On Aon Podcast: What’s Driving Global Benefits Strategy

On Aon Podcast: What’s Driving Global Benefits Strategy
October 24, 2025 10 mins

On Aon Podcast: What’s Driving Global Benefits Strategy

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In the latest episode of On Aon, Vice President of Global Benefits Kathryn Davis and Global Business Development Director of Global Benefits Celine Ng tong examine the findings from two important Aon reports: the 2025 Global Benefit Trends Study and the 2026 Global Medical Trend Rate Report.

Key Takeaways
  1. Multinational businesses are making employee benefits more meaningful and visible, with a strong emphasis on transparency and providing greater choice.
  2. Effective governance is a top priority, with businesses using data, engaging senior stakeholders and applying disciplined change management to implement benefit strategies.
  3. Technology, including AI, is increasingly used to personalize benefits and enhance employee experience, helping businesses deliver greater value.

Intro: 
Hello and welcome to this episode of On Aon — where we dive into some of the most pressing risk capital and human capital issues businesses around the world are facing.
 
Today we’re looking at how companies  — including multinationals — are tackling an increasingly important factor in managing, recruiting and retaining their employees — their benefits programs. 
 
Joining us today to discuss the findings of two key pieces of Aon Human Capital Research — the Global Benefits Trends Study and the Global Medical Trend Rates Report — are Kathryn Davis, Global Benefits Vice President at Aon, and Celine Ng tong, who is Aon’s Global Business Development Director for Health. 

Kathryn Davis 
Hello there and welcome to On Aon. My name is Kathryn Davis and I'm a Global Benefits Vice President here at Aon and it's great to be with you here today. 

Today we'll be talking about the findings from two key global reports from Aon, the 2025 Global Benefit Trend Study and the 2026 Global Medical Trend Rates Report. 

Both of these reports are a central reading for human capital leaders around the world. The Global Benefit Trend Study explores how multinational organizations are reshaping their benefits programs and strategies while the Global Medical Trend Rates Report examines the ongoing trend of rising healthcare costs and how companies and countries are dealing with this. 

You can find both reports on Aon.com, but to delve into them a bit more, I'm thrilled to welcome my colleague and one of our consulting leaders for Aon Global Benefits, Celine Ng Tong, who will help me discover and discuss the most important findings from each report. 

Great to have you here today, Celine. 

Celine Ng tong 
Thank you for having me.

Kathryn Davis 
Okay, so Celine, to get us started, let's start with the Global Benefit Trends Study on which you led the research and analysis. Can you tell me a bit about this year's report? What are the big trends we're seeing and why do these matter to multinational businesses?

Celine Ng tong 
Sure. So we're really excited about this year's Global Benefits Trends Study. We had 518 multinationals participate and we know that this is one of the biggest studies of its kind ever really run. So, we're really proud and really excited about the findings from this study. 

Probably the top three trends and what we really heard from these multinational companies is:

Number one, a big strategic focus on how do we do more and how do we enhance the perception of our benefits programs in the eyes of our employees. So that really came out at us in terms of high strategic priorities, especially for what we're calling leading multinational companies who were really saying that that's one of their key focus areas. 

We then dug a little bit into what does enhancing employee perception mean and how do these multinationals really deliver value to their employees. And we found three key trends or three common things that these companies were doing to deliver that value. So one, they were really embracing personalization and really allowing their employees the ability to customize their benefits programs and offering a lot of different choices about benefits. So we thought that was interesting.

Two, we found that these companies were very much more likely to be very transparent with their benefits package. So really be transparent, be open and also be first movers in the space of technology. So more likely to use technology, more likely to use AI to deliver employee experience and to drive analytics for themselves. Again, doing that to deliver value. 

And then the last thing that these companies were doing to enhance perception was really continuing the efforts around delivering programs that are really equitable for all. So we saw, we found that 80 % of multinationals, whether they were headquartered in the US or outside of the US, were really planning to continue to offer inclusive benefits. So we thought that was really interesting. 

The second key finding was around governance. So last year for the 2024 study, what we found out was that four out of five multinationals were unable to implement their strategy, whether it was around global financing or global minimum standards. So, we dug into what does good governance look like and what do you need to be doing to really be effective at global benefits governance and really to be able to implement and to land your strategy locally. 

And really good findings around the use of data — around the engagement with senior stakeholders and really the need for change management. 

And then the last finding, which is probably not a surprise given that the survey was fielded in early 2025, around the same time that the US tariffs were being announced, is that the top priority for all multinationals across all industries, all segments, was really cost management. How do we create sustainability and cost?

And when we dug further into this, what we found out is the top priority for multinationals was really how do we manage cost equal? How do we manage medical inflation for 70% of these multinationals? We're saying that is really the biggest priority.

Kathryn Davis 
Thanks, Celine. That's really interesting. So that hyper-focus on cost containment that you talked about, Celine, is really interesting given the results that we're seeing in the Global Medical Trends Report. So the Medical Trend Reports this year is actually reporting that for the second year in a row, we're actually planning to see a lower expected medical trend rate for next year versus what was projected for this year. So 9.8% in 2026 versus 10.0% in 2025, suggesting that we may have finally hit the peak in medical trend or at least that we're starting to plateau on a global level. So maybe time that we stop hyper focusing on cost containment from just medical inflation. 

This is being driven by some major markets around the world. So it's not just one country or one region. So we're seeing the trends start to come down in countries such as the UK, which is seeing a 5% reduction year over year, China, Brazil, Singapore, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, amongst others.

And with global inflation continuing to cool on top of this, which is an element of medical inflation, I can't help but wonder if this trend will continue in future years, which then begs the question on if there are other cost items that companies need to start waking up to. 

And I know, Celine, one of the topics we've been discussing is that while medical inflation absolutely needs to be managed, that potentially multinational companies may have blinders on as they're not spending as much energy on other benefits spend given the high medical trend rate of the past few years.

Celine Ng tong 
Yes, absolutely. And I hope you're right when it comes to medical inflation and that it will stabilize and plateau because that would be good news to, I think, all of our clients. But I completely agree with you. think, you know, when you look at medical spend, it's hugely important. It is increasing and it's a benefit that is valued by employees around the world. We know that from our Employee Sentiment Study. 

It's repeatedly one of the top most-valued benefits programs. So it's worth spending time really trying to bend that curve. 

However, we do know that in a number of countries, for example, your annual spend around defined contribution programs, so those are pension schemes, can be anywhere between 300 to 400% the cost of your annual medical program. 

So if you think about the level of effort and level of scrutiny on defined contribution plans around the world, depending on the organization, is probably not as much focused. And we did see that from our study. So really, there is, I think, a lot of value that can be put around applying the same level of global governance, the same level of discipline around how pension plan vendors are being managed and selected, thinking about the risk management strategies that are being put in place, ensuring that the fees that you're paying to your pension vendor or to your defined contribution vendors around the world are being optimized and are really delivering the value to your employees and to employers. 

And back to what I was sharing earlier around leading multinationals, what we did find out from leading multinationals, we define these companies as being leading from a governance perspective, from a benefit strategy perspective, and from a data perspective, is that we're actually two times more likely to be looking at or to be including defined contribution at defined benefits program within their global governance and their global benefit strategy. So really, they're really focused on that.

Kathryn Davis 
Yeah, that makes sense. And it is really interesting. And coming back to the medical trends report, talking about retirement. So, one of the key drivers of increased medical costs that were reported across regions, so in Europe, in Asia Pacific, and in Latin America, is aging populations. So, as the workforce continues to age, the drain that has on medical programs, the increased utilization, increased cost of claims for a higher population, where we are seeing increases or what's continuing to keep the trend pretty high, even if it is starting to plateau or come down, in a lot of places are these aging populations. 

And that's almost a double whammy than if we're thinking about retirement programs as well, because all of a sudden you have this workforce aging into retirement and retirement is now top of mind for this workforce. They are looking at that. They are close to drawing on those contributions. They're probably higher paid, which is really driving those contributions up as well. 

So it's that echelon of the workforce, if you will, almost that's really driving your costs from a two-factor perspective, not just medical, but also retirement. So something for employers to be aware of there, for sure, I would say.

Celine Ng tong 
Absolutely.

Kathryn Davis 
I think that was some really interesting findings. So thank you, Celine, for helping me highlight the importance of these two reports. That's our show for today. Thank you all for listening. Don't forget, you can find both reports and connect with an Aon colleague to discuss their findings, what it means to your business on Aon.com.

In the coming weeks and months, we'll have more episodes on human capital topics, including online benefits and personalization. Until next time.

Outro:
Thanks for tuning into the latest episode of On Aon. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to visit Aon.com to learn about Aon.

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