Benefit Informatics acquired by Benefitfocus in August 2010. read more

Benefit Informatics was originally founded in 2000 by Philip Kurtz as Beninform Holdings, Inc. to develop technologies for the employee benefit market. But the company was originally conceived by Philip several years earlier while serving as CEO of CIS Technologies, a company in 1984 which eventually captured more than 50% market share in electronic claims processing for the U.S. hospital industry.

As the chief executive of CIS, Philip was faced with annual increases in employee benefit health care premiums for the company’s 800 employees. When he asked his consultants why the costs kept increasing each year, they simply told him utilization was increasing and costs were going up everywhere. He was unsatisfied with this response and the situation employers faced and planned on doing something about it.

After selling CIS to NDC in 1996 and operating as the company’s executive vice president , Philip resigned in 1999 to investigate other opportunities. He called together former executives of CIS to see if they were interested in joining him in a new venture to offer solutions for the employee benefit market. These former executives, including Ron Houghton and Phil Bruns, joined Philip to form Benefit Informatics and bring their skills of claims processing, systems integration, software development and health care information to the newly formed company. CFO Jay Jackson joined the company shortly afterward.

Between November 2000 and January 2002, Benefit Informatics originally distributed technology and services directly to the employer market through the acquisition of three Third Party Administrators (TPAs).  The company’s first product, Benefit Manager^SM, was launched in June 2001 and Benefit Analyzer^® was introduced the following year. In October 2002, Benefit Informatics agreed to provide technology and services to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma, which was followed by an agreement with The EPOCH Group in October 2003. In order to eliminate channel conflict and focus resources exclusively on its technology, the acquired TPA businesses were divested in February 2004 and Benefit Informatics formed to market and distribute technology through plan providers and third party administrators. Through these relationships, Benefit Informatics is available to more than 5,500 businesses representing more than 2.8 million members.

In August 2010,  Benefit Informatics was acquired by Benefitfocus, the largest healthcare and voluntary benefits software provider in the U.S. with more than 11 million consumers live on the Benefitfocus Platform™.