ICHRA Renewal Process for Current Clients with benefitbay®
We are pleased to help you offer an exceptional medical insurance renewal experience for your ICHRA clients. Below is an overview of the renewal process. Your benefitbay Customer Success Manager (CSM) will work with you every step of the way to ensure you have a successful renewal season!
September 2025:
- Begin creating renewal contracts for employers who have confirmed they will be renewing (click here for instructions on how to create your contracts)
- Ensure all renewing employer contracts are created and signed by the employer no later than September 30th.
- Discuss renewal timelines, process changes, employer contributions, and optional add-on benefits during your meetings. Add-ons include:
- Ancillary elections in benefitbay
- 1095 filing
- COBRA
- Ask each employer to review and update their company profile and contacts in the benefitbay platform to ensure the information is current.
- For Employers with Medicare-aged employees: Confirm the selection of a Medicare enrollment partner and assist your employer with scheduling employee education sessions.
- For your reference, here is a list of approved benefitbay Medicare enrollment partners.
- Remind employers to send the general 90-day ICHRA Notice to all benefit-eligible 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 on or before October 1, 2025.
October 2025:
- Once your employer has updated their employee census, you or the employer should upload it to the 2025 Coverage Period in the benefitbay platform. Click here for the instructions.
- To determine 2026 ICHRA contribution amounts and ensure affordability requirements are met, model the employee census data.
- Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for guidance in remodeling the contribution.
- The benefitbay team strongly recommends transitioning groups with multi-year 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 to benefitbay and sign the 2026 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 (or auto-reenrollment). Employees must log into benefitbay and follow the enrollment steps to either keep their current plan, change plans, or waive coverage.
- Once an employee's application for January 1, 2026 coverage is submitted, no changes can be made to the chosen plan before the new coverage date. It is critical for employees to thoroughly review their selected plan and ensure it meets their needs before clicking the "submit my application" button.
- Employees should be instructed to schedule only one enrollment call with a benefitbay enrollment counselor. Multiple appointments will restrict access for others who need enrollment counseling during the busy Open Enrollment season.
November and December 2025:
- Ensure that all employees are adequately prepared for Open Enrollment, and confirm that all employee emails to be sent via the benefitbay platform have been scheduled for delivery.
- Assist employers with monitoring their enrollment progress.
ALL EMPLOYEES WILL BE REQUIRED TO LOG IN TO BENEFITBAY AND COMPLETE THE ENROLLMENT, EVEN IF THEY WANT TO RENEW THE SAME PLAN
Congratulations! You've made it!