How Castlight is partnering for impact with benefit consultants
We sat down with our Alliances executives, Jan Kaupas and Emily Schneider, to discuss what brokers are facing today and how Castlight Health helps consultants navigate complexity and win in a changing benefits landscape.
Q: What are consultants telling you they’re most worried about right now when advising employer clients?
Jan Kaupas: They are really concerned about 3 issues right now as they are having strategic conversations with their clients.
- Escalating Health Care Costs (Premium & Claims Inflation)
- Point Solution Management: Evaluating effectiveness & ROI to determine which solutions to consolidate and where to repurpose investments
- Plan Design & Member Engagement
Q: How does Castlight help consultants stay relevant and differentiated in a crowded benefits landscape?
Emily Schneider: Vendor fatigue is real, and staying expert in an ever-expanding benefits landscape is nearly impossible. Especially when this is just one of many hats consultants wear to support their clients. Castlight Health recognizes this challenge and views the consultant team as a true extension of the client’s HR and benefits function. To help consultants stay relevant and differentiated, Castlight Health has a dedicated Alliances team that partners with consultants to provide the most up-to-date resources, insights on market trends, and thought leadership.
Castlight also places high value on client and consultant feedback, using it not only to continuously improve services but also to drive the next wave of innovation and improvement in healthcare.
Q: Where do you see Castlight having the biggest impact in consultant-led client conversations—cost, experience, engagement, or something else?
Jan: Great question. Actually all of the above. In a consultant-led client conversation Castlight has its biggest impact at the intersection of cost and engagement. Neither one works in isolation. Consultants win when they can prove that better member decisions lead to better financial outcomes. That’s where Castlight changes the conversation. What consultants value most is that Castlight turns strategy into behavior. When in the strategy meeting with the client the impact is less about “cost vs engagement” and more about Connecting Engagement to Measurable Cost Experience.
Q: How does Castlight make it easier for consultants to tell a cohesive benefits story instead of stitching together point solutions?
Emily: Castlight Health makes it easier for consultants to tell a cohesive benefits story by serving as a single, unified solution that brings together health plans, third-party benefits, digital health tools, and wellbeing programs into one seamless experience. Instead of stitching together disconnected point solutions, we can show employers how all their benefits work together—reducing point-solution fatigue and creating a clearer, more intuitive experience for employees.
Castlight’s proprietary analytics and personalization engine then ties that ecosystem together with data-driven insights, using claims, utilization, and behavioral data to deliver tailored recommendations and next-best actions. This drives higher engagement and smarter healthcare decisions, while giving a clear, compelling way to demonstrate value, flexibility, and scalability as client needs evolve.
Q: How do consultants typically position Castlight alongside carriers, TPAs, or advanced primary care (APC) partners?
Jan: We typically position Castlight above & across carriers, TPAs and APC Partners…Not as a replacement for any of them, but as the layer that makes all of them work Better Together.
Carriers and TPAs handle administration and risk mechanics, APC partners deliver high-touch primary care like our Vera model. What consultants struggle with is member orchestration. How employees actually know where to go, when to use what, and how these programs connect.
This is where Castlight fits. Consultants position it as the front door and connective tissue. The platform that guides members to the right solutions at the right time and reinforces the overall strategy.
Q: Can you share a common scenario where consultants bring Castlight into a client conversation and why it resonates?
Emily: Fragmentation is one of the most common challenges employers raise. Driving low benefits engagement, rising healthcare costs, and ongoing employee confusion about where to go for help. Employees often don’t know how to use their benefits, where to find them, or who to trust, leading to disengagement caused by disconnected solutions and ineffective communication. In these conversations, consultants introduce Castlight as the answer to healthcare navigation and advocacy, positioning it as a single, trusted place employees can go to understand, access, and use their benefits.
Castlight’s intuitive navigation tools, real human Care Guides, and the ability to integrate with over 200+ providers, including advanced primary care simplify decision-making and guide employees to the right care earlier. By pairing navigation with advanced primary care, this can drive long-term engagement, improve health outcomes, and achieve meaningful cost reduction through preventive care and avoided downstream spend, making Castlight a compelling differentiator across the entire benefits ecosystem.
Q: What types of employers see the fastest value from Castlight, based on what you’re seeing in the field?
Jan: The employers that see the fastest value tend to share 3 characteristics: Complexity, Fragmentation, and Urgency.
Our Ideal Client Profile looks like this:
- Size – 2,000 Plus Member Lives
- Industries – Healthcare, Technology, Professional, Financial services, Manufacturing, Public Sector, & Taft-Hartley Groups
- Locations – Geographically dispersed populations
- Benefits – Multiple point solutions (4+), Multiple Carriers, & many overall benefits.
Q: What results or outcomes tend to matter most to consultants when evaluating Castlight for their clients?
Emily: When evaluating Castlight Health for their clients, consultants tend to focus on outcomes that clearly demonstrate impact and reinforce their role as strategic advisors. Engagement metrics are especially important—not just showing that employees are using their benefits and navigation tools, but that they are staying engaged over time. Consultants look for measurable improvements in healthcare behavior, such as increased use of preventive care, better adherence to recommended care, and ensuring employees receive the right support or resources for their individual care journeys. Whether that’s through the client’s broader benefits ecosystem, earning wellness program rewards, or quickly connecting with a medical provider.
Consultants also prioritize clear evidence of cost savings and cost avoidance, including reductions in unnecessary utilization and progress in closing gaps in care. Castlight’s actionable insights and reporting make these results visible and easy to communicate, enabling consultants to shift conversations away from product features and toward strategic value grounded in real, measurable outcomes for both employers and employees.
