"The most important present-tense consequence therefore isn't hypothetical automation sometime down the road. It's that fiduciaries are already dealing with AI-assisted operations, whether or not they label them that way.... That immediately broadens the due-diligence agenda for single-employer plans.... Cybersecurity is the second immediate effect, and it may become the most expensive one.... Multiple-employer arrangements, especially pooled employer plans, or PEPs, are likely to experience AI differently because the cited legal guidance is focused on centralized provider structures." MORE >>
"[This article] examines the unsettled and contested landscape of AI regulation ... It explains how the growing use of AI in group health plans intersects with existing federal laws ... particularly HIPAA ... The discussion highlights unresolved questions about whether training AI on claims data qualifies as permissible healthcare operations and ... further analyzes mental health parity compliance ... The rise of AI and its application to the maintenance and operation of group health plans raises the fiduciary bar exponentially higher." MORE >>
"ERISA plan fiduciaries remain fully responsible for ensuring that AI is used prudently, loyally, and solely in the interest of plan participants, even when AI is deployed by third-party service providers. Because AI systems function as opaque 'black boxes,' fiduciaries face challenges in monitoring their use. Fiduciaries can mitigate risk through reviewing vendor AI policies, requesting audits, requiring compliance with emerging standards ... and negotiating robust AI-specific contract and request for proposal terms addressing transparency, bias, cybersecurity, compliance, and accountability." MORE >>
"The gray areas are real. Who’s liable if an AI tool produces inaccurate information? How transparent should vendors be about their use of AI? What happens when a hallucination—AI-speak for a confident but wrong answer—slips into investment research or fee comparisons?" MORE >>
"Plaintiff's lawyers are using AI tools to help identify plans covered by [ERISA] to [find] outliers and anomalies and target employers with lawsuits over their handling of investment choices and forfeiture funds ... [D]efense attorneys are turning to AI for assistance with benchmarking and comparing fees and performance across plans." MORE >>
"Most conversations about AI in benefits administration cover the visible moments: the chat window, the enrollment recommendation, the dashboard that answers a question in plain English. That’s not wrong. But it’s profoundly incomplete." MORE >>
"While Copilot Health's entry into this rapidly evolving field is notable, the legal issues it raises are myriad and similar to those implicated by other similar products.... Legal professionals advising health systems, insurers, or technology vendors should begin assessing the impact of tools like Copilot Health on how data is shared with such tools and how patient care will change over time as a result." MORE >>
"Plaintiff's lawyers are using AI tools to help identify plans covered by [ERISA] to identify outliers and anomalies and target employers with lawsuits over their handling of investment choices and forfeiture funds, while defense attorneys are turning to AI for assistance with benchmarking and comparing fees and performance across plans. The nascent technology isn't without risks, with benefits attorneys pointing to hallucinations and the potential for lawsuits down the road if AI is used to second-guess fiduciaries." MORE >>
"Many providers and firms are still stuck in silos, which inhibits their ability to fully leverage the new opportunities.... Convergence is the driving force bringing in wealth advisors, their broker/dealers and the asset managers that serve them. Private equity is fueling the growth of wealth by RPA aggregators, with some pushing RIAs to leverage DC plans to grow." MORE >>
"[The] order granted broad discovery into the insurer's AI-driven claims processes. This ruling is an important indicator that litigation challenging AI-based health insurer coverage denials is gaining traction and that the inner workings of these algorithmic tools may be subject to court-ordered disclosure." [Estate of Lokken v. UnitedHealth Group, Inc., No. 23-3514 (D. Minn. Mar. 9, 2026)] MORE >>
"Last year, legislatures in Arizona, Maryland, Nebraska, and Texas enacted bills to address AI use in health insurance determinations.... [T]his post summarizes legislation under consideration in the first quarter of 2026 that governs health insurers' use of AI in determinations such as prior authorization and utilization review." MORE >>
"The growing use of artificial intelligence tools in retirement investing is creating new pitfalls for employers that sponsor plans and the fiduciaries that manage those assets, requiring them to meet their legal duties while navigating the changing technological landscape.... Emerging gray areas stemming from the contrast between the nascent technology and a decades-old law like ERISA include transparency about use of AI tools and liability if information from the technology is inaccurate[.]" MORE >>
"Open enrollment is one of the most important workplace processes, accounting for nearly 40% of labor costs ... Ensuring the process meets employees' evolving needs is increasingly critical, and for many organizations, investing in and leveraging AI agents may be a good way to improve support and keep up with workers' more involved queries." MORE >>
"For leaders of compensation planning, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) creates new unknowns. Proxy voting is one immediate example. This season marks the first year that the full capabilities of generative AI will be available to -- and increasingly used by -- investors as a supporting tool for their proxy voting process." MORE >>
"AI is changing medical imaging by finding cancers earlier and making it easier for doctors to diagnose cancer. Billing inconsistencies and the lack of standardized codes pose problems.... Payment for these advances will be a challenge for employer-sponsored health insurance." MORE >>
"71% of benefits teams report limited or no access to internal AI skills and resources, even when enterprise AI capabilities exist elsewhere. Risk concerns are most acute where financial and fiduciary exposure is highest, including data privacy, AI errors and compliance risk. Only 1% of employers report having a fully developed AI roadmap or governance framework specific to benefits. This creates a fundamental challenge: expectations for rapid acceleration are rising faster than the foundations required to scale." MORE >>
"Trustees and administrators must treat AI vendors as ERISA service providers for ERISA purposes. AI tools much be carefully vetted to ensure compliance with ERISA. Legal, IT, trustees and vendors share responsibility for ethical and effective AI use. ERISA plan fiduciaries must act prudently in selecting and monitoring service providers, including with respect to their use of AI. Some of DOL's cybersecurity best practices can be adapted to AI systems, such as strong access control procedures, prudent annual risk assessments and vendor oversight." MORE >>
"In these many situations where AI increases productivity without necessarily improving accuracy or outcomes, or when AI can perform services autonomously, current payment paradigms that reimburse based on human labor inputs like time and skill just don’t fit well. This may lead to overspending and overuse, which must be balanced with the health benefits of access to the technologies." MORE >>
"Establishing your objectives for using AI in benefits administration may help provide clarity in choosing a benefits administration provider that can support your goals. Successful benefits administration providers will be able to cleanly connect multiple data sources to provide purposeful integration of data-driven technology and AI." MORE >>
"Communications leaders should play a leading role in the application and understanding of new and evolving tools such as artificial intelligence.... The era of searching for information is quickly being replaced with the era of simply asking for it. This means communicators must also focus on how the people they serve use AI to find information." MORE >>
"[A]bout a third (32%) of adults are turning to AI for health information and advice. This includes about three in ten (29%) who say they’ve used AI tools in the past year for information or advice about their physical health, and one in six (16%) who’ve used them for mental health information or advice.... A majority (77%) of the public says they are concerned about the privacy of personal medical information provided to AI tools[.]" MORE >>
"For plan sponsors, the issue is less about the use of AI itself and more about whether existing claims oversight and payment-integrity controls are keeping pace with increasingly automated billing environments. While these technologies improve efficiency, they also introduce a growing risk for self-insured health plans: an increase in duplicate and near-duplicate claims." MORE >>
"While AI can enable PBMs to operate more efficiently and optimize pricing to help lower drug costs, this new technology raises several data privacy, regulatory, and contractual risks for employers that sponsor health plans. This Insight explains how plan sponsors can spot potential red flags and avoid potential liability while benefiting from the advantages that AI can bring to healthcare costs and administration." MORE >>
"When asked how much they trust AI or digital health assistant tools compared with care from a health care provider, 45 percent of privately insured adults ages 21-64 said they trust AI tools as much as or more than their provider ... Although providers remain the most trusted source overall, the findings suggest that AI tools are becoming part of how many consumers approach health decision making." MORE >>
"Wealth managers can face challenges when using AI to prepare client materials or conduct investment research ... But it's the more complex client-facing technology that poses the 'biggest fiduciary risk' ... FINRA's latest annual report ... included a new section on generative AI, stressing that while FINRA's rules are 'technology neutral,' they apply to AI just as they do to any other tool, including those that help with supervision, communications, recordkeeping and fair dealing." MORE >>
