Honeybee Benefits with David Katz (EVP) | EP13

Fintech Impact

During the 13th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews David Katz, the Executive Vice President of Benecaid, a traditional health benefits platform where he runs a separate division called Honeybee their digital platform for their delivery of benefit solutions for advisors, underwriters, lawyers, and end-to-end users. David shares his journey to the creating of Honeybee, how it has progressed, and the industry problems that it is addressing.

● 01:31 – Honeybee is designed to allow employers to set up benefits account for their employees, health and allowance accounts, and the employees can use those account to personalize their benefits.

● 01:54 – David started his career as a lawyer practicing corporate commercial law for a little over four years.

● 05:39 – He really enjoyed the marketing and customer acquisition side.

● 06:01 – David focused on building an online community with Porfolios.com or professional commercial artists for advertising projects—with over 80,000 creatives on the platform.

● 10:41 – People using learn about benefits once you get your first job.

● 12:52 – When he looked at Honeybee the focus was on the problems that they have to solve: rising cost of benefits, multigenerational problem, lack of perceived value of these plans, and an employer’s culture.

● 17:17 – Companies can get to Honeybee a number of ways, but it starts with the advisor, who can have Honeybee on a tablet, do a video conference, or just send a link to a client who can self-serve.

● 17:47 – Employers provide some information about size and demographics of their company, match them with products, have them configure their group into “hives,” the employer sets up a health account, pick or not pick a dental plan, decide if you will add more for family, and funding for each hive.

● 26:32 – Bundling has made things easier for Honeybee.

● 29:03 – Allowance categories adds benefits for items such as kids, fitness and pets.

● 33:48 – Their offer network which gets create by the employee works similar to affiliate marketing networks.

● 35:39 – Honeybee has a per employee per month fee for the company from about $12.50-$20 with a portion of that going to the advisor.

● 38:34 – Honeybee wasn’t funding through bootstrapping for through VCs.

● 41:22 – Obstacles have stemmed around product, coming from the carriers.

● 44:31 – David Katz is excited that they can integrate with every form of business productivity software.

3 Key Points:

1. Honeybee focused on the problems that they have to solve: rising cost of benefits, multigenerational problem, lack of perceived value of these plans, and an employer’s culture.

2. Data sharing is a huge component of where Honeybee is going, but in a measured way.

3. The steps for Honeybee set-up include: employers provide some information about size and demographics of their company, match them with products, have them configure their group into “hives,” the employer sets up a health account, pick or not pick a dental plan, decide if you will add more for family, and funding for each hive.

Tweetable Quotes:

- “Honeybee is designed to allow employers to set up benefits account for their employees, health and allowance accounts, and the employees can use those account to personalize their benefits.” –David Katz.

- “You really have to think hard about distribution, and really understand what sells online, what transacts offline, and where the different value points are.” – David Katz.

- “Nothing gets on our platform if it doesn’t help the employer.” – David Katz.

Resources Mentioned:

· Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

· LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

· Honeybee – Website for Honeybee

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