Proving Benefits Stewardship Under Executive Scrutiny

Story Overview

A national liquid handling equipment rental company with roughly 1,400 employees relied on IMA to support a complex self-funded benefits program across a distributed workforce. When executive leadership questioned whether the plan had been managed aggressively enough and considered outside review or a broker change, IMA had to quickly prove the value of its work in business terms.

Challenge

The challenge was not creating a new strategy from scratch. It was demonstrating, clearly and credibly, that years of strategic decisions had already produced meaningful savings and below-trend budget increases. Until that point, IMA had mostly worked through HR, which left a gap in direct visibility with financial leadership at a high-stakes moment. The status quo was no longer enough. Executives wanted hard-dollar proof of stewardship before moving toward an audit or RFP.

Closing the gap between performance and perception.

IMA’s Strategy and Actions

IMA’s Employee Benefits team acted to support the client by:

• Meeting directly with senior leadership to reset the conversation around plan performance and stewardship
• Reframing years of benefits work into a concise executive narrative built for CFO and CEO priorities
• Quantifying realized net savings year by year, rather than relying on general reporting
• Highlighting strategic pharmacy decisions, including targeted program changes that reduced spend with limited disruption
• Pulling validated savings inputs from internal analytics and vendor partners to substantiate results

Why It Worked

IMA succeeded because the team did not respond defensively or scramble for a last-minute fix. Instead, they translated ongoing advisory work into a clear financial story leadership could understand, backed by evidence and shaped for executive decision-makers.

Key Takeaways

This case shows the value of turning benefits strategy into executive-ready reporting before questions arise. IMA identified that the issue was not lack of performance, but lack of visibility with the right stakeholders, then closed that gap quickly and credibly.