Alera Group’s 2025 Healthcare and Employee Benefits Benchmarking Report: Employers Face Ongoing Cost Pressures, Shift Plan Design and Funding Strategies

Deerfield, IL (June 26, 2025) — Alera Group, a top national insurance and financial services firm, today released its 2025 Healthcare and Employee Benefits Benchmarking Report, offering a closer look at how employers are responding to rising healthcare costs and evolving employee expectations.

Now in its sixth year, the report includes data from more than 6,600 employers of varying sizes and industries. This year’s results show shifts in how organizations are structuring their benefits to balance cost control with competitiveness. Key takeaways include:

• More employers are choosing level-funded plans. What used to be a solution mainly for larger companies is now increasingly being adopted by midsize and smaller employers as a way to manage healthcare spending.
• Qualified High-Deductible Health Plans (QHDHPs) continue to gain traction, especially among smaller companies. For the third year in a row, more small and midsize employers are offering High-Deductible Health Plans, though fewer are contributing to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that typically go along with them.
• Pharmacy plan designs are getting more complex. Sixty-seven percent of employers now offer four or more pharmacy tiers, and more are putting caps on brand formulary and non-formulary drug costs to help manage rising specialty medication expenses.
• Supplemental benefits, also known as voluntary benefits, are on the rise. More employers are offering options like accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity coverage to round out their core medical benefits and give employees added financial protection.
• Dental plan premiums are going up, but designs remain stable. While most dental plan features stayed the same this year, nearly half of plans (49%) saw a premium increase, with a median rate change of 5%.

“This year’s data reflects an ongoing tension between cost control and benefit richness,” said Danielle Capilla, senior vice president of compliance and organizational strategy for Employee Benefits at Alera Group. “Employers are getting more creative — whether through network strategies, plan tiering or enhanced voluntary offerings — to stay competitive in a tight labor market. Benchmarking helps companies see what’s working for others and where they have opportunities to improve.”

Employers can explore how their benefits compare with peers and gain practical insights during the webinar, “2025 Healthcare and Employee Benefits Benchmarking Report: How Does Your Benefits Program Stack Up?,” on June 26, 2025, at 1 p.m. CT. To connect with a benchmarking expert or request the full report, reach out to your local Alera Group firm or email info@aleragroup.com.