'What I see in the market is more around robust benefit plans', says Capgemini's Samantha Chow
While the concept of anticipatory benefits - plans that predict and respond to employee life events before they happen - is starting to gain traction, the gap between idea and execution remains wide, according to one benefits expert.
After all, Samantha Chow, global head of life insurance, annuities, and benefits at Capgemini, is cautious about the term.
“Anticipatory, I think, is a great word. There's a lot that can be done within a benefits plan package, even from a health and a disability or hospital indemnity perspective based on what's happening and predicting what could happen as a result of an event and solving it from getting worse but I don't think you can anticipate too much… What I see in the market is more around robust benefit plans that can be flexible in that sense, so they are anticipatory, to a certain degree," said Chow, emphasizing true anticipation demands flexible plan design paired with AI tools and data that can flag life events, like marriage, a new child or a health diagnosis, before the employee thinks to update their coverage.
She highlights Canada, Europe, and parts of APAC as markets that moved on the wellness front earlier than others, and argues those regions are now folding in retirement planning, fertility support, and financial readiness to create a more holistic model. That same logic applies to event-based predictions within health and disability coverage – using data to intervene before a situation worsens.
Yet she stops short of overselling what anticipation can achieve. She suggests the real opportunity is to use data and life-stage signals to guide employees before problems deepen or needs go unmet. That could mean identifying when someone may need family-planning support, retirement advice, or help after a health event.
“That’s how you’re going to be able to anticipate and be personalized in an anticipatory fashion, rather than a reactive fashion,” she said.
Still, Chow questions whether both insurers and plan sponsors are prepared for a fully anticipatory benefits model. While older generations tend to accept benefits as they are, she suggests younger workers tell a different story as many still weigh insurance against the perceived safety of a savings account and struggle to see the value in paying for coverage against risks that feel remote at their age.
That skepticism, she argues, has to be addressed before the industry can move forward.
"We need to crawl, walk, run in this scenario. And that crawling is the education," she said, adding that for now, employers who move in this direction gain a recruitment and retention edge - the kind of benefit package employees would think twice about walking away from.
While anticipatory benefits will become table stakes, those who are chasing them currently is “icing on the cake. It'll be something that will attract more talent, maybe retain more talent longer," added Chow.
For employers, Chow sees anticipatory – or robust benefits - as a trade-off rather than a simple upgrade. She emphasized how expanding coverage often means more coordination, more vendor management, and more decisions about what the company is willing to subsidize.
The challenge isn’t just financial, it’s also operational, Chow suggests, adding employers may need to assemble a broader network of providers because traditional benefits carriers don’t often offer more specialized services like fertility support, nutrition planning, or targeted physical therapy programs.
She suggests that this pushes employers toward a more fragmented but potentially more responsive benefits ecosystem, where standard protection products sit alongside wellness and predictive-support services. Some of those offerings can help employees before issues escalate, but they also add complexity to plan design.
Since utilization will vary widely across a workforce, Chow suggests employers have to weigh the value of offering broader support against the reality that some benefits will only be relevant to certain employee groups.
In that sense, building a more anticipatory package becomes a “balancing act” between customization, cost, and practicality, said Chow.
As for the future of AI in benefits, Chow argues that AI is already proving most useful behind the scenes, helping insurers, brokers, and advisors design better workplace benefits packages.
She believes AI can analyze a company's workforce makeup, including factors such as age, gender mix, job roles, and industry, and use that information to predict which benefits are likely to be most relevant. That gives providers a stronger starting point for shaping a base plan that fits a particular employer rather than relying on a generic offering.
She also suggests that AI becomes more valuable when it is paired with the provider's own book of business and claims experience. By looking at what similar employers in the same sector tend to choose and use over time, insurers and advisors can identify patterns, recommend add-on benefits, and offer guidance even before a formal request-for-proposal process begins.
Chow acknowledged that the more data AI can absorb, the more useful it becomes in showing employers what is being used, what is being overlooked, and how to build a more tailored benefits package for their workforce.
She also draws a distinction between two forms of anticipation: predicting what products an employee will need versus actively intervening to keep them healthier or help them recover faster.
The latter, she argues, should already be happening. For example, if someone breaks a leg and skips physical therapy, the data exists to flag that and intervene before disability costs escalate. That kind of event-driven response benefits employees, carriers, and employers alike. She points to Australia's total and permanent disability (TPD) claims as a cautionary example, where mental health-related claims have surged and, in some cases, been exploited. She underscored anticipatory tools should essentially serve a dual purpose: supporting employees while also helping carriers and employers manage costs and reduce fraud.
Ultimately, the shift in demand could come fast once younger workers understand how benefits apply at different life stages, but the insurance industry faces its own readiness problem, noted Chow. Products need to become far more flexible, which means rethinking how carriers approach underwriting, pricing, and risk, a difficult transformation she compares to the long-term care market, which nearly brought down major insurers through mispricing.
"I don't think that the industry is ready for it, nor do I think those that they would target would be ready for it," she said.
