Most small business owners treat employee benefits as an HR responsibility — a compliance checkbox managed by whoever handles people operations. But what if your benefits program is actually one of your most powerful financial levers, directly impacting your profitability, talent retention, and ultimately, what your business is worth to a buyer or investor?

In this session, Mike Ehrle — Managing Partner at Lumity and CEO of Finparency — challenges the conventional wisdom around benefits management and reveals why the smartest CEOs are moving this conversation from the HR desk to the CFO's office.

Drawing on experience with hundreds of small businesses and his Forbes-published research, Mike will walk attendees through the real cost of benefits inaction, how a data-driven brokerage strategy can reduce medical renewal costs by 20-30% without sacrificing quality, and why employee experience metrics are among the first things sophisticated investors examine when evaluating a company for acquisition.

Whether you are planning an eventual exit, seeking growth capital, or simply trying to run a tighter operation, this session delivers a practical financial framework for thinking about benefits and business value in an entirely new way. Attendees will leave with clear, actionable steps to turn their benefits program from a cost center into a genuine competitive advantage — and a driver of long-term company valuation.