that we became fully carrier and general agency agnostic. And what I mean by that is early on, we were tightly partnered with partner carriers, and it was the main strategy, like get partner carriers. And over time, we realized that that was really not the right long-term model. And I think there's a few other solutions in the space that they're still in that. Model, but brokers want freedom to work with whoever they choose. And technology really shouldn't— it should support that, right? It shouldn't influence where they should go work. So today, PlanSite works equally well with all carriers. We work really well with all general agencies. We no longer charge carriers anymore. We used to get a fee from the carriers. We don't do that. Um, we're not trying to shape broker behavior through these partner dynamics. We're really focused purely on helping brokers operate more efficiently. Within their ecosystem that they already live in. So I'd say that's the biggest maturing that we've had.

Yeah, that's the question I wanted to ask you. You know, I love to learn about, okay, what is the problem you're solving? We could talk about a lot of problems that brokers face at renewal time, especially these days. I don't think there is a broker out there that's delivering a good health insurance renewal right now. But when you think about the problem you guys do solve, what are you really helping brokers do at renewal time?

Well, um, I think that the biggest thing that brokers are faced with at renewal time is delayed in getting responses from carriers. So carriers are prone to push off getting those renewals so that they know that it slows down the opportunity for them to do a shopping experience. Um, so that's a big problem. So communication chains back and forth, and then being able to take that data, which seems to be very unstructured, and you guys know, you've looked at several plans. They have different terms for these attributes and it's hard to sometimes decipher. And so a lot of times when you're trying to scale an organization to be able to support, especially the output that has to go out during the busy seasons, it's difficult unless you can really find talent that understand that language of the benefits industry to really compare apples to apples and spreadsheet that stuff correctly. So our number one benefit that we provide is just automation in that when the carrier uploads a quote or when the broker uploads a quote because the carrier sends it to them, immediately purpose-built AI reads that, structures it, puts it in the side-by-side presentation, which allows that team member now to go straight to analyzing and modeling contribution strategies or census enrollments and starting to be really more strategic about putting together a comprehensive affordable benefit package versus doing all that manual work. We don't want them doing the manual work and This is one thing I'd say about that, Andy. Sometimes I feel like our brokers and some of the team members in these brokerages, that's become their identity. And they feel like that's the value they add, getting these gorgeous presentations built. But the reality is that's got to shift because that's not the value you add. The value you add is being able to look at it, analyze it, and then really helping that client of yours structure a more affordable and more winning comprehensive plan for their teams.

That's— I couldn't agree more. I think the difference between a broker and a consultant, brokers place all their value on a quote. So, they spend all their time at renewal putting the spreadsheet together, make it look pretty. Whereas a consultant's getting hired for their process and a quote, a renewal quote is just a part of that process. And I was curious, Right. I was curious, your thoughts, because you are automating that now, which should elevate the level or type of conversation a broker is having with their client at renewal time. You kind of answered it already, but go into a little more depth. Well, if I'm not having to spend all this time on the actual spreadsheet and quote itself, what are the conversations I'm able to focus on at renewal time that maybe I couldn't have done before Plansight?

Oh man, it honestly, Andy, the fundamentally, it changes the entire tone of the conversation. So instead of reacting to questions that clients will tend to ask in almost every situation, I mean, I do, I'm an employer. I've got 12 companies that we, every year when you have, especially when you're dealing with large groups, but small groups are impacted too. But when you're dealing with large groups, 300+ employees or 200+ employees, and I know that's not the bread and butter of brokers, but those teams are going to be asking some difficult questions to those brokers, and the brokers need to be ready to answer them. And so instead of reacting to questions like, what if we change this? Or can we run this? Or what if we looked at— there's all these what-if scenarios that clients will present back to either reduce the burden on their employees, so cost, or to reduce the burden on them if it's running outside of their budget. And brokers can't deal with that on site. They can't have that conversation because the technology they're using right now, which is benefit services teams back in the office and their spreadsheets, no one wants to open up an Excel spreadsheet and try to model that live. And so, technology allows them to have this real-time conversation where I can just look at you and say, Andy, that's a really great question. Let's take a look at it real quick. And within 2 clicks of a button, I can do add 5% to the contributions that's going to come to an employer or go to a fixed mark or change whatever they're asking really quickly. And I don't have to worry about formatting issues or, or the, what is it called, the formulas in my Excel spreadsheets breaking. So we, we give them the conversation, I guess, shifts from scrambling to actually advising and you can still get a close one that day.

And that's what I— that's where my head was at, is you're closing the deal by the time you leave.

Yeah. You don't want to leave with some what-if scenarios. You're busy too. You got to get off to your next client, right?

So, you brought back so many memories. I mean, I can remember, you know, as an accounting exec a decade ago working with self-funded groups and we had all these elaborate spreadsheets we had created. The formula was wrong. You're making a big mistake mathematically, which could cost you. Because if you go out and you present renewal figures and those are not accurate because a formula was in, was not accurate, you know, the client holds you to those numbers.

You, you bring up something that most brokers underestimate how much risk actually lives in their manual handoffs and this tribal knowledge that lives in these brokers. And when renewals rely on spreadsheets and email chains and individual experiences, errors become invisible until they show up, Andy, and sometimes they'll never show up. And the plan goes and the whole year goes by and there was no issue. But there are times where misplan differences, incorrect contributions, and outdated assumptions, they do end up showing up. And that brings a substantial amount of risk and that compounds. So technology and plan side auto, it mitigates that risk, not just provides efficiency, but it gets rid of those manual handoffs.

That, those are the two things I think are the most important is the elimination of mistakes. And the real-time adjustments so you can walk out of the meeting with final, final decisions made.

Yeah, I would agree.

So many brokers having to go back, readjust the numbers, come back, and between the time of let's read from, from we need to adjust the numbers till they come back, guess what? Guess what could have happened? Well, they had a conversation with another broker.

That's what— and they do, especially with the way that— especially this year when rates are increasing at the rate they've increased. Seeing some insane renewal proposals coming in. And so they are having other conversations.

I want every broker listening— sorry, Weston— to hear what you just said. Because of the way the health insurance market is working right now, I've heard this from every carrier, Weston. There are more AORs being written right now than ever before.

Yeah.

So if you're still using outdated manual renewal processes that require you to let me get back to you, you're exposing yourself to a broker coming in with something different and/or better.

Right.

A tool like PlanSite allows you to make the adjustments on the fly so you can close the dang renewal right there and then.

Very quickly. And Andy, these guys aren't just having conversations with other brokers. They're having conversations with their peers in their industry and their peers are introducing them to the brokers. So this conversation is always happening.

Uh-huh.

It's something that healthcare needs to be solved. In general, but employers are just trying to mitigate their exposure to this crazy cost.

Couldn't agree more. I'm curious, given how fast things have evolved here in the last few years with AI, is there anything PlantSight is doing today inside its technology that even like 3 years ago you'd be like, we wouldn't even have thought of that?

Oh, absolutely. And I think that here in the next 12 months, that's going to happen again and we're going to see a lot of changes. Technology is advancing so fast, but 3 years ago, For sure. It was not realistic to reliably extract complex benefit data from carrier documents. I mean, you couldn't do it and turn that into structured, usable intelligence at scale, right? So today, our AI can read those documents, and I'm talking about complex documents, Andy, and not a lot of AIs can. And I think brokers need to understand that there's a difference between just general large language models and purpose-built AI for a market or for a specific reason. And we've done that. I don't care if you throw me a medical plan that's got multiple in-networks or out of— only one out-of-network, but multiple in-networks, which we're commonly seeing with multiple classes. We can handle reading that and spreadsheeting that accurately. So that unlocks things like instant what-if scenarios again, instead of dealing with it on a spreadsheet, clean side-by-side comparisons immediately so that you can get back to your The thing about this, the moment a document is uploaded, I immediately, without doing any work, have a side-by-side. Like I can see current against that doc, that new plan proposal that came in without doing any work. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not going to go in there and do some modeling and some scenario planning, but at the same time, I can get a real quick side-by-side comparison. And that was not available 3 years ago.

That's awesome. Speaking of brokers, I would be curious. I remember when I was working with Steve, one of the things we were working on early on was identifying the right kind of advisor. When you look at your software today, what does the ideal broker look like for you guys?

Well, I'm not going to give you an answer, I guess, by the size of a broker. I'd say that our ideal broker is one who believes in processes and that they understand processes really create freedom. So, they care more about delivering a consistent client experience. They want their teams focused on advising, not clerical work. Again, someone that wants to get their teams out of, I feel valued and important because I put together this gorgeous spreadsheet versus I feel valued because I've come up with a really cool comprehensive benefit package that's affordable that I think our employers are going to love. So they're thinking about scale growth and reducing key person risk. They don't need to be the biggest broker by any means, Andy, but we work with small mom and pops and I have some clients that have over 300 locations across the United States. So, They just need to be intentional about how they run their business. That would be our ideal customer. Someone that really wants to scale and improve.

It's so well said. I, I, I, Weston, I can tell you there isn't a conversation I have with agency executives right now where the, the conversation of how do we incorporate AI into our systems isn't coming up.

Yeah.

When you look at an agency, there's 3 things you have to do well. You gotta market yourself to get opportunities. You have to have a sales process to close them, and you have to have a service model to take care of them.

Yeah.

And I think so many agency executives right now are trying to figure out how we incorporate AI into all of that to make the whole thing more efficient. And I think in, in your, to your point, one little area of that is what are you doing to make the renewal process more efficient?

Yeah.

And, and that's what you guys are solving is what you, what you used to think was valuable time spending hours making a spreadsheet look pretty can now be done in minutes.

Right. And I think that it's important that whatever technology you adopt in a brokerage, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's okay to test, but you need to be deliberate about it. We're, um, PlanSite's very deliberate about our innovation or our sequencing. We don't try to drop 10 new features on a broker and expect them to figure it out. We focus on solving one clear problem at a time and then embedding that solution into their existing workflows. So I would just caution when looking for technology, innovation only matters if it's usable, right? Someone could show you a really cool feature, but our job is not to make powerful technology pretty. It's to make your problem solved quickly. And that is, that's the purpose of technology. Whatever you adopt, it doesn't need to be It needs to be able to solve workflow problems. And so just be mindful about when you're looking at that for technology improvements in your—

Well, and look, think about what PlantSight's doing. And this is something we preach. All these workflows you can be automating with AI just give you more time to be in front of the client or the prospect, which is the whole point, right?

You're not spending hours behind during the busy season.

100%, especially fourth quarter. Absolutely. I would be curious, because you do have a technology background, I find it kind of amusing in our industry. I think we have a lot of people who are by definition laggards when it comes to technology. I've still— I've had agency executives tell me they're still evaluating their stance on AI, which I kind of find amusing. Um, I don't know what your stance means. Like, it's here. You're— you better do something here.

I mean, they can evaluate security, safety, and, and accuracy. Like, all those things need to be looked at. You should be making the decision already. We're going to be utilizing AI.

You have to use it. Yeah.

That's the best way to get into it.

So I would be, I'd love your take. What separates advisors who successfully adopt tech versus those who are still in that kind of putting the head in the sand position?

Oh, that's a really good question. I'd say the number one thing is they treat technology as a decision, not as a side project. The decision. So they, they take ownership personally as a, as a brokerage owner or executive there. And then they assign ownerships out to individuals that are going to really drive this. They define to the team what success looks like, even to the vendor they're purchasing the software from. They define what success looks like to that vendor, because that gives accountability to the vendor to ensure that they're reaching that. So they don't train features and they don't accept vendors that train features. They train processes. And so how does this technology actually fit in their workflow? So the ones who stall, and we've had customers, Andy, that have stalled. And so some of them may even be listening to this. Those who stall, and I'm not saying it wasn't our fault, because probably was, but they tend to buy tools hoping behavior will magically change. And I'm telling you, change management is hard. It never does. It never magically changed. So adoption, I would say those that are most successful are those who They follow leadership and leadership gives clarity about this business decision we're making, not just here's some technology we're buying.

You just defined, thank you for saying what you just said because we have some clients we're going through that with is before you find the solution, change the behavior.

Yeah.

If you think the solution will magically create a different result without you changing the behavior, it's not going to give you the result you want. That was so well said. Well, this has been a great conversation, Weston. If there was, if there is an advisor listening into this conversation right now and saying, okay, Q4 was frustrating, we never want to go through that again, we need a better solution for quoting and things like that, what is the best way to get a hold of you or somebody at Plansight to learn more?

Yeah, really just going to our website, www.plansight.com. And you can take a look at several videos on there, read about some of the technology, but there's a click schedule, a demo with one of our account executives. Our account executives really understand the industry. They understand the benefits, complexities. And so these guys, I don't call them sales reps. They're professional consultants and they actually can help with a lot of different areas and just processes also with your organization. But Schedule time with them and they'll do a discovery call with you. And if, if it's the right fit, they'll move forward into showcasing the product and how it would work within your workflows.

Perfect. That was plansite.com, guys. Go check it out if you're looking for a better renewal solution next year so you never have another fourth quarter like you just did. Check those guys out. I've gotten a chance to see it on the inside. That was years ago. I can only imagine how good the tool is now. Be good.