Voya's offices in Chandler, Arizona. Credit: Rosemarie Mosteller/Adobe Stock
Employers and benefits advisors hoping that stop-loss insurance rate increases will slow may have to wait.
Executives at Voya, a big stop-loss provider, said during a conference call with securities analysts Wednesday that they are happy Voya pushed up stop-loss prices and imposed tough underwriting standards this year.
"We continue to execute our disciplined pricing strategy in stop-loss, with a focus on margin over growth as we head into 2026," Heather Lavallee, Voya's chief executive officer, said.
Michael Katz, the chief financial officer, said stop-loss margins are recovering because of the tough actions it took, not because of any improvement in the health care cost environment.
"We are continuing to see health care costs change at a rapid pace," Katz said.
Voya held the call to go over results for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30. It streamed the call live and posted a recording on its website.
What it means: Voya is the second big stop-loss issuer to emphasize its relief about its ability to increase rates enough to keep up with claim costs. Executives at Cigna made similar remarks during an analyst call last week.
Cost pressure may lead to increased employer willingness to listen to ideas about new or potentially unpopular cost-control strategies, such as use of narrow-network plans or plans based on individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or plans that provide employer cash that workers can use to buy their own individual coverage. Voya executives noted during their call that the company's Benefitfocus unit can help employers set up ICHRA plans.
Stop-loss insurance: Stop-loss insurance is an arrangement that a self-insured employer uses to protect a plan against catastrophic claim costs.
Cost drivers: Katz noted that one cause of high claim costs is an increase in the number of young health plan participants who are facing cancer.
Many of the young patients are getting very expensive cell therapy and gene therapy treatments, and that's also driving up costs, Katz said.
Katz noted that one reason the company's stop-loss unit performed reasonably well in the third quarter is that its own reinsurer made a payment when one patient covered by a Voya stop-loss policy generated a claim for more than $5 million in covered health care costs.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.