This is a job that didn’t exist. Not a job someone else was doing badly.
Employers already buy several kinds of help with benefit decisions, and most of them should keep buying it. This is the map — who does what, who pays them, and the one thing none of them is built to do.
Every cell is occupied but one.
Sort the market on four questions — who pays, before or after the purchase, one program or the whole portfolio, your population or the category — and the map fills in almost completely.
We are not paid more when your costs rise, take no commission, and have no stake in which vendor you choose. Fees are a fixed share of advised spend, agreed before the work starts.
We model what a claim is worth rather than grading what already happened. Analytics tells you whether what you bought worked; this tells you whether to buy it.
Five vendors can each count the same avoided episode once. Untangling that is the part nobody else does at any price, because everyone else evaluates one program at a time.
A category average is not a finding. The number has to be about your people — their age mix, their shifts, their exposure, and whether they can reach the thing you bought them.
Everyone else, and what they’re for.
Named, because being vague here would read as not having looked. The third column is not a courtesy — each of these does something we do not.
| Who | Who pays | What they're good at | What it doesn't cover |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brokers and consultantsMercer, Aon, WTW, Lockton, Gallagher, Alliant, USI, Marsh McLennan Agency | Commission and overrides | Market access, placement, plan design, service, and knowing what exists in a market that changes every year. | Within a category they compare bids properly. Across categories there is no common denominator to anchor to — a gap in the market rather than in their work. |
| Vendor-funded validationValidation Institute, Beyond Banyan | The vendor being validated | Methodology critique that is frequently excellent, and better than most buyers could produce alone. | The buyer is not the client. |
| Claims analyticsArtemis Console, Springbuk, Innovu, Merative, MedInsight | You | What actually happened inside your own claims, measured rather than modeled. | Descriptive and post-purchase. It grades what you already bought, one program at a time. |
| Actuarial firmsMilliman, Wakely, Axene, Aon Health Analytics | You | All of it, properly, by people who do this for a living. The honest answer to “who else does this”. | Bespoke six-figure engagements, one program at a time, aimed at jumbo employers. |
| Independent assessorsPHTI, ICER | Philanthropy | Category verdicts nobody can buy, from organisations that take no money from what they assess. | Category-level, and not about your population. |
Nothing here requires removing anything.
We don’t place coverage, take commission, hold the client relationship or want the renewal, so your broker stays your broker. If you run claims analytics, keep it — it tells you what happened inside your claims, which we don’t do and which you need. The analysis is the entire product, and it is more useful to everyone in the room when it comes from somewhere with nothing at stake in the outcome.
For brokers and consultants →The closest, and the best.
Artemis grades point solutions across engagement, care, utilisation, satisfaction and clinical outcomes, in your own claims data. It is the closest anyone has come, and it does that job genuinely well.
It is descriptive, single-vendor and post-purchase. It tells you whether what you bought worked. We tell you whether to buy it — and what happens to the arithmetic once you own eight of them.
Milliman markets independent third-party review of vendor ROI methodology directly, and does it properly. There is no version of this page where we claim to do it better.
It is bespoke, six figures, one program at a time, and aimed at jumbo employers. If you are large enough to buy it, buy it. Most employers are not, which is the gap this exists to fill.
See where your benefit portfolio actually stands.
Free, reviewed by a person, and in your inbox within 24 hours. It costs nothing and has no sales call attached to it — including if the answer turns out to be that what you already have is working.