The roots of EBC lie in a group of people who worked for the mainstream consultancies, could see the errors that were being made and wanted to try and do things differently. This doesn’t mean that these businesses were bad, just that there were certain things that really annoyed the people who set up EBC and made us determined to do things differently. Please note, this also doesn’t mean that we think we are perfect – we are not. Nor does it mean that we don’t make mistakes, we do. All it means is that in the following areas, we’ve tried to have a different approach, and to date our instincts seem to be working out all right for us.
Nowhere is this truer than in respect of the cost of Benefits Platforms for UK employers. Key to this approach was to offer Benefits Platform Technology at an affordable price. We know that we do, as we have now been involved in many, many tenders in the UK market and we are consistently at the bottom end of the pricing spectrum. This isn’t always as positive for us, as sometimes people are so used to the ‘current market’ way of doing things that they think we’ve made an error, or that our offer is ‘too good to be true’. Luckily for us, we have a large range of clients who have taken the leap of faith to try a new player and found that we walk the walk with our Benefits Platform services.
The Problems with Benefits Platforms
There are 5 main reasons for the high cost of Benefits Platforms for UK employers:
- Not passing on the savings generated by modern technology.
- Lack of automation.
- Focus on peripheral functionality over core functionality.
- Over specialisation.
- Not offering pricing based on scale.
Twenty years ago, establishing a website for anything was expensive. Now, it is cheap. The technology has come a long way in 20 years, reaching the point that you can set up an online website with shop for your business in under an hour with the right package. The same story is true in respect of Benefits Platforms and yet the pricing from the leading providers remains the same, if not considerably higher. How can technology have improved so rapidly, but the savings not be passed on to businesses by the biggest market players?
AI is due to be a potential game changer in many areas of business, should it work, and its reliability improve. In Benefits Platform Technology, it can really be a game changer. Not only can it help with employee queries, but it can hopefully revolutionise data analysis and with agentic AI it might even be able to make elections for us or highlight the best deals whilst we get on with other things. AI is the latest in a range of tools that have made Benefits Platforms easier to run and automate. Yet, the cost savings generated by this is not being passed on to businesses by the biggest market players.
I worked in ‘Flexible Benefits’ for many years at a leading supplier. The whole point of these platforms is to highlight the importance of employee benefits. Without a decent pension or private medical insurance scheme, there would be little interest in the technology – which is simply a communication, selection and administration tool for the benefits offered to employees. Yet, time and time again I saw investments being made in minor ‘back end’ tools or peripheral functionality over making the customer journey / selection process as short and painless as possible and making sure that interesting and innovative benefits and services were on the platform for employees to discover.
At EBC we try to make our Benefits Platforms as simple as possible for everyone. This defacto makes them cheaper to run. The big players seem obsessed with making everything as complex as possible. As we like to say in consultancy, complexity equals cost. That is why when a major provider turns up to a meeting, they bring 8 people with them and charge you for them turning up. How do we have businesses left in the UK that charge their customers to speak to them? It’s bonkers! Our Founders realised that if you made the Benefits Platform and associated services as simple as possible for those customers who wanted simplicity, then you don’t need 8 people to run one and you can charge a more effective price. Now, I love a chorus line as much as the next person but remember that you pay for it.
The final part of our approach to the competitive pricing of Benefits Platforms is that we recognise that it is complimentary to Benefits Consultancy. Ideally, you want to offer both services to a client. So, as a business, we only look to offer our Benefits Platform to Consultancy Clients where we can. We offer a significant discount where clients take out all our services as we benefit from the income from both Platform and Consulting services. We also believe in price transparency and consistency wherever possible, offering two-year fixed fees with little scope for additional charges for services not covered in the fees. Crazy, I know and nothing like the experience of working ‘with’ the major market players. Yet this isn’t a problem for us, we make more money when we work with clients across all of their employee benefit services and working on both platform and benefits at the same time makes the work easier – so we can pass on the cost savings to you!
We don’t think our approach is perfect for every UK business. We understand that there are good reasons for businesses to work with the major market players. Our success is not built on their failure as business is not a zero-sum game. All we ask is that if you read this far and find yourself agreeing with our critique, why not contact EBC about how we can help you and, very likely, save you some money.
