Introducing Benefits— one API for end-to-end deduction and contribution management

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Benefits, a product that enables developers, benefits administrators, and employment providers to enable holistic benefits management—including benefits creation, employee enrollment, and deduction and contribution updates—across employment providers via a single API.

At Finch, we are on a mission to power the future of employment, and a huge piece of employment involves benefits. As the employee benefits landscape becomes increasingly digital and competitive, existing benefits providers need to be able to scale rapidly. In addition, benefits expectations have changed drastically over the past 18 months. From small businesses to large enterprises, there is more demand than ever from employees for quality benefits, and new solutions are popping up to fill those needs. We're excited for this new product to provide seamless control over benefits data so you can deliver these much-needed services to employers.

The current situation— multiple systems, complicated processes

Today, benefit providers sell to employers across a whole range of different employment systems, from Gusto™ to Zenefits to Insperity® and more. These benefits providers not only need the ability to retrieve employee records when a new member joins, but also process deductions and benefits enrollment to move money from payroll compliantly. The requirement to process deductions and enrollment is further complicated given money movement and employment regulations.

Existing solutions are error-prone and time-intensive

Today, there are generally three options for benefits providers—

• SFTP—Most of the health insurance, health benefits, and retirement sector currently upload files to be consumed via SFTP. This is the standard in the industry but it is not real-time and is prone to errors.
• Partnerships—Partnering directly with payroll providers can require several months of partnerships and business development effort on top of technical integration work.
• Product Operations— Building out an in-house product operations team to pull reports and manually make changes to the system.

Many times, this benefits infrastructure is cobbled together with millions of dollars in development cost and is extremely difficult to maintain. Benefits changes the game. We have rebuilt this infrastructure from the ground up using modern API connectivity. Gone are the days of depending on painful CSV uploads, antiquated SFTP transfers, or error-prone internal product operations teams. With Benefits, Finch's platform can support the growth and expansion of our partners for today's increasingly digital and fragmented employment landscape.

Easy to set up, robust functionality

Benefits is comprised of a few simple endpoints under /employer/benefits/ to set up company benefits as well as enroll individuals—

/employer/benefits

• Supports 17 benefit types (401(k), 403(b), HSA, FSA, and more)
• Provides detailed benefits information including frequency, company contributions, and employee deductions
• New company benefits can also be created via the API
• Robust feature set covering catch-up limits for retirement benefits, flexible annual maximums for HSAs, and other benefits-specific configurations

/employer/benefits/{benefit_id}/individuals

• Provide individual enrollment information including individual deductions, contribution limits, and other configuration information relevant to the specific benefit
• Individuals can be enrolled in and unenrolled from company benefits via the API

You can enable the benefits product for supported providers today by simply configuring your application to request permission for the new benefits scope on Finch Connect.

Trusted data integrity and security

As with all of our products, Finch takes data integrity and security very seriously, and our Benefits product is no different. None of this sensitive data is stored by Finch, but rather it is passed through from the application to the underlying provider. Since we are a pass-through layer, we build on top of all of the existing fail-safes for communicating issues and tracking deductions and contribution limits, just as the underlying payroll systems do.

Already improving acquisition and retention

Benefits is already being used by customers from sectors including HSA, FSA, 401(k), payroll-backed lending, and more. Hear directly from some of our customers—

Operational efficiency and employer coverage was a bottleneck to our sales efforts. Finch Benefits allowed us to drive real-time management around deductions and enrollment and therefore increase our customer acquisition and retention. Our sales and operations teams are extremely happy!

CPO of a large enterprise powering a new workplace savings program

Finch has allowed us to streamline our required integrations with our client's payroll administrators, freeing our clients and Lane Health from having to expend time and resources to perform these payroll system integrations and file exchanges.  By providing Lane Health with access to 95 payroll systems, we can deliver a superior client experience very effectively and efficiently.  Finch has and will continue to be a valued partner for enabling our growth and achieving our business goals.

Crystal Peel, VP of Client Solutions @ Lane Health

The Finch team have been valuable partners to us as we navigate the various complex aspects of 401(k) administration and compliance, and how payroll and contribution data factor into that equation. We couldn't be more pleased with our partnership with Finch so far and are equally excited for the future as Finch continues to evolve their service platform to include more valuable features and benefits.

Justin Young, Senior Manager of Product Development @ Slavic401k

We would like to extend a big thank you to all of our early users who provided invaluable feedback during the build!

Getting started with Benefits

If you’re an existing Finch customer, you can enable the Benefits product today by reaching out to your account manager to get started. Developers new to Finch can reach out to developers@tryfinch.com.

Stay tuned as we continue to update the endpoint with additional benefits categories. We look forward to supporting you in what you build next to create innovations for employers and employees.