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Following its acquisition from Cigna, the business strengthened operations, expanded capabilities and positioned itself for its next chapter.

• New York Life Group Benefit Solutions (GBS) has strengthened operations and built a stronger foundation for growth.
• The business has expanded its talent, technology and capabilities.
• GBS is using technology, data and AI to create better experiences.

The story of New York Life Group Benefit Solutions (GBS) over the past five years is, at its core, a story about taking the long view. It begins before the business was even acquired.

In 2018, New York Life began exploring the strategic opportunity to expand into the group benefits market. Group insurance offered the potential to broaden the company’s domestic insurance footprint, add a business with complementary risk characteristics, and further diversify New York Life’s portfolio. That long-term strategic view ultimately led New York Life to acquire Cigna’s group life, accident and disability insurance business for approximately $6.3 billion, completing the transaction on December 31, 2020. The timing could hardly have been more challenging.

The acquisition closed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, at a moment of extraordinary disruption for individuals, employers and the insurance industry. At the same time, New York Life was beginning the significant work of separating the business from Cigna and integrating it into a new company.

The acquisition gave New York Life something that would have taken years to build organically: immediate scale, deep expertise and an established position in the group benefits market. But realizing the full potential of that franchise would require significant work.

The early years made that clear.

Pandemic-related mortality drove significantly higher life claims. Call and claim volumes increased. And the demands of separating and integrating a large, complex business placed additional pressure on an organization already operating in an extraordinarily difficult environment.

Those pressures also exposed areas where GBS needed to become stronger, particularly within disability operations.

“We were navigating the pandemic while simultaneously undertaking an enormous integration,” said Scott Berlin, head of New York Life Group Benefit Solutions. “But we also recognized that not every challenge could be attributed to the environment around us. There were areas of the business we needed to strengthen, and we took responsibility for doing that.”

That accountability became an important starting point for the transformation that followed.

Strengthening its operations

GBS began strengthening the fundamentals of the business: adding talent, enhancing training, redesigning processes, and investing in technology and capabilities.

The work was not about finding a single solution. It was about systematically building a stronger operation and creating the foundation required to deliver consistently for customers, clients and brokers.

Just as important was New York Life’s commitment to investing in the business during a period when near-term financial pressure might have led others to pull back.

As a mutual company, New York Life is built to take a long-term view. The objective was never simply to acquire a business and optimize its performance for the next quarter. It was to build a franchise capable of contributing to New York Life and serving customers for generations.

That perspective created the space to make investments that would take time to produce results while maintaining urgency around the work that needed to be done.

Over the next several years, GBS strengthened its operations, improved financial performance, and built a more durable platform for growth.

For Berlin, however, the financial results tell only part of the story.

“The transformation is about much more than financial performance,” he said. “It is about building an organization that can deliver consistently for the people who depend on us. We have made tremendous progress in our operations, our capabilities and the experience we provide, and we continue to raise the bar.”

When someone files a disability claim, they may be navigating one of the most difficult periods of their life. When a family submits a life insurance claim, they may be grieving the loss of someone they love. When an employee needs help understanding their benefits, the experience can shape how supported they feel by both their employer and their insurance provider.

Those are the moments in which operational excellence becomes something more than a metric, which is why GBS’ vision — delivering service excellence in the moments that matter — serves as the continuous north star for the business and its employees.

People serving people

GBS has long emphasized that while insurance products matter, products alone do not differentiate a company in the group benefits market. Service does.

“This is a people-serving-people business,” Berlin has told employees. The moments when customers interact with GBS are often among the most consequential in their lives — losing a loved one, experiencing a disability or navigating an extended absence from work.

The next chapter is about using the foundation built during the past five years to make those experiences significantly better.

GBS has expanded its product portfolio, including the launch of Voluntary Benefits, while investing in data, digital capabilities and artificial intelligence. Its strategy now centers on profitable growth, becoming a technology-, data- and AI-powered organization, and creating increasingly seamless experiences for customers, clients and brokers.

But Berlin draws an important distinction between using technology simply to reduce costs and using it to transform the customer experience.

“The winners are not going to be the ones who figure out how to do what we do today for less,” he said. “The winners are going to be the ones who figure out how to redeploy that capacity into creating superior experiences for our customers.”

The goal is to allow technology to take on more of the process-intensive work while enabling employees to spend more time on what people uniquely provide: judgment, advice, empathy and compassion.

Five years ago, New York Life acquired scale, expertise and an established presence in the group benefits market. What followed tested the organization in ways few could have anticipated. A global pandemic, a complex integration, and significant operational challenges. But those challenges also helped clarify the investments that fundamentally strengthened the business.

GBS invested in its people. It strengthened its operations. It expanded its capabilities. And it created a stronger foundation from which to grow. Today, the organization is looking beyond integration and stabilization toward what the business can become.

“We should be proud of how far we have come, but we should be even more energized by what is ahead,” Berlin said. “The foundation is stronger, our ambitions are higher, and we have an opportunity to reimagine how group benefits are delivered. The next five years should not simply be about doing more of what we do today. They should be about creating something meaningfully better for the people we serve.”

That may ultimately be the most important lesson of GBS’s first five years at New York Life.

Taking the long view does not mean moving slowly. It means having the conviction to invest through difficult periods, the discipline to address what needs to improve, and the ambition to build for what comes next.

FAQs

When did New York Life acquire its Group Benefit Solutions business?
New York Life completed its approximately $6.3 billion acquisition of Cigna’s group life, accident and disability insurance business on Dec. 31, 2020, establishing an immediate scaled presence in the group benefits market.

How has Group Benefit Solutions evolved over the past five years?
GBS has strengthened its operations, added talent, enhanced training, redesigned processes and invested in technology and capabilities. It has also expanded its product portfolio, including the launch of Voluntary Benefits, while improving its financial performance and customer experience.

What is next for New York Life Group Benefit Solutions?
GBS is focused on profitable growth and becoming an increasingly technology-, data- and AI-powered organization. Its goal is to use those capabilities not simply to improve efficiency, but to create better experiences while enabling employees to spend more time providing judgment, advice, empathy and compassion in the moments that matter.