A 9.5% Renewal, Turned Into a Cut — by Working the Renewal Instead of Accepting It
Company Profile: A construction company — a small builder — running its health benefits through a FrankCrum PEO on Aetna plans, coming up on its annual open-enrollment renewal. (Client name withheld; the figures below are real, drawn from the renewal proposal.)
The situation: the renewal came back at +9.5%
The builder had moved off a Moda Health plan onto a FrankCrum PEO running Aetna earlier in the year, and the setup was working. Then the first renewal landed: the current Aetna plan was set to go from $32,331 to $35,414, a 9.53% increase. That’s the moment most small employers just sign: the plan is fine, the increase is “market,” and shopping it feels like more work than it’s worth.
The builder didn’t want to disrupt a plan its people liked — but a near-10% jump on a small group is real money, and worth a hard look before accepting.
The work: shop the renewal inside the same PEO, instead of rubber-stamping it
Rather than accept the renewal as presented, Benefitra worked the options within the FrankCrum/Aetna lineup — same PEO, same carrier family, no disruptive platform change — to find a plan design that held coverage while resetting the cost:
- Current plan, renewed as offered: $32,331 → $35,414 (+9.53%)
- Alternative Aetna plan surfaced: $30,964 — about 4.23% below the current cost, before the increase
- $10,000 of term life & AD&D remained included, as it is across the FrankCrum plans
The analysis: a ~14-point swing, found by looking
The gap between accepting the renewal and taking the alternative is the whole story — roughly fourteen points of annual cost, on a plan the employer was about to renew without a second thought:
| Annual plan cost | vs current ($32,331) |
|---|---|
| Renewal as offered — $35,414 | +9.53% |
| Alternative Aetna plan — $30,964 | −4.23% |
| Difference between the two | ~$4,450/yr, ~14 points |
Figures from the open-enrollment renewal proposal. The alternative is a different Aetna plan design within the same FrankCrum PEO — the employer’s call on whether the design trade is worth the cost reset.
Why work the renewal at all
Accept the renewal as offered
Easy and zero-effort — and it quietly bakes a 9.5% increase into the budget every year it’s repeated, on a plan nobody pressure-tested.
✗ The default that compoundsShop the renewal within the same PEO
No platform disruption — just a harder look at the options already on the table:
- An alternative Aetna plan below the current cost — turning +9.5% into −4.2%
- Same FrankCrum PEO, same carrier family — no rip-and-replace
- $10k life still included
The honest trade-offs
The alternative is a different Aetna plan design, not the identical plan at a lower price — so the comparison is a cost-versus-design decision the employer makes with eyes open, not a free lunch. And a single-year renewal swing isn’t a permanent trend; next year’s renewal gets worked the same way. The point isn’t that one clever move fixed cost forever — it’s that an annual renewal is negotiable, and the difference between accepting it and shopping it was real money the employer would otherwise have signed away.
Outcome: a renewal that went the right direction
A construction company that was one signature away from a 9.5% increase instead had an alternative on the table priced below what it was already paying — same PEO, same carrier family, life benefit intact. The entire difference came from treating the renewal as something to work rather than something to accept.
+9.5% as offered → −4.2% alternative · ~14-point swing · same PEO, no disruption
Most small employers never see the gap between “the renewal” and “the best option in the same lineup,” because nobody goes looking. Here, looking was worth about fourteen points.
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