Your renewal went up. Was it fair?
The letter arrives about six weeks out with the number already decided. Everything needed to check it is in the envelope: the credibility factor, the target loss ratio, the trend assumption, your own claims experience. Almost nobody reads it. We do, and we hand you the whole picture rather than a verdict.
All prices in Canadian dollars.
A Sounding
A sounding is a depth measurement taken on a lead line. Send the carrier package, get back what the renewal actually is: what is being asked, what the claims support, where the gap sits, and what can be done about it. Brokers send their clients' cases. Employers send their own. Same analysis either way, because there is only one right answer to what a renewal is doing.
Priced on covered lives, because a twenty-life case and a four-hundred-life case are not the same work. Nothing is charged from the upload form — we confirm the band and the price before any work starts.
Analysis back within two business days.
For boards: an independent read on the benefits spend is governance you can minute.
| 2 – 25 lives | Single carrier, one or two benefit lines to unpick. | $250 CAD | Send a case |
| 26 – 50 | Where credibility starts to bite and the levers get real. | $500 CAD | Send a case |
| 51 – 100 | Full experience exhibit, pooling, age-band drift worth modelling. | $950 CAD | Send a case |
| 101 – 250 | Multi-line, multi-tier, usually a booklet and a census to reconcile. | $1,900 CAD | Send a case |
| 250+ | Quoted. At this size the work is shaped by the plan, not the headcount. | Quoted | Ask us |
What comes back
All of it, whoever sent it. There is no simplified version for employers, because a plan with three benefits over target, two under, and three marginally higher is not a traffic light — and pretending otherwise would be the least useful thing we could hand you.
Where things stand
The carrier's ask in percent and in dollars a year, against current premium, members, and the target loss ratio the carrier itself is working to.
The renewal, line by line
Every benefit and tier on the rate sheet, current against renewal, with the percentage change on each.
What is driving it
Trended adjusted loss ratio per benefit against target. Anything above target is costing rate, and you can see which lines and by how much.
The experience behind it
Premium, incurred claims, loss ratio and credibility per benefit. Credibility is how much of the rate is driven by this group's own claims rather than the carrier's manual.
The cushion already in place
Pooling level, pooling charge, and what was pooled out — the large claims already removed from the experience, and what that protection is costing.
The plan, and what it saves
Priced plan changes modelled off this group's own claims, each with a savings band and the reasoning. Modelled ranges, not quotes.
The market, side by side
Where a competing carrier lands on the same claims, with logos and declined markets shown rather than hidden.
The road ahead
Where you are in the renewal cycle, what is still open, and what closes when.
What happens next
Dated actions with urgency and member impact. What to do now, what to do at the letter, and what waits for the next cycle.
Delivered as a hosted page you open in a browser, password-gated, nothing to install. Where a Sounding is prepared for an employer it stops at the arithmetic and the questions worth putting to their broker: no carrier recommendations and no placement advice, which is a licensed activity and someone else's job. Fathom is built by Scotia Blue Technology and is used in production by East Coast Employee Benefits, a licensed brokerage. Nobody here is paid a commission on anything you decide.
Send it and find out.
The renewal letter on its own is enough to start. If we cannot get a defensible answer out of what you send, we will tell you that rather than produce one anyway.
Send a renewal