Employee benefits platform Ben raises $16M to cut HR admin – TechCrunch
Summary
Employee benefits platform Ben today announced it has raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding led by European VC giant Atomico.While salary is undoubtedly the main draw in a companys compensation offer, additional perks can help sweeten the deal for current or would-be employees this could be anything from gym subsidies or an e-bike subscription, to meal allowances and mental well-being support. But curating and bundling all these various benefits is a massively resource-intensive endeavor, something that Ben is setting out to solve.Founded out of London in 2019, Ben is a SaaS platform that offers core employment benefits such as life insurance, health and pension, as well as more lifestyle-based nice-to-haves such as gym memberships and work-from-home allowances.While Ben is aimed at the human resources (HR) realm, it essentially straddles both the HR and fintech divide, integrating with systems spanning accounting, HR and payroll to automate many of the onboarding and enrollment processes. Through the platform, employers can set budgets and spend controls for each workers perks, as well as facilitate the entire payments process to the service provider. This both expands choice greatly while also minimizing time-consuming admin.A quick peek across the employee benefits landscape reveals a number of similar companies, including Forma, which announced a $40 million Series B round of funding back in March, while London-based Juno secured a $4 million round.Ben, for its part, is pitching its end-to-end flexibility and comprehensiveness of its benefits as one of its core differentiators, spanning regulated core (e.g. life insurance and pensions) products and lifestyle (e.g. gyms) perks.On the core front, were able to provide country-specific coverage through our global broker network and enrolment technology, Ben co-founder and COO David Duckworth said. On the lifestyle front, we have relationships with benefits suppliers and can enable spend controls on the Ben Mastercard to turn any merchant into a benefit, including spending Lifestyle budgets on core products.On top of that, Duckworth also pointed to the fact that Ben is an open platform that isnt locked into a set range of benefits.Companies are not limited to specific providers and can bring their own providers and broker relationships, while Ben takes over the ongoing administration, he said.Its also worth noting that a key premise behind the extensiveness and flexibility of the benefits on offer is that different people have different needs, depending on a multitude of factors including their age.This is the first time in history that four generations coexist in the workforce at the same time, Fallert added.