Benefits got broader.
Now they need to connect
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Desjardins Insurance is moving the work of coordinating coverage, clinical expertise, and outside support away from employees and into the plan
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OVER THE past decade, group benefits have become much more than a mechanism for reimbursing claims. Insurers have added virtual care, mental health support, disease management programs, and partnerships with healthcare providers, broadening the role they can play in employees’ health.
Chantal Gagné, executive vice president, life and health insurance, Desjardins Insurance, sees that progress has been significant, but it has also exposed a complex problem. The number of resources available to employees has grown faster than the ability to make those resources feel like one coherent experience.
Desjardins Insurance offers a wide range of flexible life insurance, health insurance, and retirement savings products and services. It has been providing innovative services to individuals, groups, and businesses for over a century. Desjardins Insurance ensures the financial security of over five million Canadians from offices across the country. It is one of the top life insurance companies in Canada and a member of Desjardins Group, the leading cooperative financial group in Canada.
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“One of the things that the industry has got right in the past decade is really the fact that we saw an evolution in the market from being a claims payer to a real partner of the global health of clients”
Chantal Gagné, Desjardins Insurance
“I think one of the things that the industry has got right in the past decade is really the fact that we saw an evolution in the market from being a claims payer to a real partner of the global health of clients,” Gagné says.
The next step is making that broader support easier to use. The plan member should not have to translate their situation into the insurer’s internal structure just to get help.
A plan member dealing with cancer, for example, may need medication, mental health support, physiotherapy, nutritional advice, and help managing an absence from work. Those services may already exist within a benefits plan, but they are often organized according to insurance categories rather than the health event that brought the person there in the first place.
This is the premise behind Desjardins Insurance’s Focus programs, a series of coordinated offerings built around specific health situations rather than specific benefit categories. The insurer has launched programs for cancer, family health, obesity, and mental health, and is preparing to add neurodiversity in November.
Each one brings together benefits, professional advice, and access to external expertise within a single, coordinated experience, so a member does not have to identify and assemble the relevant pieces of their coverage on their own.
The coverage may be there. Finding it is another matter
The fragmentation is partly structural. Insurance companies have traditionally built expertise around product lines and areas of coverage. That makes sense operationally, but it can look very different from the other side of the plan.
“When someone lives something, they don’t live it by insurance categories,” Gagné says. “It really lives health because of a life event or a health issue.”
Someone with cancer should not have to determine independently that they may need a nutritionist, physiotherapist, or mental health professional and then work out how to reach each one. “You have cancer − here’s what you may need,” Gagné says. “All the resources are organized around the client’s needs rather than insurance categories.”
That is also why simply adding more services has limits. A benefits plan can become more comprehensive on paper while becoming harder for an employee to understand at the moment they need it most.
The challenge is therefore less about creating one universal pathway than making a complicated system feel simpler without pretending every employee will need the same thing.
That puts a different demand on insurers. They must bring together benefits, clinical expertise, technology, and external partners while keeping the complexity behind the scenes.
“It’s really about making it feel easy when it’s something that is complex and unique to each,” Gagné says.
Moving the starting line earlier
There is another part of the health journey where Gagné thinks the industry has further to go. “The place where we should improve the most is the before-diagnosis phase,” she says.
That means looking for ways to reach members before a health issue becomes more serious, rather than waiting until a diagnosis, claim, or absence creates an obvious point of intervention. Earlier support, Gagné emphasizes, may help keep a problem from escalating and, in some cases, reduce the chance of it developing further.
Employees have an obvious interest in staying healthy, employers benefit when people remain at work, and insurers and healthcare systems may avoid some downstream costs.
Desjardins Insurance currently offers several programs built around earlier intervention. Its Health PACT service is designed to help employees stay at work through “proactive intervention,” while its EAP is intended to address personal problems before they interfere with work. Its absence-prevention services also intervene when health issues have reduced an employee’s ability to work.
“You cannot just invest in solutions and not see the results,” Gagné says. “We need to find the right balance and the right equation to really be there at the stage of prevention.”
“In the next 10 years, AI will probably bring lots of new capabilities to help us with prevention [and] also help us with the efficiencies of insurance companies”
She connects those efficiencies back to affordability. With medical costs rising, gains elsewhere in the system could help offset some of that pressure and support what she describes as an industry priority: keeping benefits plans sustainable.
Gagné expects technology, including artificial intelligence, to play a larger role in prevention and operating efficiency over the next decade. That matters in a market where medical costs continue to put pressure on plans, and employers are scrutinizing the value of each additional investment.
From fragmented benefits to coordinated care pathways
For employers, the value of that coordination is practical.
“The employer does not always have all the expertise it needs to support its employees,” Gagné says. “It can rely on us to provide that support, not only for the employee but for the employer.” That includes guidance on how to accompany a team member through a specific situation, something many managers have never had to navigate before. The Focus model is designed to fill that gap directly.
A program must be personalized enough to reflect real differences between cases while still functioning as a single, coherent offering rather than a menu of options.
Where a plan or a program falls short internally, external partnerships are what fill the space, whether that means specialized clinics, digital health providers, or condition-specific experts.
That measurement problem is particularly difficult because prevention works on a timetable different from a claim. An insurer can see when a prescription is filled or a disability payment is made. It is much harder to isolate the value of an intervention that helped prevent a deterioration months or years later.
Technology could change some of that. “In the next 10 years, AI will probably bring lots of new capabilities to help us with prevention [and] also help us with the efficiencies of insurance companies,” Gagné says.
Published October 22, 2026
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What coordinated care is worth to a plan sponsor
For plan sponsors weighing the value of that investment, Gagné points to three possible returns. The first is engagement, with better-supported employees potentially more engaged in their work. The second is swifter return to work: if employees can reach the right support earlier, Gagné believes it may help some return sooner.
The third is retention. A benefits experience that demonstrates support during a difficult period can influence how employees view their employer long after the immediate health issue has passed. “That’s a powerful retention tool as well,” Gagné says.
Gagné’s broader point is that the industry’s transition from claims payer to health partner is not finished. The next phase of that shift, in her view, is about organizing the services that already exist around the person using them rather than around the insurer’s internal structure.
Where Focus is taking shape
Cancer support that connects members with relevant care and guidance
Family health resources built around broader household needs
Obesity support that combines benefits, advice, and specialist access
Mental health resources brought together in one coordinated experience
Neurodiversity support launching in November for employees, families, and managers
Chantal Gagné, Desjardins Insurance
Guidance for managers supporting employees through health events
Coordinated resources that reduce the need to search piece by piece
Potential for better engagement and an earlier return to work
Employee support that can also contribute to retention
Earlier support rather than waiting for a claim or absence
Beyond reimbursing the claim
The Focus programs are one attempt to do that. Whether the model can scale across the full range of conditions employees face, and whether it meaningfully changes the trajectory of cost pressure on plans, will depend on execution over the next several years rather than on the concept itself.
Source: World Health Organization, Reshaping work environments to promote and protect mental health, June 16, 2022.