The following year-in-review message was shared with member-owners and business partners on March 24, 2025.
Dear Member-Owners and Business Partners,
This year, we mark a new milestone at our member-owned coalition – recognizing the productive and successful year of our captive edRISK and its three distinct cells or programs. In 2024, we celebrated the launch of edLIABILITY and edPROPERTY and 11 years of growth at edHEALTH.
While we can’t cover everything in this one update, you will discover how much edRISK and its three programs accomplished last year. You will also gain insight into how we’re evolving to meet the growing needs of our colleges, universities, private secondary schools, and charter schools.
edRISK’s evolution and expansion
We formally launched edLIABILITY and edPROPERTY on June 1, 2024. Alongside creating the new cells and finalizing the founding member-owner schools, we established a new edRISK Board of Managers and created our new website, edrisk.org.
As word got out about edRISK, the captive world also wanted to know more! Respected publications such as Captive Intelligence, Captive Review, Captive Risk & Insurance Magazine, The Global Captive Podcast, and Healthcare Captive Insurance all asked to speak with us about edRISK and its ability to fulfill the growing needs of edHEALTH and The Boston Consortium for Higher Education (TBC) member educational institutions. The Captive Review, in part due to the growth of edRISK, again recognized us as a Top 20 Captive Owner—always such an honor. Last year, edRISK also received the Cell Captive Initiative of the Year at the 2024 Captive Review Awards.
With more Boards and their respective committees coming to fruition last year, we hired a new team member to support those activities (as Board Secretary) and manage our organization's day-to-day operations and administrative work.
edHEALTH: A year of growth and planning
In 2024, edHEALTH maintained our 100% school retention rate and welcomed three new schools, including our first two private secondary schools.
- On January 1, Husson University in Bangor, Maine, and The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, joined
- On June 1, Wilbraham & Monson Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, brought our coalition up to 28 member-owner schools
Also, last June, we had a great deal to share with our schools at our annual member-owner meeting. This included returning $3.5 million in dividends to more than half of our schools. Distributing dividends is obviously one of my favorite parts of the job! At our meeting, we also began delving into timely topics, like medical utilization, pharmacy trends, and wellness needs, to begin building the foundation of our next three-year strategic plan.
Other year-in-review edHEALTH highlights include:
- Launching three new point solutions with preferred pricing for an administrative services vendor, dental insurance, and diabetes management program
- Redefining roles and responsibilities to have two positions, Member Relations Managers, dedicated to providing support to our member-owners and their advisors
- Thought Leadership Series Webinar, Ageless Talent: Debunking Myths for a More Effective Multi-Generational Workplace, with Dr. Lisa Finkelstein, an author and Professor and Program Director of Social and Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Northern Illinois University
- A record-breaking seventh annual walking challenge, with support from one of our third-party administrators—with 40% more participation and a first-time repeat winner, Saint Joseph’s College of Maine
- Access to more health, wellness, and pharmacy-related communications to engage and help HR and Finance departments educate faculty and staff
edHEALTH was represented at two NACUBO events last year, including at their annual meeting at which edRISK’s CFO/COO, David White, partnered and presented with edHEALTH’s Board Vice Chair and Wellesley College’s Assistant Vice President for Finance and Administrative Services and Controller, Melissa Fletcher. Together, they highlighted collaboration among like-minded schools using Wellesley as a case study.
As edHEALTH and the other edRISK programs grow, the edHEALTH Board of Managers voted to add a new role to the Board, Chair-Elect, last November. The creation of this role is a strategic and important one. We want to be proactive in succession planning so that our Board continues to meet edHEALTH’s needs. We are thrilled that John Burke, Boston College’s Financial Vice President & Treasurer, has accepted the Chair-Elect position. Being from a founding member-owner school, John is no stranger to edHEALTH and has worked closely with us since the early days. He serves on our Board of Managers and Subscribers Advisory Committee and previously held Vice Chair and Treasurer positions. John is deeply committed to edHEALTH’s long-term success on behalf of its educational institutions, understands the Board’s strategic priorities, and has the right skills to be Chair-Elect. John and our current Board Chair, Stephen Hannabury, have worked together for many years and are doing so even more closely now to ensure continued effective governance.
Securing edHEALTH’s future
Let’s be honest. Healthcare is a significant budget item, a critical employee recruiting and retention tool, and affects everyone. To date, edHEALTH continues to provide savings to our members. Our average health insurance premium equivalent increases since inception remain below average. Last year’s changes to our pharmacy benefits managers’ contracts are also helping to control costs.
That said, our schools, like institutions nationwide, are experiencing firsthand how the cost of healthcare continues to rise. Our data shows that the reasons are many, including expensive medical and pharmaceutical technological advances like new-to-market drugs, more prescribing of GLP-1s and other specialty medications, serious cancer diagnoses, and the continuing behavioral health crisis. It’s clear that the status quo in healthcare benefits isn’t working anymore.
It’s time for us to be courageous like we were 12 years ago when we first created edHEALTH. Together, we must shift our thinking, approach healthcare issues differently, and look for new solutions that will positively impact the health of our schools’ faculty and staff while also controlling the institutions’ allocated budgets. Enter edHEALTH DISCOVERY, our three-year strategic framework.
As with prior strategic planning efforts, we depend upon all our stakeholders to participate in the process, including member-owners, advisors, and even your faculty and staff at edHEALTH schools. Only then can we truly move forward to create meaningful change to bring greater transparency, solid savings, and improved outcomes for member-owners.
edHEALTH Member-Owners: Please save June 12th for us! That’s when we begin the Path 2 DISCOVERY at our annual meeting in Dover, Massachusetts.
edLIABILITY and edPROPERTY: Solid inaugural year
While they operate individually and as two separate cells of edRISK, edLIABILITY and edPROPERTY work similarly in that they are each a group of educational institutions that have come together as captive cells for long-term savings on general and educators' legal liability insurance and property insurance.
- edLIABILITY has seven member-owner schools, $1.5 million in annualized premiums, and the member-owner-schools have over 19,000 employees
- edPROPERTY has nine schools, $1.7 million in annualized premiums, and a total insured value of approximately $1 billion.
Last November, one of edLIABILITY’s business partners sponsored a webinar for our member-owners and TBC member schools about minimizing the risks of campus protests. We look forward to more opportunities like this.
Looking ahead: Discoveries for greater savings and experiences
We’re clearly very proud of all three edRISK programs and what we’ve accomplished to date. Yet, we still have much to do to make our member-owners’ investment even more beneficial. As we look ahead in 2025 and beyond, our team will have the wise words of Marcel Proust as our guide:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Our eyes are wide open to the new opportunities available to all three edRISK cells. Together, we can lead our member-owners to even greater savings and successes.
Thank you for being a valued and vital partner.
In good edHEALTH,
Tracy
