What is a Carrier Feed?
A carrier feed is a recurring, automated file of enrollment and eligibility changes sent from an employer, benefits administration platform, broker, or TPA to an insurance carrier, in the format that carrier specifies.
Before carrier feeds, enrollment changes reached carriers by spreadsheet, fax, or a carrier portal. A carrier feed automates that handoff. Each time it runs, it sends new enrollments, coverage changes, and terminations, so the carrier's records match the employer's.
Who Sends Carrier Feeds
- Benefits administration platforms send feeds on behalf of every employer that uses them, often to hundreds of carriers.
- Brokers and consultants build and manage feeds for their employer clients.
- TPAs and PEOs send eligibility to carriers, stop-loss partners, and pharmacy benefit managers.
- Large employers sometimes run their own feeds straight from an HRIS.
How a Carrier Feed Works
The sender extracts enrollment data, maps it to the carrier's layout as defined in its companion guide, and delivers the file over SFTP on an agreed schedule. The carrier returns error or acknowledgement reports, and the sender fixes rejected records. Medical carriers often require the X12 834; many other lines accept CSV or fixed-width files.
Common Carrier Feed Problems
- A feed that silently stops, so changes pile up until a member is denied care
- Rejected records that nobody reviews
- Carrier layout changes that break an existing mapping
- A long setup cycle for every new carrier or employer group
Carrier Feeds and Integrate.io
Integrate.io standardizes enrollment data once and delivers it to each carrier in the format it requires, with monitoring for failed or missing runs. See how this works for brokers, benefits administration platforms, and carriers.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Clear answers to the questions teams ask when evaluating Integrate.io.
What is a carrier connection in employee benefits?
A carrier connection is the set-up work that makes a carrier feed run: mapping the sender's data to the carrier's layout, agreeing on a schedule, exchanging SFTP and encryption details, and passing the carrier's testing before production. The term is often used interchangeably with carrier feed.
What format do carrier feeds use?
Large medical carriers commonly require the X12 834 transaction. Many dental, vision, life, disability, and voluntary carriers accept their own CSV or fixed-width layouts instead. Each carrier documents its requirements in a companion guide or file specification.
Why do carrier feeds take so long to set up?
Every carrier has its own layout, testing process, and queue of other connections to work through. The sender has to build a mapping for that carrier, send test files, fix the errors the carrier finds, and wait for sign-off. Repeating this for each carrier and each employer group adds up quickly.
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