This tech company believes benefits management should be as easy as using Venmo

Once a year, employees enroll in benefits, ranging from healthcare and dental coverage to 401(k)s and life insurance — but do they really know what they’re signing up for and how it will impact their lives?

Americans listed health insurance as their most expensive medical expense, yet 44% have avoided care and services in the past year, according to data from insurtech company, HealthCareInsider. This points to a lack of understanding around benefits and what a health insurance plan actually covers, says Shannon Goggin, co-founder and CEO of tech company Noyo.

Bridging that comprehension gap is a benefits management problem, Goggin explains, and one that Noyo is attempting to rectify.

“It's difficult to get access to fundamental information and data about your coverage because a lot of that information has not been digitized,” says Goggin. “We are trying to make it possible for any company in the benefits ecosystem to safely share data with other parties.”

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While many insurtech companies, like Policygenius and Zipari, are developing consumer experience technology so employees better understand their coverage, it still takes collaboration with insurance providers. This can prove challenging, since insurance companies are not always technologically up-to-date.

To make that collaboration possible, Noyo uses application programming interface technology, enabling two different systems to securely communicate. This means benefits software developers at an insurtech company can get the information they need to make insurance a more accessible, user-friendly experience, explains Goggin.

“Insurance companies are trying to figure out how to be more consumer-friendly and how to meet their customers where they are,” she says. “The real way to do that is by being able to work seamlessly with all the software their customers want to use.”

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Goggin compares Noyo to the fintech company Plaid, which works to ensure that banks across the world can communicate with each other, making Venmo possible, for example. Plaid handles the security, compliance and accessibility challenges that come with paying someone through an app. That same concept can be applied to benefits, Goggin says.

“Employees do not have to engage with us directly,” she says. “Employers and employees can use their benefits software app while we are behind the scenes making it all hum.”

In fact, Noyo is not something employers even need to purchase. Instead, Noyo is licensed by insurance companies, since many need the API tech in order to connect to the software employers are already using. And as more insurance companies face criticism in the face of growing medical debt and financial insecurity, Goggin believes Noyo is an essential step in making benefits usable for employees, regardless of industry or company.

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“This is about creating an environment where individual consumers have the ability to sign up, understand and use their benefits in the context of their lives,” Goggin says. “Applications for online banking and flights are the types of consumer experiences that should also be available for benefits.”

As technology further develops and more insurtech startups enter the market, Goggin foresees benefits becoming integrated into users’ daily lives, as well as more personalized. For example, if someone wants to know whether they are covered for a specific surgery, they could check on their phone with the same ease as someone checking their flight’s wifi access, Goggin says.

“In the future, benefits will become more integrated into tools you use every day,” she says. “You will have more places to connect to your benefits account and a tapestry of options that are meaningful to you.”