DATE: Monday, November 10, 2025
Please share this information with your Servicing Personnel Office and all appropriate staff.
This year’s Federal Benefits Open Season runs from November 10 through December 8, 2025. The Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Benefits Administration Letters (BALs) can be found here:
400 Series – Federal Benefits Open Season Announcements
In the 2025 Federal Benefits Open Season: Significant Plan Changes (BAL 25-401) and subsequent attachments, OPM outlines the terminating plans and plans that are reducing areas of coverage. Employees currently enrolled in a terminating health plan, or affected by a plan reducing its coverage area, should make a new valid health benefits election through Employee Express or their Servicing Personnel Office (SPO) during Open Season.
Agency Action Required: Terminating Plans
On November 12, 2025, IBC’s Benefits Processing Branch will provide agency SPOs with a query identifying impacted employees in the terminating plans. Please notify these employees that their current health plan is being terminated and encourage them to make a new election in Employee Express. If a SPO does not receive a query, it means that no employees have been identified in the affected plans for that SPO.
If these employees do not make an election during Open Season, the SPO will need to transfer these employees into the lowest cost provider per the BAL 25-401 and our Client Interface Guide. The lowest cost provider for 2026 is the GEHA Benefit Plan – High Option. To complete this transfer, the SPO needs to enter the most current SF 2809 Health Benefits Election Form information into FPPS under the FEHB command. This is the only way to properly build the information in FPPS so it can be transmitted to OPM and to the health benefit carrier.
Resources:
- 2025 Benefits Administration Letters: Federal Benefits Open Season Announcements (400 Series)
- Client Interface Guide
Questions:
- If SPOs have any questions, please contact Duke Dupre, Benefits Processing Branch Chief at Duke_Dupre@ibc.doi.gov or 303-969-7487.