Speaking at the CFO Leadership Council’s fall conference in Colorado, Marsh McLennan Senior VP Marybeth Gray shared ideas to keep employees healthy and costs down.

WESTMINSTER, Colorado — The time to start planning for your company’s 2028 health benefits? January of 2027.

That’s according to Marybeth Gray, senior VP of health and welfare benefits consulting with Marsh McLennan Agency. Speaking to a crowd of finance leaders at the CFO Leadership Council’s fall conference in Colorado this week, Gray urged attendees to start thinking about health benefits as soon as feasibly possible.

What might have long been considered strictly an HR issue, Gray said, has firmly become a finance issue.

“We need to get on solid footing,” she said, citing data from the Business Group on Health showing that healthcare costs have ticked up as much as 76% over the last decade.

Gray’s message likely didn’t come as a surprise to the conference’s more than 300 attendees. A familiar face on the CFO conference circuit, she has been regularly sounding the alarm about the ongoing rise in healthcare costs for a while now. Over meals at the conference, attendees commiserated about the rising healthcare costs, which have been described as a “tapeworm” in the American economy by investor Warren Buffett.

Speaking at the Westin Westminster hotel on Tuesday, Gray offered a few tips to help keep costs at bay and employees healthy:

If you begin planning for next year’s health benefits in summer, Gray said, it’s already too late. “June is implementation time,” she said.

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