By Alex Sauer-Budge, Ph.D. CTO at SAVVI Financial

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Open enrollment has become increasingly difficult for employees to navigate. Healthcare costs continue to rise, financial priorities are competing for attention, and most benefit decisions are still presented in isolation. Even financially savvy employees often struggle to understand how one choice impacts another.

The issue is rarely a lack of information. More often, employees lack clear guidance on how to make optimized decisions that work together across healthcare, savings, retirement, and day-to-day finances.

Most enrollment experiences still depend on lengthy surveys, disconnected tools, and static recommendations. Employees are left trying to calculate tradeoffs on their own while asking questions like:

• Am I overpaying for coverage?
• What happens if I actually have a tough medical year?
• Should I stick with what I have or make a change?
• Am I putting enough away for retirement?
• How do these decisions impact my finances year-round?

With SelectSmart 2026, SAVVI is continuing to change that.

Today, we’re introducing the next evolution of SelectSmart, a survey-less enrollment experience designed to help employees make more confident financial and benefits decisions without the usual friction or guesswork.

SelectSmart 2026 builds on the trusted expertise SAVVI customers have come to expect, with enhancements designed to make open enrollment decisions even more connected and intuitive.

Built on SAVVI’s decision intelligence and next-dollar optimization engine, SelectSmart 2026 delivers personalized guidance instantly using existing data. Employees can immediately see how different decisions affect healthcare costs, savings opportunities, tax advantages, and take-home pay without the lengthy onboarding flows.

That guidance is rooted in trusted financial optimization logic, with AI enhancing the experience by making recommendations easier to understand and act on at the moment decisions are being made.

This year’s release also expands the platform well beyond the confines of traditional decision support.

New capabilities for OE 2026 include the SAVVI Studio, expanded NextDollar optimization, and a new AI Chatbot experience – all designed to make financial guidance faster to access, easier to understand, and more connected across the employee journey. 

A Faster, Simpler Enrollment Experience

Most decision support tools create friction before employees ever receive guidance. Surveys, disconnected workflows, and manual inputs slow down the process and often push employees toward defaulting to prior-year elections.

SelectSmart 2026 removes much of that complexity with SAVVI’s Survey-Less Advantage. Employees receive personalized guidance immediately using existing benefits and household data, making it easier than ever to evaluate:

• Coverage and premium tradeoffs
• HSA and HRA opportunities
• Estimated annual healthcare costs
• Supplemental benefit protection
• Retirement savings opportunities
• Impact on take-home pay

The experience is designed to help employees make confident decisions quickly, without extensive onboarding or guesswork.

“Wow this is something I’ve never seen before in my life, similar to someone walking with you right now. Easy to complete with zero need of outside guidance”  - Employee SelectSmart user, Open Enrollment 2025

What’s New in SelectSmart 2026

SAVVI Studio

Live Performance Studio simplifies onboarding workflows, automates handoffs, and reduces coordination work across HR, broker, and implementation teams.

Teams can also monitor outcomes with weekly updated metrics and insights, providing better visibility into engagement and operational performance year-round.

AI Chatbot

The SelectSmart AI Chatbot enhances the employee experience by helping explain recommendations, answer questions in context, and increase overall confidence in their decisions.

Importantly, the experience is grounded in SAVVI’s trusted decision intelligence framework, ensuring AI is used to clarify and reinforce guidance rather than replace the underlying financial expertise and optimization logic behind each recommendation.

Expanded NextDollar Optimization Engine

The NextDollar Optimization Engine has been expanded for 2026 to support more continuous, real-time financial optimization across a broader set of everyday financial decisions.

Employees can continue receiving personalized financial guidance across the decisions that matter most:

• Healthcare accounts
• Employer matches
• Emergency savings
• Retirement contributions

This allows guidance to extend beyond enrollment and support better financial decision-making throughout the year.

Designed to Drive Financial Fortitude

Many benefits platforms still focus primarily on education, static recommendations, or AI layered haphazardly onto disconnected workflows. SelectSmart is designed differently, combining trusted financial decision intelligence with AI-powered guidance that helps employees make more connected financial decisions in real time.

Organizations using SAVVI guidance report consistent impact:

• 70% reduction in HR calls¹
• 4.1x ROI²
• 138% increase in HDHP enrollment³
• 230% increase in voluntary benefit elections⁴
• 100% increase in HSA enrollments⁵
• 13x higher retirement savings⁶
• 4.5/5 employee satisfaction⁷

The Future of Enrollment Is Frictionless

Most employees do not want to become benefits experts during open enrollment. They want to understand the tradeoffs clearly, make financially sound decisions, and feel confident they are not overlooking something important.

SelectSmart 2026 is designed to reduce friction throughout that process while helping employees make better-connected decisions across benefits, healthcare, savings, and retirement.

We’re excited to bring this next generation of SelectSmart to employers, brokers, partners, and employees heading into OE 2026.

To learn more about SelectSmart 2026 and schedule a demo or explore SelectSmart.

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Frequently Asked Questions about SelectSmart 2026

What is SelectSmart 2026?
SelectSmart 2026 is SAVVI Financial’s survey-less decision support experience that helps employees make optimized benefits, healthcare, savings, and retirement decisions using existing data.

How is SelectSmart 2026 different from traditional enrollment tools?
Unlike traditional tools that rely on surveys and static comparisons, SelectSmart provides instant, data-driven financial guidance without requiring employees to complete lengthy questionnaires.

What is SAVVI’s decision intelligence engine?
SAVVI’s decision intelligence engine uses financial optimization logic and household data to deliver personalized recommendations across healthcare, savings, retirement, and other financial decisions.

What is NextDollar optimization?
NextDollar optimization helps employees understand how to allocate their “next dollar” across competing priorities like healthcare coverage, retirement savings, emergency funds, and debt repayment.

Does SelectSmart include retirement planning guidance?
Yes, SelectSmart provides recommendations that help employees evaluate retirement contributions alongside healthcare costs and savings goals.

What kinds of decisions can SelectSmart help with?
Employees can evaluate healthcare plans, HSA/HRA usage, supplemental benefits, retirement contributions, emergency savings, employer match opportunities, and overall financial tradeoffs.

How does SelectSmart improve employee decision-making?
It simplifies complex financial tradeoffs by showing the real-time impact of decisions on costs, savings, taxes, and long-term financial outcomes.

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¹  Client internal report, 2026 Decision Support Stats, Open Enrollment Results (2026).

²  Calculated using methodology outlined on this SAVVI calculator- https://www.savvifi.com/selectsmart-roi and selecting 10K employees, $70K salary, 40 avg age employee, 30% HDHP usage, 30% guidance utilization, cost $4 PEPY

³   Industry Average HDHP enrollment reported KFF 2024 vs Q4 2023 SAVVI guidance user for Benefitfocus/Voya 2024

⁴  230% is the average increase for SAVVI Guidance election vs Industry average results reported at the 2024 Workplace Benefits Conference in the “Workplace Benefits Innovation: Broker Trends and Insights for 2024” Report. 230% in average increase for accident insurance (289% increase), critical illness insurance (218% increase) and hospital indemnity (189% increase)

⁵  Industry Average HSA enrollment reported HealthEquity vs Q4 2023 SAVVI guidance user for Benefitfocus/VOYA 2024

⁶ 27% of SelectSmart users changed their retirement savings rate vs 2% of non-users for the 2026 plan year

⁷ Based on 2025 aggregated, anonymized data from SAVVI Financial guidance experiences integrated within multiple enterprise benefit platforms

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