From Data to Direction: Group Dental Market Trends Shift

From Data to Direction: Group Dental Market Trends Shift
August 2025
The data-driven world that dominates marketing and business decision-making processes across all industries and ventures provides us with a unique opportunity to reevaluate the historical performance of workplace benefit dental carriers.
Over the past 25 years, LIMRA has collected thousands of data points related to new sales of group dental plans, providing unique opportunities to explore prevailing trends. To start our journey, we tested two main research hypotheses: whether the sales performance of the first quarter of the year is indicative for the year-end sales results; and how stable this predictive measure is.
While it is tempting to examine all records from the past 25 years, we will be focusing on the time frame from 2017 to 2025, to keep data consistent and reflective of the most current macroeconomic and microeconomic trends that affected the dental industry.
Based on data from 35 quarterly group dental snapshot reports and 22 group dental carriers — representing, on average, 65 percent of the U.S. group dental market — first quarter performance has proven to be a reliable proxy for full-year results. Our focus will be on three core indicators — new employer groups, new subscribers and new premiums — to understand whether these metrics can provide reliable predictions and what insights they offer on market behavior and direction.
To begin, we will look at employer groups, the client base for workplace benefits carriers. Between 2017 and 2025, the percentage of employer groups sold in the first quarter fluctuated between 35 and 37 percent steadily, with a spike to 41 percent in 2020.
According to our data (Figure 1), first quarter new employer group sales reliably predict the end-of-the-year performance, despite representing only a third of total year-end sales. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic did not have any effect on the predictability of the year-end total number of new employer groups, despite any anticipation.
Now, let’s examine the new subscriber data that traditionally is considered the primary metric for the group dental plans. Compared to 35-37 percent of employer-group sales attributed to the first quarter effective date, more than half of new subscribers are recorded for the same period.
This suggests that the fall is the peak annual group dental benefits enrollment season for larger employers. The data reveal that, except for 2020, regardless of how the companies in aggregate performed in the second, third or fourth quarter, the year-end results are established in the first quarter, similarly to the operational pattern by employer groups.
The 2020s’ “odd” performance aligns with the enrollment cycle expectations: the first quarter effective-date sales were placed essentially pre-pandemic, in the fall of 2019, while the rest of the year bore the brunt of the COVID-related shock. Factually speaking, the 2020 new subscriber year-end results were forecasted to be similar to 2017 or 2018 — had COVID-19 not emerged.
The market was already leaning toward larger employers, and the pandemic significantly disrupted small businesses. Employees at all levels were affected. In the absence of a macro trend — such as the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 — the first quarter 2025 results are not unique in terms of their ability to predict year-end performance or explain variation in quarterly results, based on the historical records from the past eight years.
Another hypothesis tested was whether the year-end results can be reliably predicted based on first quarter performance. Two types of market participants emerged. The first group was labeled “stable in predictability,” meaning that the first quarter sales results for this group’s members consistently and reliably predict the end-of-the-year performance, whether it is negative or positive.
The second group is labeled “unstable,” meaning that we cannot predict anything regarding this group’s members, based on the first quarter performance. The “stable and predictable” group is significantly larger than the second group and dominates the market, contributing to the overall predictability of results as shown on both Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Finally, let’s explore the overall dynamics of market trends. According to our data, there are consistent periods of market fluctuations. While it is easy to speculate that the new subscriber sales drop in 2020 is solely attributed to the pandemic, our data suggest otherwise — both employer groups and new subscribers showed a visible slowdown during the 2019 fall enrollment period, ahead of the pandemic.
In this context, the first quarter of 2025 follows the pattern of a consolidation phase. According to LIMRA’s Q1 2025 Workplace Benefits Dental and Vision Sales Survey, a 7 percent decline in new group dental subscribers is certainly a setback from the robust beginning of the previous year. Yet, the total number of new dental subscribers reported for the first quarter is similar to 2019 and outperforms new sales for 2022 and 2023.
A few notable trends of the past few years are worth mentioning. The average employer group size spiked in the first quarter of 2019 to over 100 employees per group, then dipped to a pre-pandemic level of 75-80 employees during 2021-2022, and is now rising again toward the 2019 level.
The cost of coverage (premium-per-employee ratio) rose during the first quarter of 2025, but it remains below the inflation rate. As the year progresses, we will gain a better understanding of whether trends in group size or cost of coverage are creating a new context for the overall performance in 2025, or if we can continue to rely on the historical model.
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