BIP Spring 2025

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What does prioritizing transparency, fiduciary responsibility and modern strategies in plan design get you? A benefits revolution — if Chelsea and Donovan Ryckis have a say.

A different beginning Getting his start on the financial services side of the business in the late 2000s, Donovan realized the traditional model often prioritized selling products over delivering tangible solutions. Instead of following the commission-driven path, Donovan became a fiduciary advisor, ensuring transparency and accountability in his work. "I learned that the results you get are directly tied to how people are compensated," he says. "If advisors are paid to sell a product, the client often ends up with gaps in their plan. I didn’t want to be part of that." When Chelsea teamed up with him a few years later, she brought an equally essential focus — ensuring benefit strategies translated into a seamless employee experience. "While Donovan worked on financial strategies, I made sure employees could actually engage with and benefit from these innovations," she says. "None of it matters if the end user doesn’t understand or trust their plan." Their combined strengths laid the foundation for Ethos. "Being young and bringing a completely different message was a challenge at first," Chelsea says. "People would ask, ‘If you’re so smart, why haven’t the big guys told me about this?’ The answer was simple: they’re not incentivized to." Ethos continues to run on fiduciary-first principles. Every benefits strategy is designed to serve the employer and employees above all

The founders of Ethos Benefits in Orlando, Florida, won’t settle for anything less. "From the very beginning, our goal was to be unique from every broker we had ever seen," Chelsea says. "We didn’t have a roadmap, but we had aligned incentives and a commitment to doing what’s right for clients." Donovan adds, "We’ve built our entire business around proving that the big lie in healthcare — that you can’t control costs — is simply not true." Here’s how they’re spreading the word.

KEY POINTS

▶ Ethos Benefits Proves Fiduciary-First Works: By prioritizing transparency and aligned incentives, Chelsea and Donovan Ryckis create cost-effective benefits for employers and plan members. ▶ Smarter Cost-Saving & Engagement Strategies: Ethos reduces healthcare risk, leverages financial assistance and improves communication to enhance plan effectiveness. ▶ Challenging Industry Norms for Better Outcomes: The Ryckises are rethinking compensation models and are focused on data-driven strategies to drive lasting improvements in plan design and innovation.

26 bip magazine Spring 2025