ICHRA in Indiana 2026: Indy Wins, Fort Wayne Doesn't

Does ICHRA beat small group in Indiana?

Yes, across most of the state, though not everywhere. An ICHRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement) currently beats traditional small-group coverage in an estimated 75 of Indiana's 92 counties for the 2026 plan year, based on a county-by-county comparison of individual-market and small-group benchmark premiums, cross-verified against CMS public-use marketplace files. Those 75 counties make up about 10% of the 719 counties nationwide where the math currently favors ICHRA.

If you haven't worked through the general decision yet, our ICHRA vs. small group decision guide walks through the framework this article applies specifically to Indiana. Here's the part most "ICHRA works in Indiana" content skips: the 17 non-qualifying counties include Allen County, home to Fort Wayne, Indiana's second-largest city. If your company sits in Fort Wayne proper, the county-level math does not currently favor an ICHRA over small group. If your workforce is centered on Indianapolis, its suburbs, Lafayette, Evansville, South Bend or the Gary area, it very likely does. That split, not a single statewide number, is the real story, and it's why we build this dataset at the county level instead of publishing one figure for the whole state.

Why Indiana's 2027 rate filings matter now

Indiana employers already lived through one round of sticker shock this year. The state's individual-market carriers received final approval for a 26.3% weighted-average rate increase for the 2026 plan year, down from an initial preliminary ask of 31.9% but still steep, affecting roughly 360,000 people who buy coverage on the individual market, according to rate data compiled by ACA Signups from Indiana Department of Insurance filings. Anthem, Indiana's largest individual-market carrier with about 107,900 affected members, settled at 21.3%. CareSource settled higher, at 27.6%, on roughly 59,863 members. Insurers pointed to the December 31, 2025 expiration of enhanced federal premium tax credits as a central driver, arguing that healthier, more price-sensitive enrollees would be the first to leave the individual market once their subsidies shrank, pushing the average cost of everyone who stays higher.

Now a second round is already filed. Indiana's individual-market carriers have submitted preliminary 2027 rate requests averaging a weighted 18.9% increase, and small-group carriers have filed averaging 14.1%, both compiled from SERFF and Indiana Department of Insurance filings. Neither figure is final; Indiana's Department of Insurance reviews every filing before approving anything, and this year's 2026 final rate came in nearly six points below the preliminary ask. Still, two consecutive years of double-digit increases on both sides of the market is the specific, dated reason an ICHRA conversation is worth having in Indiana right now, not a generic "costs are rising" claim.

This matters for an ICHRA specifically because ICHRA reimbursements ride on individual-market prices, not small-group prices. When individual-market rates move sharply, as they have in Indiana for two straight years, the spread this entire strategy depends on can widen or narrow depending on what happens to small-group rates at the same time. That's exactly why every figure in this article is tied to a specific plan year and why we rebuild the underlying dataset every year rather than reusing prior numbers.

The individual-market filings, carrier by carrier

The 18.9% figure for 2027 is a weighted statewide average across a shrinking field of carriers. Two of the five insurers that sold individual-market plans in Indiana for 2026, Cigna Health & Life and CareSource, are leaving the state's individual market entirely for 2027. Cigna's exit displaces roughly 7,000 members; CareSource's is far larger, displacing close to 60,000, the single biggest carrier exit in this filing round. One new carrier, AmeriHealth Caritas, is entering to take some of that business. Among the carriers staying, UnitedHealthcare filed the steepest increase at 32.4%, though its Indiana enrollee count wasn't broken out in the filing; Coordinated Care Corp. filed 25.2% on about 63,592 members; Anthem, the largest single block of Indiana individual-market enrollees at roughly 102,400, filed the smallest continuing-carrier increase at 15.6%; and Celtic Insurance (which sells as Ambetter) filed 15.3% on about 18,073 members.

Two carrier exits displacing close to 67,000 people is a real disruption for anyone currently covered by Cigna or CareSource in Indiana; those members will need to actively choose a new plan for 2027 rather than being auto-renewed into a comparable one. It's also a reminder that an employer basing an ICHRA contribution on "whatever plan my employees have now" needs to revisit that assumption heading into open enrollment, since the specific plan may not exist next year even if the employee's county still qualifies.

The 75 counties where ICHRA wins

Indiana's qualifying counties aren't confined to one corner of the state. They run from the Indianapolis metro and its ring of suburbs, through Lafayette and the Wabash Valley, up into the Gary and South Bend areas near Lake Michigan, and across most of southern and eastern Indiana. Savings for 2026 run from about 22.9% to 38.4% below the small-group benchmark, averaging 32.6% across the 75 qualifying counties.

Marion County, home to Indianapolis and by far the state's largest county by population, qualifies at 36.5%, well above the statewide qualifying average. Lake County, anchoring the Gary and Hammond area near Chicago, qualifies at a close 35.8%. Hamilton County, the wealthy Indianapolis suburb that includes Carmel and Fishers, qualifies too, but at a noticeably thinner 28% spread, a reminder that "Indianapolis metro" isn't one uniform market: the affluent suburban ring shows a smaller gap between individual and small-group pricing than the urban core or the more rural counties around it.

See the full Indiana savings breakdown for every qualifying county, or the national savings map to check a specific county by name.

Why Allen County isn't on the list

Allen County, home to Fort Wayne and the state's second-largest city, does not currently appear on the qualifying list. Neither do Clark and Floyd Counties across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, nor 14 other counties concentrated in the northeastern corner near the Michigan and Ohio borders (DeKalb, Huntington, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben, Wabash, Wells and Whitley) and along the southern border (Crawford, Harrison, Jefferson, Scott and Washington).

This isn't a data gap. It reflects the same mechanical pattern that shows up in every state we've mapped: a county's individual-market and small-group benchmark premiums land close together, or the individual benchmark lands above small group, in markets where the small-group book is already comparatively price-competitive relative to the individual market. Fort Wayne has a long-established base of manufacturing and healthcare employers that lean on group coverage, which tends to keep the small-group market itself more competitively priced there than in counties with a thinner large-employer base. That dynamic doesn't make ICHRA a bad idea for a Fort Wayne employer. It means that, for the specific 2026 rate filings behind this dataset, the individual-versus-small-group spread there hasn't opened up the way it has in Indianapolis, Lafayette or rural Indiana.

For an employer headquartered in Fort Wayne, the practical takeaway isn't "ICHRA doesn't work for us." It's "check every county your workforce actually lives in, not just your headquarters address." A Fort Wayne company with remote or field staff in Whitley's neighboring counties or further out already has part of its workforce inside a qualifying county today. And because carriers file new rates every plan year, especially with the sharp 2027 individual-market moves already in motion statewide, Allen County entering the qualifying list for a future plan year is a realistic scenario worth rechecking at the next renewal, not a permanent no.

A worked example: Indianapolis versus Fort Wayne

Here's what the county-level math actually looks like for a small employer with a split Indiana workforce, using real 2026 rate data for a qualifying county. Assume a 20-employee company with 14 employees in Marion County (Indianapolis metro, qualifying) and 6 employees in Allen County (Fort Wayne, not currently qualifying).

Notice what this example does not do: claim a single statewide "Indiana saves X%" figure. A headline like that would hide the fact that Marion's math clears easily while Allen's, as of this dataset, doesn't clear at all. Checking counties individually, not trusting a state average, is the entire argument for county-level data.

Scale the same math to a bigger, more realistic Indiana employer. A 50-person firm centered on Indianapolis and its qualifying suburbs, all in counties averaging near Marion's spread, could see an estimated $113,064 a year in aggregate savings if it funded ICHRA contributions at the benchmark level across the board (50 x $2,261). That isn't a guarantee. It assumes every employee enrolls in a plan priced near the benchmark, and real households will land above or below it depending on age, plan choice and household size. It is, however, a real number built from real 2026 rate data, not a sales estimate.

The affordability test, in plain numbers

Every ICHRA has to clear the IRS's affordability test to avoid pushing an eligible employee's premium tax credit decision the wrong way. Under IRS Revenue Procedure 2026-26, the required contribution percentage for plan years beginning in 2027 rises to 10.22% of household income, up from 9.96% for 2026, the highest the percentage has been since it was first indexed. In plain terms: an employer's ICHRA is considered affordable for an employee if that employee's own required monthly contribution toward the lowest-cost silver plan in their rating area doesn't exceed 10.22% of their household income, divided by 12.

Why more Indiana employers are looking at this now

Indiana's rate filings aren't happening in a vacuum. The HRA Council, an industry association that aggregates anonymized enrollment data from its member organizations, released its newest annual report on August 12, 2026: Growth Trends for ICHRA & QSEHRA, Vol. 5. It found that more than 20,000 US businesses now offer ICHRA or QSEHRA, covering at least 500,000 employees nationally, and that Applicable Large Employers are the fastest-growing segment of ICHRA adoption, more than doubling on average since last year. Among small employers, more than two-thirds of those offering ICHRA, and 93% of those newly offering QSEHRA in 2026, had previously offered no health coverage at all. Nearly a third of small employers adopting ICHRA in 2026 switched over from a small-group plan, so it isn't purely a "first benefit" story anymore either.

That distinction matters for an Indiana employer weighing this for the first time. On the current individual marketplace, Indiana had 300,049 people enrolled during the 2026 open enrollment period, paying an average of $623 a month before subsidies and $222 a month after, with about 83% of enrollees receiving a subsidy averaging $481 a month, according to CMS's 2026 Open Enrollment Period state-level public use file. For most small businesses in the state's 75 qualifying counties, the realistic comparison isn't "ICHRA versus our current group plan." It's "ICHRA versus offering nothing," which is a much easier case to make when you're competing for talent against employers who already offer some kind of benefit, and a more urgent one with 2026 individual rates already up 26.3% and 2027 filings adding more on top. The IRS, DOL and HHS final rule that created ICHRA in 2020 sets no employer size minimum at all; a single-employee company can offer one on the same terms as a 500-person company, part of why adoption keeps climbing fastest among the smallest employers in the HRA Council's data.

How ICHRA Savings helps

None of the county math above requires talking to anyone. The savings map lets you look up every Indiana county by name and see the same individual-market and small-group benchmark premiums used in this article, so you can check whether your specific workforce sits inside a qualifying county before you spend time on anything else. Beyond the map, we help employers design and set up an ICHRA: building employee classes correctly, modeling affordability against your real census instead of a rule of thumb, and getting the required employee notice right and on time. We don't pick your employees' plans for them; that decision, and the choice of network, stays with each person buying their own coverage. Our part is the budget, the design and the compliance scaffolding around it.

Before anything else, check whether your county is one where this works: https://ichrasavings.com/ichra-savings-map/. Ten minutes there tells you whether the rest of this process is worth starting.

Setting up an ICHRA in Indiana

Indiana doesn't add state-specific ICHRA rules on top of the federal framework. The same IRS, DOL and HHS final rule that governs ICHRA everywhere applies here, and the setup sequence is identical to any other state:

1. Pull your census by county, not by office address. A company headquartered in Fort Wayne with field or remote staff in Indianapolis or Lafayette has two very different rate-spread stories.
2. Check each employee's county on the savings map. Don't assume a statewide average applies, and don't assume your Fort Wayne address rules it out for your whole team.
3. Model affordability using the 2027 threshold. At 10.22% of household income, the required contribution percentage is higher than it has ever been, which changes how much an ICHRA contribution needs to cover to count as affordable.
4. Define employee classes carefully, if you use them. An employee class is a group defined by an objective factor the IRS permits, such as full-time versus part-time status, geographic location, or salaried versus hourly work. Class rules carry minimum-size requirements and cannot offer the same class a choice between ICHRA and group coverage.
5. Send the required notice on time. Under the federal ICHRA final rule, eligible employees generally need written notice at least 90 days before the plan year starts, with specific required content about the offer and its effect on subsidy eligibility.
6. Budget for onboarding support. Employees who have never shopped Indiana's individual marketplace on their own need guidance, once, at enrollment, especially this year with two carriers exiting and members needing to actively pick a new plan.

See our full ICHRA setup timeline for the detailed rollout plan, including the exact notice content requirements.

Where small group still wins

How these numbers are calculated

Every county figure in this article comes from the same dataset that powers our savings map, not from a survey or a sales estimate. For each of Indiana's 92 counties, we compare a 2026 individual-market benchmark premium, the second-lowest-cost silver plan available to a representative enrollee, the same benchmark the federal government uses to calculate premium tax credits, against a small-group benchmark premium built from comparable small-group plan filings for that county's rating area. Both figures are cross-verified against CMS public-use marketplace files before publication. A county "qualifies" when the individual benchmark sits below the small-group benchmark; the percentage and dollar savings figures in this article are the gap between those two numbers, expressed as an annual per-employee figure at 12 times the monthly difference. This article's county figures are pinned to the same dataset snapshot used across our state guides, so the numbers here stay stable even as our live savings map is updated with newer benchmark methodology. The separate 2026 and 2027 rate-filing figures in this article come from Indiana Department of Insurance and SERFF filings as compiled by ACA Signups, and are not reflected in the county-level qualifying dataset above, which uses the 2026 benchmark comparison described here.

Three limitations are worth stating plainly. First, benchmark premiums are built around a representative enrollee profile, so an unusually young or unusually old workforce will see a different real-world spread than the county average implies. Second, these are benchmark plans, not every plan on the market; an employee who chooses a richer or leaner plan than the benchmark will see a different premium, though the relative spread tends to hold directionally. Third, rates are filed and refreshed annually, so a county that qualifies for 2026 is not guaranteed to qualify for 2027 once the current filings are approved, and a county that doesn't qualify today, including Allen County, could qualify next year. We rebuild this dataset each plan year rather than reusing prior-year figures, and we recommend employers do the same before every renewal.

Questions Indiana employers actually ask