Individual Coverage HRA

Health Benefits Your Way — Funded by You, Chosen by Them

An ICHRA lets you set a predictable monthly benefit budget while your employees choose the individual coverage that fits their lives. You control the cost. They get real choice. And Benefits in a Card handles the administration, compliance, and member support behind it all.

What Is an ICHRA?

An Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) is an employer-funded benefit that reimburses employees, tax-free, for individual health insurance they choose themselves. Instead of selecting and managing a single group health plan, you decide how much to contribute each month. Your employees then use that allowance to buy the individual coverage that works best for them — through the ACA Marketplace or directly from a carrier.

Introduced under federal rules and available since 2020, the ICHRA expanded on its predecessor (QSEHRA) by removing contribution caps and giving employers the flexibility to structure benefits across employee classes — full-time, part-time, seasonal, salaried, hourly, or by geography. In short: you fund a defined benefit, your people choose the plan, and everyone gains predictability and choice.

How It Works

You set the allowance.

Choose a tax-free monthly contribution amount. Offer the same amount to everyone, or vary it by employee class and family size.

Employees choose their plan.

Each person selects individual coverage that fits their needs, doctors, and budget — with guided support so they are never navigating the Marketplace alone.

They get reimbursed, tax-free.

Employees submit proof of coverage and premiums; eligible costs are reimbursed up to their monthly allowance with no payroll tax burden.

BIC runs the engine.

We handle plan design, required notices, monthly coverage verification, reimbursement processing, and ACA compliance — so your team doesn’t have to.

What an ICHRA Brings to Your Organization

For the right workforce, an ICHRA solves problems that traditional group plans can't — turning an unpredictable annual renewal into a benefit you can budget with confidence.

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Predictable, controllable cost. You set the contribution and own the number. No surprise renewal spikes driven by one bad claims year — you decide the budget, not the carrier.

Real employee choice. People pick the plan, network, and carrier that fit their own families and providers, instead of being forced into one group design that fits no one perfectly.

Meaningful tax advantages. Reimbursements are tax-free to employees, and your contributions are generally tax-deductible and free of payroll tax.

A path to ACA compliance. For applicable large employers, a properly funded ICHRA can satisfy the employer mandate when the allowance makes the lowest-cost benchmark plan affordable under the federal standard (9.96% for 2026).

No group claims-risk volatility. Because employees hold individual policies, your organization isn’t exposed to the year-over-year claims swings that make group budgeting unpredictable.

Scales across people and places. Class-based design and individual coverage make the ICHRA a natural fit for multi-state, remote, and demographically varied teams.

Administration handled for you. The biggest knock on ICHRAs is the paperwork. With BIC managing it end to end, that burden becomes our job, not yours.

Is an ICHRA Right for Your Workforce?

An ICHRA is a powerful tool — for the right organization.

We’ll be straight with you about when it fits and when a different model serves you better. That honest, right-model-for-the-right-workforce approach is exactly why clients trust us.

An ICHRA shines when you have…

Geographically dispersed, remote, or multi-state teams
A diverse workforce one group plan can't serve well
A stable population comfortable choosing their own coverage
A first-time benefit offering where simplicity matters
A desire for fixed, defined-contribution budgeting

Consider a day-one group model when you have…

High turnover with constant onboarding and offboarding
An urgent need for coverage on an employee's first day
Workers who need a simple, guided enrollment — not Marketplace shopping
Variable-hour or temporary staff cycling on and off assignments
A staffing or high-turnover model better served by unbundled day-one benefits

Not sure where you land?

That’s the conversation we love to have. We’ll model your workforce and recommend the approach that actually works — ICHRA or otherwise.

Plan and class design

Structuring allowances by employee class, family tier, and geography.

Reimbursement processing

Fast, accurate, documented tax-free reimbursements.

Required employee notices

Compliant ICHRA notices delivered on the federally required timeline.

ACA affordability calculations

Benchmark and safe-harbor analysis to support employer-mandate compliance.

Monthly coverage verification

Confirming each participant maintains qualifying individual coverage.

Guided employee support

Real help choosing a Marketplace plan, so no one is left to figure it out alone.

What Benefits in a Card Handles for You

An ICHRA is only as good as the administration behind it.

We manage the full lifecycle so the experience stays simple for your team and your people.

It’s all backed by an established national administration platform that supports 700,000+ lives — delivered to your organization under the Benefits in a Card name, with the responsive, in-house, bilingual support our clients expect.

Better Together: ICHRA + the BIC Ecosystem

An ICHRA doesn't have to stand alone. Pair it with the rest of the BIC toolkit to round out a complete, high-value benefits experience:

FreeRx — prescription savings members actually use, every month.
24/7 virtual urgent care — care access from day one, anytime.
Unbundled ancillary benefits — dental, vision, life, and more, layered in to fit your people.
BenefitSync API integrations — connected administration that reduces manual work and errors.

A Few Things to Know

We believe in clarity up front.
Here are the realities we'll walk you through before you commit:

Topic	What it means for you
Advance notice	Eligible employees receive a written ICHRA notice on the federally required timeline (generally 90 days before the plan year, or before the effective date for new hires). We prepare and deliver it.
Premium tax credits	Accepting an affordable ICHRA generally makes an employee ineligible for ACA premium subsidies. For lower-wage populations, we'll help you set an allowance that keeps the offer genuinely valuable.
Individual enrollment	Employees enroll in their own individual coverage. Our guided support keeps that step simple — the right fit is a workforce that's comfortable choosing a plan.
Ongoing verification	Qualifying coverage is verified monthly. We own that tracking so it never lands on your HR team.