The executive mental health benefit a benefits broker can place with confidence.
Your most demanding clients have a mental health problem their current program does not touch. The senior people the business runs on will not walk into a company channel, so the line item gets paid for and goes unused at the level where going without costs the most. CEREVITY is the confidential, private-pay layer you can place above whatever they already have, without disturbing the incumbent vendor or the renewal.
A benefits broker can place CEREVITY as an executive-tier mental health benefit: confidential, private-pay therapy with senior independent clinicians, delivered by secure telehealth in all 50 states and sponsored by the employer. It sits above the EAP for the leaders an EAP never reaches, creates no health-plan claim record, and is scoped and live in about 30 days.
What CEREVITY is.
A nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians, packaged as a leadership-tier benefit an advisor can place.
CEREVITY is a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians providing private-pay therapy by secure telehealth across all 50 states. It is not an app, not a coaching marketplace, and not an employee assistance program. Each leader is matched by hand to a clinician experienced with high-responsibility roles, and keeps that clinician over time rather than restarting with whoever is free.
The model is easy to explain in a renewal meeting. Care is private pay, and no claim is filed against the client health plan, so nothing lands in claims data and nothing moves the medical trend the client is already arguing about. The benefit sits above the existing program rather than replacing it, which means no incumbent has to be unseated for the recommendation to be written.
The employer-facing version of this material lives on the executive mental health benefit page for companies, which is the page to forward when a client asks in writing what they would actually be buying.
Why this sits on your side of the table.
The advisor owns the recommendation, and the recommendation is increasingly what the account turns on.
Nothing about a client senior population is served well by the stack that serves everyone else. General programs are designed for volume, short episodes, and low friction. The people at the top present with the opposite profile: long-running pressure, high exposure, an absolute requirement that nobody at work knows, and no patience for a clinician who has never sat with someone carrying that load. An advisor holding only a general vendor has nothing to say when a chief financial officer asks, quietly and late in the meeting, what the chief executive is supposed to do.
That gap is not academic. It sits inside the one relationship an advisor cannot afford to lose, and the client knows whose recommendation put the current program in place.
of employers turn to their brokers or benefits advisors to identify and evaluate the options and select the benefits that suit their employee base. The recommendation is the product. Source: LIMRA, The Future Is Now: Workplace Benefits Distribution Amid a Changing Landscape, April 2025.
Placement power cuts both ways. The same period that shows employers leaning harder on their advisors also shows those relationships getting markedly less durable, and the reason employers name most often is the bench: they want an advisor who can reach a broader set of solutions than the incumbent menu. A senior-tier mental health option is one of the few additions that is small to administer, visible to the exact people who decide the renewal, and difficult for a general vendor to imitate. The reasoning behind why executives do not use the EAP is worth reading before the next renewal conversation.
Utilization is the awkward number in that conversation. Employer-reported use of assistance programs has stayed below 10 percent for as long as anyone has measured it, with the most commonly reported band running from about 2 to 8 percent of employees in a year. A line item that reaches under a tenth of the population it was bought for is not a solution for the executive floor, and the advisor who names that before the client does is the one who gets to propose the fix. Our comparison of an assistance program against private therapy sets out the structural reasons rather than the marketing ones.
Source · Leader's Edge (Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers) with McKinsey and Company, The State of Benefits Satisfaction, September 2025.
What the senior population actually brings.
The presenting issues behind the performance, in language a client leadership team would recognize on sight.
Sustained overload
Years of carrying the number with no break long enough to recover in. It presents as irritability, cynicism, and a slow loss of interest in work the person used to like, which is the territory executive burnout therapy is built for.
Isolation at the top
No peer inside the company, and a board that evaluates rather than confides. Senior leaders absorb every hard call alone, which is the exact pattern leadership isolation therapy exists for.
Fear of the record
The most common reason a senior person declines help is not cost. It is the belief that a company channel creates a record somebody will eventually read, which is why care with no records the employer sees is the first question to answer, not the last.
High-stakes anxiety
Board meetings, earnings, diligence, and reductions concentrate a year of exposure into a handful of days. High-stakes anxiety degrades judgment well before anyone in the room calls it a problem.
Sleep that will not come
The mind that will not switch off once the day ends. Chronic short sleep erodes precisely the recovery that decision quality depends on, and executive insomnia is among the earliest signals worth catching.
The load on people leaders
The person administering the benefit is often having the hardest year of their career and has the fewest safe places to say so. Support for human resources leaders belongs inside the same arrangement rather than as an afterthought.
Decision fatigue
Hundreds of consequential calls a quarter, all drawing on one finite capacity. It shows up as avoidance and reversal rather than as tiredness, and decision fatigue therapy addresses the mechanism rather than the symptom.
Strain at home
The hours and the mental load follow leaders home, and partners carry the overflow of a job that never pauses. Couples therapy sits inside the network for exactly this reason.
Nobody remembers which carrier you placed. They remember the one thing you brought that nobody else could.
Session formats that survive an executive calendar.
Three lengths, no rigid weekly slot.
The steady cadence of ongoing therapy. Most clients spend most of their care in 50-minute sessions.
For work that needs more room than a standard hour can hold. See 90-minute sessions.
For work that needs uninterrupted time to reach resolution. See 3-hour therapy intensives.
Care is delivered in 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour sessions by secure telehealth, nationwide. A leader between board meetings can do real work in a single 90-minute or 3-hour block instead of defending a standing weekly appointment that travel will break within a month. Continuity holds because the leader keeps the same clinician throughout, and modality is matched at intake rather than assigned by whoever answers. When a situation is urgent, same-week access is the norm rather than the exception.
Bring a client something the incumbent cannot.
A confidential conversation about a leadership-tier benefit takes one call. Nothing about it touches the client health plan or the medical renewal.
Start a partnership conversationHow a senior leader is matched.
Every leader is matched by hand, not by an algorithm running against an intake form.
The eligible individual submits a confidential intake form covering presenting issues, modality preference, professional context, and scheduling parameters. Operated by CEREVITY directly, not by a broker.
Intake is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership against the network's active capacity, current licensure footprint, and modality availability. This is the step that does not exist in an EAP.
A specific clinician is matched to the senior leader, who receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
Scheduling runs directly through CEREVITY infrastructure with no phone handoff. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of the match.
Care continues on the cadence the clinical work requires, in 50-minute, 90-minute, or 3-hour sessions, without an employer-imposed session cap.
Capability comparison for benefits brokers and consultants.
An evaluation framework on the dimensions that come up when an advisor scopes a leadership-tier offering. All three models have a place; they were designed for different populations. One note on wording: the broker layer named in the assistance program column is the vendor subcontractor roster, not the placing advisor.
| Dimension | Typical EAP | Executive-tier platform | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between employer and contractor roster | Single-vendor platform, W-2 or contracted pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review by network leadership |
| Intake and scheduling | Phone handoff to the clinician's line | App-based intake and scheduling | Network-operated intake, direct online scheduling |
| Session formats | Standard 50-minute, capped session counts | Standard 45 to 50-minute sessions | 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour formats, no cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable concerns | Workforce-wide, executive tier as an upsell | Built around the presenting issues of senior leaders |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy | Generalist therapy with some specialty | CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, IFS, matched at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density | National telehealth, roster variance | All 50 states via telehealth |
| Payment model | Employer-sponsored, in network | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private pay, out of network, partnership agreement |
| Employer visibility | Aggregate, broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement metrics | Administrative reporting only |
| Right fit for | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing care with an executive add-on | benefits brokers and consultants, end to end |
When a client runs a formal evaluation, the criteria in our note on choosing a wellness vendor for senior teams map onto most request-for-proposal grids without rewriting.
What the employer sees, and what it does not.
For a leadership-tier channel to function at all, the participating leader has to trust that engaging with it creates no visibility into their care. CEREVITY is built around that requirement, and in practice it is the part of the conversation that closes the room.
- Confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals.
- Aggregate utilization at the partnership level, where contractually appropriate.
- Invoicing and eligibility reconciliation.
- Nothing tied to a specific named senior leader's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named senior leader has scheduled, attended, or engaged.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, or diagnostic information.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians are independent licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. Protected health information is held within the clinical infrastructure, and the agreements governing it are defined in writing before the partnership goes live. Our notice of privacy practices and privacy policy are published in full.
Clinical records, session content, and individual engagement data sit inside the clinical platform. The administrative layer the partner interacts with is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed at the point of intake. Administering eligibility does not require the partner to receive clinical information back.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed where the partnership structure requires it, and whether one applies is a determination made with counsel rather than assumed. The partnership agreement defines the administrative reporting scope in writing before anything goes live. See also our terms of service.
The question a senior client asks before any other is what shows up later, and to whom. It is answered directly in the confidentiality premium, which is a useful thing to have already sent before the meeting.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a leadership-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first senior leader in care.
A 60-minute kickoff with your team and CEREVITY's partnership lead. We confirm the partnership shape, the eligibility model, the administrative reporting scope, and the internal owner. The BAA, where applicable, is executed.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list. CEREVITY confirms it against the network and establishes the verification path at intake. Only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, leadership-tier comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. It is written to be received without stigma.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days. By day 30 the partnership is operational and a quarterly review cadence is in place.
The business case for the client, and for you.
Retention of senior people, sustained decision quality, and recruiting are the client levers. The advisor lever is the account itself.
Retention of senior people
Losing one senior leader is among the most expensive events on a client people budget, and the loss usually arrives with no warning anyone could have acted on. Confidential clinical care is one of the few interventions that reaches the people least likely to raise a hand, which is why leadership retention is the cleanest frame for this line item.
Sustained decision quality
Judgment, focus, and follow-through degrade under chronic unmanaged stress long before anyone steps back, and the cost lands as slow decisions and quiet errors rather than as absence. The measurable version of that is presenteeism, and it is routinely larger than the absence line a client already tracks.
The account, and the next one
Employers name access to a wider set of solutions as the leading reason they change advisors, so a differentiated senior-tier option defends the relationship as directly as it serves the population. It also travels: the same structure supports retaining top talent at the next client in the book.
Questions brokers and consultants ask first.
What mental health benefit should a benefits broker recommend for senior leaders?
One the senior population will actually use, which in practice means confidential, private pay, outside the health plan, and staffed by clinicians who work with high-responsibility people every week. General-population programs are the right tool for volume and the wrong tool for the executive floor. The cleanest structure is a narrow leadership-tier layer sitting above whatever the client already has, which is how a corporate mental health program is usually extended rather than replaced.
Do executives use EAPs?
Rarely, and the structure explains why. Employer-reported utilization of assistance programs has stayed below 10 percent across decades of measurement, with most employers reporting a band of roughly 2 to 8 percent of employees in a year. The format is built for short, acute, general-population episodes, and the access path runs through a company channel, which is the one thing a senior person will not do. The result is a benefit that is paid for and unused at precisely the level where going without costs the most.
How do benefits brokers partner with CEREVITY?
Through a written partnership agreement that defines scope, eligibility, reporting, and fees before anything goes live. Most advisors start with one client and one narrowly defined leadership cohort, then extend across the book once the first placement is running and the client has seen how it is received. The available models are set out on the partnerships page, and a conversation can start from the briefing form on this page.
Does this replace a client existing assistance program?
No. CEREVITY sits above it as a leadership-tier layer, so the incumbent stays in place and continues to serve the broader employee population at volume. That matters commercially as well as clinically: nothing has to be unseated, no existing contract has to be broken, and the recommendation does not put the rest of the client stack into play. Where a client does want to rethink the base layer, EAP alternatives covers the options.
Is this coaching or is it therapy?
Therapy, delivered by licensed clinicians, and it is a different product from executive coaching. Coaching is performance work and frequently reports back to the sponsor. Therapy is confidential clinical care with no stakeholder except the leader, addressing stress, anxiety, depression, and the personal weight of the role. The distinction is set out in leadership coaching versus therapy, which helps when a client compares line items.
How is confidentiality protected for a client senior leaders?
Care is private pay, so no claim is filed and nothing routes through the client health plan. There is no claim record for a benefits administrator, a carrier, or the employer to access. Sessions stay between the leader and the licensed clinician, who is bound by their own licensure confidentiality and privacy obligations. The employer receives administrative reporting only, and any governing agreement, including a Business Associate Agreement where counsel determines one applies, is defined in writing before the partnership goes live.
What does a leadership-tier mental health benefit cost the client?
Structure is agreed in the partnership conversation and depends on the size of the covered cohort and the scope of access. CEREVITY is a private-pay network with transparent fees, so nothing in the arrangement behaves like a medical claim and nothing arrives later as a surprise adjustment. Standard individual rates are published on the pricing page, the right document to attach to a client summary.
How does an advisor start a conversation with CEREVITY?
Use the briefing form on this page, call (562) 295-6650, or go through the contact page. A member of CEREVITY clinical leadership follows up directly and confidentially, and the first conversation is about scope and fit rather than paperwork.
Start a partnership conversation.
Tell us about the client, the cohort you want covered, and the renewal you are working toward. A member of CEREVITY clinical leadership will follow up directly and confidentially.
Further reading and related partnerships.
Research, buyer-side notes, benefit design, and the client populations CEREVITY supports.
Research and benchmarks
For brokers and advisors
Benefit design
A note on sources.
The placement figure is drawn from LIMRA research published in April 2025, reporting its study The Future Is Now: Workplace Benefits Distribution Amid a Changing Landscape, which finds that 79 percent of employers turn to their brokers or benefits advisors to help identify and evaluate options and select the benefits that best suit their employee base. Advisor-switching figures come from the McKinsey and Company 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey of roughly 1,900 employers, published by Leader's Edge in September 2025, which reports that the share of employers with no plans to switch advisor fell to 18 percent in 2025 from 31 percent in 2024. Utilization is characterized in the terms used by Brooks and Ling in the Journal of Insurance Regulation, who write that utilization remains typically below 10 percent and report a study by Compton and McManus of 44 organizations in which roughly 47 percent of employers placed annual utilization between 2.1 and 8 percent and only 19 percent placed it above 8 percent. The observation that senior leaders are themselves at risk is supported by Deloitte research conducted with Workplace Intelligence, a 2022 survey in which nearly 70 percent of the 1,050 senior leaders polled said they were seriously considering leaving for a role that would better support their well-being. The structural comparison on this page is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians who have served on assistance program panels, combined with publicly available vendor materials. Specific contractual scopes, including any Business Associate Agreement, are confirmed in writing in the partnership agreement before a partnership goes live. Additional CEREVITY research is collected in the knowledge base.