Scout InsurTech Interview with Noyo

Noyo is a benefits data platform. They seek to power the modern benefits experience by delivering the technology, automation and tools to move the entire industry forward. Chris Luiz sat with Senior Director of Growth, Andy Hutter, to learn more about how Noyo is impacting the industry.

Who are your clients?

Noyo is a data platform enabling the seamless exchange of benefits enrollment information. We serve both sides of the group benefits market: insurance carriers (UHC, Anthem, Principal, Guardian, etc) on one side and HRIS and benadmin platforms (Workday, Gusto, Rippling, Plansource) on the other.

What does your product do?

Our product is a data platform and API interface that connects benefits carriers and ben-admin companies. Noyo enables carriers to offer a modern enrollment experience
to HR teams (no faxes, forms or giant spreadsheets!) and gives ben-admin technology companies an easy, fast and accurate way to transmit crucial employee data to a wide network of insurance carriers without building expensive direct connections. 

How much capital have you raised?

Noyo has raised $60M.

Was the company born from within or outside the industry?

It was born from within. Noyo was founded by three early employees at Zenefits. At the time, they were new to the employee benefits industry and tried to approach entrenched problems with data and connectivity with a modern technologist mindset. Their challenges with carrier connections and enrollment processing at Zenefits informed the idea that became Noyo.

What growth metrics have you accomplished over the last 12 months?

Noyo facilitates enrollment and eligibility for millions of insurance policies. We do this work on behalf of some of the best-known and fastest-growing ben-admin companies in the industry, and for nearly all of the major insurance companies that offer health and ancillary benefits (including UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Anthem, Humana, Principal, Guardian, Ameritas, Beam Benefits and more). Our data platform is a highly automated rules-driven engine that completes enrollments and changes at over 95 percent accuracy, without the need for old-school file ingestion and manual error review.

Within your domain, what is the current challenge that the industry is facing?

1. Aligning consumer expectations and ROI

It’s no secret that consumer behavior and expectations continue to evolve. Group benefits have perhaps lagged behind other sectors in terms of breadth and depth of investment and technology disruption, but it’s catching up quickly. Employees want it to be easy to enroll in coverage (and get confirmation that they’re enrolled), brokers want to manage all their clients in one place and HR admins want a simple way to manage payroll deductions, QLEs and support on behalf of their employees. The challenge for carriers has been directly linking the improved consumer experience that API-powered enrollment delivers with a resulting lift in new sales and persistence. 

2. Outdated and unbalanced funding and compensation models

There are still many disincentives to change in this industry, which has been built on long-term relationships, trust and expensive legacy service layers. Large portions of carrier-loss ratios are spent on consultants, general agencies and TPAs for work that’s becoming automated through APIs and other technologies (like filling out paper forms, calling carriers for support, setting up groups, processing enrollment changes or using carrier portals). That disrupts the status quo and creates an awkward but necessary period of transition from the old and expensive ways of doing things to the new and efficient ways. That tension is real, and Noyo carefully works our way through it every day.

How does Noyo take a unique approach to providing value?

Noyo enables a modern API enrollment experience with virtually any insurance carrier. Our platform allows ben-admins to ditch EDI files, portals and paper and scale connections faster at a fraction of the cost of building direct integrations. Noyo partners get automated workflows and real-time visibility with a simple, standard data format for every insurance carrier. Noyo manages all maintenance and upgrades for each carrier, freeing up teams to focus on other priorities. 

What inspired the team to start this company?

While at Zenefits, the Noyo founders ran into many of the data exchange challenges I’ve described here, and they were faced with the harsh reality that nobody was motivated to solve them. They realized that in order to holistically address the problems with how enrollment data was exchanged, they would need to be outside of any one insurance carrier or ben-admin and instead found their own organization that would be ideally positioned between the two parties. 

Can you share any goal(s) for the next 12-months?

Noyo has spent several years doing the hard work of building custom API and high-automation file integrations with most of the largest employee benefits carriers in the country. In the next year, we will expand upon our core enrollment products to address the challenges associated with group and plan data and explore additional solutions in other areas of the benefits installation and fulfillment journey. 

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