About Alycia Riedl, Immediate Past President, NABIP
As President of the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals (NABIP), Alycia Riedl continues to drive the organization “Future Forward”—focused on Connecting, Innovating, and Leading to strengthen the industry and empower members.
A bold industry advocate and strategic leader, Alycia has served on NABIP’s Board of Trustees for nearly a decade, shaping key initiatives in professional development, policy advocacy, and industry partnerships. Under her leadership, NABIP is redefining its impact—expanding professional designations, launching cutting-edge tools, and reimagining its signature events like the Capitol Conference and Annual Convention to deliver more value than ever.
With over 20 years of experience in benefits consulting and strategic partnerships, Alycia understands the complex challenges and opportunities facing agents, brokers, and industry leaders. As a Principal and Senior Consultant at Mercer, she helps organizations navigate evolving healthcare landscapes and design forward-thinking employee benefits solutions that drive business success and deliver real value to employees and their families.
Beyond her industry leadership, Alycia is a champion for collaboration, advocacy, and professional growth. She is committed to elevating NABIP as the go-to resource for education, networking, and influence—ensuring that members have the tools, training, and connections they need to thrive in a rapidly changing market.
Her message is clear: The future of NABIP is strong, the momentum is real, and together, we are shaping what’s next.
Let’s go!
About NABIP
NABIP is the preeminent organization for health insurance and employee benefits professionals, working diligently to ensure all Americans have access to high-quality, affordable healthcare and related benefits. NABIP represents and provides professional development opportunities for more than 100,000 licensed health insurance agents, brokers, general agents, consultants, and benefit professionals through more than 200 chapters across America.
Medical Travel & Digital Health News (MTDHN): Please tell our readers about your background and how you got involved with this organization.
Alycia Riedl (AR): For background, NABIP is a leading professional association for health insurance agents, brokers and benefit advisors. I have been working in the consultant field for quite some time, including with some of the major consulting firms like Willis Tower Watson, Mercer and others.
NABIP serves as an umbrella across the industry. Our members and other professionals like us bring a unique perspective to the healthcare system because we engage with every aspect of it. We help consumers and employers finance healthcare, select health plans, help those healthcare plans to pay for claims, manage care and navigate the system. We often help employees, beneficiaries and Medicare recipients deal with issues they encounter with the healthcare system. We also collaborate with partners across the industry to create programs, benefits and experiences that service the American workforce.
As for my personal background, my late father owned an insurance agency here in Minnesota and so insurance has been in my DNA. He was a very smart, forward-thinking man and he worked with many self-funded clients, Medicare individuals and small group markets.
Growing up around that environment gave me an early exposure to the insurance industry. Once I became a young mother and was in need of stability and benefits, I took a job for a health insurance carrier and interacted with individual patients and members who were navigating the healthcare system or the health plan. Over time, I transitioned into working with brokers and later moved into consulting large self-funded groups, including Fortune 50 companies.
So, my career path has been intentionally varied, but it all stems from growing up in a household where a broker’s work put food on the table. That foundation has shaped my passion for this field and is what drives my commitment to NABIP.
MTDHN: Does the NABIP include members from other countries?
AR: Yes. There have been some exciting recent developments with NABIP on that front.
Many of our members, including my dad, have long been interested in exploring what solutions there are for medical tourism whether it’s domestic or international. There’s been a lot of discussions around Canadian pharmacies and drugs, medical plans, dental tourism, etc.
Strategically, NABIP is thinking about medical travel in two buckets: international and domestic. From the international standpoint, we believe it’s becoming even more critical to think about healthcare access, affordability and quality of care.
In fact, we recently welcomed a contingent of new NABIP members from Costa Rica who specialize in services such as dental care, prescription medication access and digital health solutions for American consumers. They’re actively working with some of our chapters like Los Angeles, New York, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia as well as raising awareness around medical tourism as an employee benefits specifically.
MTDHN: What types of policy or industry issues does NABIP focus on?
AR: NABIP is a trade association and advocacy is one of our core pillars, along with professional development. A major strategic shift has been adopting our Consumer Healthcare Bill of Rights, which guides our policy priorities.
For example, Medicare and senior health are major focus areas. We’re working hard to protect access to professional guidance and fair compensation for agents helping seniors. My brother, who now runs our family agency, still does kitchen-table visits with 93-year-old neighbors to walk them through their drug plans. That kind of support is irreplaceable.
We’ve run campaigns like Brokers Making a Difference and we’re seeing strong engagement, over 15,000 respondents to a recent survey on the value of the broker-patient relationship.
MTDHN: Does NABIP have a position on Medicare Advantage covering out-of-country treatment?
AR: I know that traditional Medicare doesn’t cover international care but Medicare Advantage may. I’d be happy to follow up with our Medicare advisory group, they go deep on these issues.
MTDHN: How can providers or vendor partners engage with NABIP and reach your membership?
AR: There are several ways to engage with NABIP.
First, we host a number of events throughout the year. We’re in the process of reimagining our events and I think it’s starting to work as far as, how people experience their time with us, what they take away from it, how meaningful the event was and what they can apply going back to their jobs and professions. We’re really leading the thought around events and ways that partners can help get to those people and to our members differently.
We also have our quarterly magazine, the BIP Magazine, in digital and print. So, there are advertising opportunities there. We’ve worked really hard this last year on our communication strategy, and so our open rates are way higher than they used to be on our emails. Our newsletters are actually making impact. As a matter of fact, this fall, we introduced our quarterly impact report that highlights some of the statistics around the things that we’re doing.
We hope the change in our viewership and readership engagement with us as an organization can help transform the relationship or at least give more value to our advertisers and how they interact with our members, whether it’s emails, logos, the website or seminars they can host. We can put together podcasts and seminars, etc.
We also have a new annual partnership program where we’re trying to foster closer relationships with partners in the industry. You can have one-on-ones with our CEO or receive special legislative updates or obtain special ways to be recognized with our members.
MTDHN: Do you host webinars with your partners?
AR: Yes, we do host webinars with partners. We’re expanding in this area and there’s growing interest from vendors looking for cost-effective platforms and we’re exploring how to meet that demand.
MTDHN: In healthcare, how do you balance access, quality and cost? Is one more important?
AR: It’s always a balance and it has to be. You can’t just expand access without addressing affordability and quality. For example, adding more mental health providers to a network doesn’t help if they’re not affordable or effective.
Our Healthcare Bill of Rights is built on those three principles, access, affordability and quality. If you ignore one, you risk creating a system that fails consumers.
MTDHN: Are you seeing increased interest in pharmacy medical travel?
AR: Yes, but it’s complicated.
There are three key challenges:
- Regulatory complexity: We lack consensus from regulators and Congress on cross-border care, which introduces risk.
- Quality and safety: Different countries have different standards. Without apples-to-apples comparisons, it’s hard to assess the true value or risk of imported pharmaceuticals.
- Benefit design and transparency: For pharmacy travel to work, employers need to structure benefits accordingly and consumers need education on what they’re actually buying.
We’re hearing growing interest, especially with discussions around tariffs and global pricing pressures but we need policy clarity and consumer safeguards to make it viable long term.
MTDHN: Are medical records and interoperability still major obstacles for both international and domestic travel?
AR: Huge issue, even within the U.S. My mother splits her time between Minnesota and Florida. She’s on Epic (MyChart) in both locations and yet her ER and inpatient providers couldn’t access her records from just hours earlier.
Same with my husband’s care between his primary provider and Mayo Clinic, both use Epic but there were still gaps.
When people travel for care, especially internationally, these gaps become even more pronounced. That’s why advisors need to prepare clients: What records to bring, what to expect, how to advocate. You can’t assume the system will fill in the blanks because it won’t.
MTDHN: This has been a fantastic conversation. Any final thoughts?
AR: Just thank you, this topic is incredibly personal and professionally important to me. We’re excited to help lead the way forward on medical travel, pharmacy access and consumer empowerment through benefits.