The
Donald DeSantis, co-founder and chief product officer at benefits brokerage Nava Benefits, is working on creating the answer. DeSantis has led Nava's product and engineering team in building Nava Benefits Search Engine, a search engine that allows users to shop for benefits across 28 categories without a special login or fee.
"There are some fantastic brokers out there, but there are a lot of not fantastic brokers out there as well," says DeSantis. "We wanted to provide something that was trustworthy and unbiased."
Read more:
DeSantis and his team have dedicated themselves to expanding the vendors within the search engine as well as the reviews and information on each benefit available to users. Putting access and visibility first, DeSantis shares how he is working to revolutionize the benefits marketplace.
Why create a benefits search engine?
We spoke to hundreds of HR professionals, and they struggle to answer three basic questions: What benefits should we be offering; what vendors should we be looking at; and how much will this cost?
Read more:
We created a centralized source for all vendors in the benefits space without making it a pay-to-play system — no one can pay to be ranked higher or to be featured. If we can help somebody make a decision that's even 10% better for their employees, whether or not they're working with Nava, then that's success for us.
What challenges stood out to you over this last year?
HR professionals have their guards up. They are used to being pitched, a very opaque market. For us to come in and say, 'We're not getting paid for this' is such a foreign concept. They don't believe it. But we want to create a place that drives transparency, and our work is far from done.
