Dates To Know for This Year's Open Enrollment Season (+ Resources)

The Dates Insurance Agents Should Know for Open Enrollment 2025 — Plus Tips To Tackle It With Ease.

The annual enrollment season is the timeframe when your clients may enroll in or make changes to their insurance plans for the next year, like health insurance. These enrollment periods are set up for Medicare, job-based or employer-provided health insurance, and individual market insurance, like the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Here are the key dates insurance agents should know for the 2025 enrollment season (plus, some resources to help you stay effective and efficient during the busiest time of the year).

Key Open Enrollment Period 2025 Dates

Let’s explore the important dates to know for the approaching enrollment season and certain exceptions to keep in mind that your clients may qualify for. Use our Open Enrollment/Annual Election Period checklist to stay on track. 

2025 Individual Market/ACA Open Enrollment Period

For 2025, the Individual Market OEP (including ACA coverage) for healthcare insurance plans begins November 1st and ends December 15, 2024, for most states. There are a few states that follow a different enrollment schedule, some of which offer longer enrollment periods.

2025 Medicare Annual Election Period (for Medicare Advantage and Part D Plans)

The Medicare Annual Election Period (for coverage starting on January 1, 2025) begins on October 15th and ends on December 7, 2024. During this period, your clients can:

• Switch from Original Medicare to a Medicare Advantage plan, and vice versa
• Switch from one Medicare Advantage plan to another Medicare Advantage plan
• Opt-into or unenroll from a Medicare prescription drug coverage (Part D)
• Switch from one Medicare prescription drug plan to another

For those who already have a Medicare Advantage plan, OEP runs from January 1st to March 31, 2025. During this time, enrollees can switch to a different Medicare Advantage plan, opt for Original Medicare, and make changes to their drug coverage. These changes will go into effect on the first day of the following month.

People aging into Medicare are eligible to join, even if their birthday doesn’t align with AEP — you can easily track your aging-in clients with an industry-specific agency management system (AMS), which we’ll discuss later on.

Exceptions Outside of the 2024 Open Enrollment Period

While the OEP dates are set in stone, there are certain life events and qualifying situations where your clients can get coverage outside of the OEP in the Individual Market. Some qualifying life events for insurance coverage changes include:

• Losing or quitting a job
• Aging out of a parent’s plan — depending on the plan, the age-out date could vary
• COBRA
• Expiring insurance
• Getting divorced
• Moving out of a plan’s service area
• Getting married
• Having a baby or adopting a child

In addition to life events, other exceptions include job-based health insurance enrollment periods. These may vary depending on the employer’s preference, however, most companies typically set their dates sometime in the fall so that their policies begin on January 1st.

How To Optimize Productivity During the Annual Enrollment Period

AEP and OEP are always hectic for insurance agencies. Here are some ways you can save time, without sacrificing the ability to deliver high-quality customer service.

Use an Industry-Specific Agency Management System

The right agency management system (AMS) can be a powerful, time-saving tool that increases your productivity and organization during the hustle and bustle of Open Enrollment. AgencyBloc is an insurance agency management platform with a suite of solutions that your team can use to sell more policies, increase client retention, and maintain compliance. Let’s explore AgencyBloc’s Plus Suite:

• AMS+, an Industry-Leading Agency Management System: Centralize your entire office with an end-to-end agency management system built for your needs. Our robust insurance AMS has a suite of features designed specifically for health, benefits, and senior insurance agencies and uplines.

  Use the sales enablement tools, including a built-in VoIP/dialer, electronic compliance management, automated lead routing, and lead nurturing workflow automation to streamline sales calls and bring in more business.

  Then, retain those customers with client retention tools, including health insurance policy management, retention workflow automation, email marketing, productivity tracking, downline agency/agent management, and more.

• Commissions+, the Best-in-Class Commissions Processing Tool: Ensure accuracy, reduce worry, and make managing commissions easier with AgencyBloc’s Commissions+ solution. Our commissions processing tools uses proprietary commission mapping software to efficiently upload carrier and upline commission statements, then it will calculate splits, payouts, and total commissions earned. Run commission-specific reports for additional analysis and efficient tracking

  Identify any discrepancies quickly with our Commission Not Received Report. Use that information to alert carriers and uplines to inaccuracies and rectify your bottom line. Then, quickly generate agent statements with detailed breakdowns of commission earned, bonuses, and any additional one-time payments.
• Quote+, an All-in-One Group Quoting & Enrollment Solution: Reduce time spent on servicing small group clients by up to 50% every renewal season with Quote+, an AgencyBloc solution. Our insurance quoting software gives you access to a private, broker-controlled online marketplace where you can gather and compare quotes from various carriers for medically underwritten, community rated, and ancillary products.
  
  In addition to an intuitive online experience, Quote+ helps your team turn small group benefits quotes into client-ready proposals, allows you to seamlessly gather medical health questionnaires, provides a step-by-step enrollment portal for employees, and simplifies the carrier submission process.

AgencyBloc is the #1 Recommended Insurance Industry Growth Platform for health insurance agencies, and these are just a few of our many vast features designed to help your organization thrive. If you want to explore how we can help you tackle AEP/OEP, watch this five-minute overview video or schedule a live, one-on-one demo!

This blog was originally published on August 8, 2020, and most recently updated on August 6, 2024.

Posted by Allison Babberl on Tuesday, August 6, 2024 in Sales Enablement

1. open enrollment