Companies go to a lot of trouble to create attractive benefits packages to appeal to good employees and retain them. The trouble is that a lot of employees don’t know what they’re getting. A recent survey found that more than a third of employees don’t understand what benefits they sign up for during open enrollment. Worse, over half of younger workers don’t understand their benefits package.
A big part of the problem is that benefits at many companies run on antiquated legacy systems that are hard to use, inefficient, and require lots of helping hands to tailor packages. It’s an area of business that is ripe for a digital makeover.
This is where Elevate comes in. Elevate is solving a lot of the complexity around benefits, particularly consumer-directed benefits (CDB) like health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, commuter benefits, and flexible spending accounts. Benefits like these are notoriously complicated—and they’re also very important, because they keep employees healthy and productive.
Over 100 million U.S. employees are signed up for CDB, which means that Elevate is addressing a very large market with a lot of potential for growth.
CDB needs a digital makeover
Tackling legacy systems and bringing them into the 21st century is all about reducing paper and touches by people and boosting overall efficiency by leveraging automation.
Elevate’s platform is built on an advanced software architecture that offers a full suite of benefits across health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, and flexible spending accounts, as well as commuter benefits. Organizations can use Elevate to create custom-tailored solutions to meet various employee needs, along with efficient funding and reporting solutions. With Elevate, funding and reimbursements happen with a click.
This is a big step forward. Traditionally, CDB has been done manually. Employees hand over their receipts and get reimbursed later—often much later. It’s a tedious process that takes too much time from employees and employers. Many organizations are forced to maintain large call centers to deal with the process of reimbursement. In other situations, employees must keep track of multiple cards for multiple benefits.
Some $4 billion a year is now spent on the CDB market—and that’s only the beginning of the opportunity for Elevate, as there is a sizable upside if it can make CDB benefits more attractive to companies and employees and spur greater adoption.
Elevate’s team brings deep experience
The team driving Elevate has broad and deep expertise in the world of benefits. The team boasts decades of experience working with Fortune 1000 employers and brings extensive knowledge to corporate benefits teams.
Indeed, Elevate has assembled the strongest team we’ve seen to-date in this space and is poised to disrupt the CDB market. The team comes from WageWorks, Businessolver, and ConnectYourCare. My own background as an executive at WageWorks nicely complements the talents of the Elevate team.
The outlook is healthy
For years now, companies have been working to transform their traditional processes and automate their legacy workflows to meet the demands of today’s digital consumers. This digital transformation will accelerate and, in the CDB space, it will bring healthy outcomes to organizations.
