ICHRA Renewal Process for Current Clients with benefitbay®
We are excited to help you provide a great renewal experience for your ICHRA clients. The information below is an overview of the renewal process. Your benefitbay Customer Success Manager will work with you every step of the way to ensure you have a successful renewal season!
August 2025:
1st-15th:
- Work with your CSM to set up renewal conversations. These should be completed by August 31st.
- Discuss the renewal process with each client, including add-on options for this year's renewals. Add-ons include:
- Ancillary elections in benefitbay
- 1095 filing
- COBRA
- Begin creating contracts for employers who've confirmed they're renewing (click here for instructions on how to create your contracts)
- Request each employer to review and update their company profile and contacts in benefitbay to ensure everything is up to date before the new plan year begins.
18th - 31st:
- Instruct your employers to have their census updated and uploaded to benefitbay by October 1st
- The employer's instructions on how to complete that task can be found by clicking here.
- We recommend you start contacting your largest groups first, as they have the potential for more updates.
- Employers utilizing the payroll integration can skip the census update step.
- FOR EMPLOYERS WITH MEDICARE-AGED EMPLOYEES: Confirm the selection of a Medicare enrollment partner; assist each employee with scheduling any employee education.
- For your reference, here is a list of approved benefitbay Medicare enrollment partners.
September 2025:
- Ensure all renewing employer contracts are created and signed by the employer no later than September 15th.
- Remind employers to send the general 90-day ICHRA Notice to all employees. A personalized ICHRA Notice will be available to employees when enrollment begins.
- Here is a template they can use.
For compliance purposes, this notice should be sent by October 1, 2025.
October 2025:
- Once your employer has updated their employee census, you or the employer can upload it to the 2025 Coverage Period in the benefitbay platform. Click here for the instructions.
- Model all employer census data to determine the 2026 contribution amounts and ensure the employer contributions meet ICHRA affordability requirements.
- Connect with your Customer Success Manager for assistance with remodeling the contribution.
- It is the recommendation from the benefitbay team to move groups with age-banded contributions to a single-age model.
- Once the 2026 contribution model is agreed upon, lock the model, and have the employer "Signer" log in and sign the ICHRA plan document.
- Schedule employee education for Open Enrollment.
- Employees who currently have coverage must TAKE AN ACTION STEP! There is no option for a passive renewal. They must go through the enrollment steps and choose to keep their current plan, change plans, or waive coverage.
- Employees enrolling in coverage will not have the option to change plans before 1/1/2026 if they regret the plan they chose. Employees should be advised to only hit the 'submit my application' button when they are certain they have the plan they want.
- Employees should be advised to only schedule one enrollment call with a benefitbay enrollment counselor. Appointments will be limited due to volume, and multiple appointments will hinder others from obtaining needed enrollment counseling.
November and December 2025:
- Make sure all your employees are ready to go, and all employee emails have been scheduled in benefitbay.
- Assist employers with monitoring their enrollment progress.
ALL EMPLOYEES WILL BE REQUIRED TO LOG IN TO BENEFITBAY AND COMPLETE ENROLLMENT, EVEN IF THEY WANT TO RENEW THE SAME PLAN
Congratulations! You've made it!