The benefits platform aligns with policy and regulations from federal and state agencies like ERISA, the IRS and the Department of Labor, easing the compliance requirements that accompany executive benefits.
The executive benefits business needs to scale, says Nienaber, because demand for benefits packages has become widespread.
“Whereas before our starting point was companies doing $50 million in revenue or higher, we’re now seeing bonus programs for companies doing $3 million in revenue,” says Nienaber. “Small businesses, if they want to keep one or two people, they’ll try to do something beyond normal compensation. We’re seeing this happen in restaurants and tire shops – small, normal companies are coming into the picture, and it’s absolutely changing the marketplace.”
Whereas benefitRFP targets executive benefits for the top tiers of the corporate world, Nations Choice is targeting businesses in general while including the executive benefits functionality of its predecessor.
Nienaber says that Nations Choice goes beyond a simple insurance platform, combining business planning, wealth management, commercial insurance and executive benefits on a digital platform.
With the benefitRFP infrastructure, Nations Choice will perform a full risk assessment and seek to fill any gap in a company’s insurance, risk management and benefits offerings across its entire workforce.
“Then they can shop the marketplace for a product and get the cost down for the customer,” says Nienaber. “The real advantage is that they’re usually not just shopping for one item or one product, the platform brings a whole list of opportunities to the carriers.”
Though the benefitRFP platform wasn’t designed to analyze workplace retirement plans, Nienaber says that Nations Choice will also be able to give clients an idea of plan health.
Just as benefitRFP may now be applied to a larger client base via Nations Choice, BD Capital will in turn harness the technology to grow its practice of acquiring and streamlining independent insurance agencies.
“BD Capital was a small company with an already developed line of business accessing the client base we were most interested in working with,” says Nienaber. “We can grow side-by-side with them, with a branding that encompasses both of our businesses. It’s really a partnership, a relationship that we’re using to drive technologies.”