We started Covaru because of a renewal letter.

Every October a renewal letter landed on our desk. It said the price of the health plan was going up, by 9 percent one year and 14 the next, and almost nothing else. We asked the broker why, in detail. Which claims. What we could change to bring it down. Whether our employees were even using what we were paying for. The answer was the market, then claims, then trend, which is the industry word for “it goes up.”

We had a full-time HR team and we still could not get a plain answer. We were not unusual. In a 2026 U.S. Chamber of Commerce poll, 67 percent of small business owners said they wished they had outside help choosing benefits. That frustration, year after year, is where Covaru started.

At every open enrollment we handed out a packet, walked through the plans and asked if there were questions. There never were. Then January came, and the questions came with it. What is a deductible. Why did the pharmacy charge me 200 dollars.

We were not the only ones. In a 2023 KFF survey, 27 percent of adults with job-based coverage said terms like deductible and coinsurance were hard to understand.