What if benefits work leaped from horse‑and‑buggy speed to highway pace? We sit down with Julian Lago, co‑founder and CEO of BenePower, to explore how AI is already compressing days of quoting, enrollment, and service into minutes—and what that means for brokers, HR leaders, and members who need clear answers right now.

We dig into the practical side of agentic AI and retrieval‑augmented generation: how specialized models fetch plan rules, accumulators, and pending claims to answer real‑world questions like “what’s left on my deductible?” with accuracy. Julian explains why virtual care is no longer just telemedicine, how ambient documentation can free clinicians to focus on patients, and why unified front‑door experiences beat a jumble of point solutions. Along the way, we talk about emotion AI that detects stress, switches languages seamlessly, and brings empathy to urgent moments—like getting an ID card to a parent driving to urgent care—without losing speed or precision.

For employers, the conversation moves from tools to outcomes: steering to high‑value care, reducing surprise bills, and designing plans people actually use. For advisors, it’s a playbook for differentiation—showing clients how to use data, automation, and hyper‑personalization to improve health and lower costs while keeping a human in the loop for sensitive decisions. We also address the hard edges: privacy, HIPAA alignment, model hallucinations, and emerging state regulations that set boundaries around clinical advice.

If you’re ready to trade legacy friction for clear, measurable gains, this episode lays out where to start, what to watch, and how to scale. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review telling us which workflow you want AI to fix first.

This episode is sponsored by Benepower, the platform of choice for a modern benefits experience. Benepower is an AI-powered benefits platform offering access to top products and services, enabling consultants and employers to create customized plans, optimize usage, and measure effectiveness. www.benepower.com