Tag: Press
Vericred Raises $23M in Oversubscribed Series B Funding Round
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
Aquiline Technology Growth-led funding round and board additions to fuel rapid staff expansion and product development.
Benefits infrastructure leader extends its position as industry standard for health and supplemental insurance connectivity, efficiency.
NEW YORK, April 12, 2021 — Vericred, the innovative data services platform powering digital quote-to-card experiences in health insurance and benefits, today announced the completion of a Series B round of funding totaling $23 million and the addition of two new members to its board of directors. Aquiline Technology Growth led the oversubscribed funding round, which included participation from new investors Echo Health Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Guardian Strategic Ventures, and existing investors Riverside Acceleration Capital, FCA Venture Partners and First Health Capital Partners.
Vericred will use the new capital to expand its teams in New York, NY and Omaha, NE, further build its marketing and sales functions, and exponentially grow the community of participants on its market-leading platform, laying the foundation for a united, digitally connected benefits ecosystem.
“Today’s announcement showcases the market’s clear endorsement of Vericred’s critical innovations in health insurance and employee benefits. We are proud to have attracted the highest caliber of venture and strategic investors, surpassing the goals we initially set out for this fundraise,” said Michael W. Levin, CEO and Co-founder of Vericred. “We are excited to partner with these leading investors who share our vision for building a simplified way for all participants in the benefits ecosystem to connect, communicate, and exchange data rapidly and accurately.”
Vericred offers a full suite of APIs across medical, life, dental, vision and other lines of coverage that power quoting, enrollment, member management, and renewals on multi-carrier InsurTech and BenTech platforms. Vericred’s solutions simplify the complex process of exchanging data with multiple partners. By effectively removing a critical barrier to industry-wide digital transformation, Vericred enables a true digital quote-to-card experience.
More than 300 carriers, including industry leaders Cigna, Guardian, Humana, MetLife, Principal, Kaiser and 100+ InsurTech companies including Rippling, Gusto, Ease, and Namely have joined Vericred’s platform, creating a powerful network effect and establishing an important channel to bring new products and innovation to market.
In connection with this funding round, Vericred welcomes two additions to its board of directors:
Max Chee leads Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG), which is managed by Aquiline Capital Partners, and seeks to invest in early and growth stage FinTech companies. Max brings over 20 years of experience investing in FinTech and enterprise software.
Jessica Zeaske, PhD is a Partner at Echo Health Ventures, identifying and investing in emerging and growth-stage health care companies. Previously, she invested with GE Ventures and Lemhi Ventures and has a career-long focus on thesis-driven investing.
“Aquiline’s investment in Vericred is rooted in our shared vision of a fully digitally connected employee benefits ecosystem, where plan quoting, enrollment, and renewal is a seamless experience, much like booking travel or applying for a new credit card online,” said Chee. “We’re pleased to add Vericred as a portfolio company, as we view its infrastructure offerings for benefit administration platforms, along with their carrier partners, as a catalyst for the digital transformation of the industry.”
“At Echo Health Ventures, we seek to drive systemic transformations of the health care system through hands-on, purpose-driven investing. Vericred is an ideal investment aligned with that vision and we look forward to partnering with them as they scale their platform” said Zeaske. “As a Board member, I am excited to help Vericred as they continue to modernize the way health insurance and employee benefits are quoted, sold, enrolled, managed, and used.”
About Vericred
Vericred is the way health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers connect with new technology partners to deliver seamless quote-to-card consumer experiences. We are not the websites or apps you use to choose a plan or find a doctor. We are infrastructure. We are the ‘pipes’ that simplify the complex exchange of quoting, enrollment and eligibility data between carriers and the technology partners responsible for delivering health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans everyday. Our APIs transmit billions of data points between InsurTech and insurance carriers, powering digital distribution across the insurance industry. Come join the community of insurance geeks creating a seamless digital quote-to-card experience. Visit www.vericred.com.
About Aquiline Technology Growth
Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG) seeks to invest in early- and growth-stage technology companies that are bringing innovation to the insurance and financial services ecosystems. ATG is managed by Aquiline Capital Partners, a private investment firm based in New York and London investing in businesses globally across the financial services and technology sector. The ATG team has experience in technology and financial services and is supported by its colleagues at Aquiline, strategic partners, and an active group of industry Executive Advisors. For more information on ATG, visit: www.aquiline.com.
About Echo Health Ventures
Echo Health Ventures drives systemic health care transformation through hands-on, purpose-driven strategic venture capital and growth equity investing. Echo brings together USAble Corporation, Cambia Health Solutions and Mosaic Health Solutions to accelerate health care innovation on a national scale and support meaningful health care impact. For more information, please visit www.echohealthventures.com.
BenefitsPRO: ICHRA has potential to reshape the way employers pay for benefits
Vericred Launches Health Insurance and Employee Benefits Enrollment APIs, Announces Key Relationships
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
Beam, CaliforniaChoice, Kaiser Permanente and Oscar partner with Vericred to create a de facto standard for California group enrollment and member management
September 15, 2020 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vericred today unveiled a new suite of enrollment and member management APIs, ushering in a new era of digital connectivity between health insurance and employee benefit carriers and InsurTech companies. Vericred’s API Platform enables the simple and seamless exchange of quoting, enrollment and eligibility data between carriers and technology companies such as tech-enabled brokers, BenAdmins, HCMs and HRIS solutions. This news is paired with the announcement of groundbreaking enrollment relationships with Beam, CaliforniaChoice, Kaiser Permanente and Oscar.
“The digital transformation of health insurance and employee benefits is being held back by lack of connectivity and industry standards, resulting in incredible inefficiencies and poor consumer experiences,” said Michael W. Levin, Vericred’s co-founder and CEO. “Our enrollment and member management capability democratizes this connectivity and enables industry-wide digital quote-to-card experiences for carriers, general agents, brokers, employers and employees.”
Vericred’s new suite of APIs enables end-to-end functionality including new group installation, renewals, broker of record changes, member additions, terminations and changes, reconciliation and normalized enrollment status and error handling across all lines of coverage.
“Great products need great foundations. Vericred is critical, foundational infrastructure for our insurance and benefits products at Rippling. We could not have built Rippling without this partnership,” said Parker Conrad, Rippling’s co-founder and CEO.
COVID-19 is a catalyst for the industry’s digital transformation, adding a new layer of complexity to the busy Fall enrollment season. Social distancing regulations permits few, if any, in-person meetings between brokers and their group clients. Open enrollments are being conducted virtually. Employers and brokers need tools and connectivity in order to deliver modern digital experiences to their clients and employees. Vericred’s Platform is essential for those looking to quickly and efficiently scale their digital solutions.
Vericred partners with leading California carriers to create a new standard
CaliforniaChoice, Kaiser Permanente and Oscar, representing a majority of California small group medical members, will use Vericred for health insurance and benefits enrollment and management in California and other regions in which these companies offer coverage.
“Small group health insurance has been stuck in the early 2000s as far as online enrolling, managing and renewing,” noted Kirk Whelan, National Vice President of Small Group Commercial business for Kaiser Permanente. “We support the efforts to move toward digitizing small group enrollments.”
“As the Nation’s largest private exchange we are continuously innovating to meet the needs of our brokers and General Agent partners, and our small business customers,” said Michael Close, CEO of CHOICE Administrators, the parent of CaliforniaChoice and ChoiceBuilder. “Vericred allows us to leverage our own investment in APIs across GAs, tech enabled brokers and a broad spectrum of enrollment and benefit administration solutions.”
In addition to the above health insurance carriers, Vericred is working with Aetna, Anthem, Blue Shield of California, Cigna, Guardian, Humana, MetLife, Principal, Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, and UnitedHealthcare. Vericred has aggressive plans to complete more than 200 carrier integrations over the next two years.
Interested parties should contact sales@vericred.com for more information.
About Beam
Beam Dental was built around the idea that blending technology with traditional insurance policies could bring incredible value to a commoditized employee benefits market. Beam Dental is a company’s best choice for a differentiated, innovative take on dental and ancillary employee benefits with a nationwide network of dentists. For more information, visit beam.dental.
About CHOICE Administrators
CHOICE Administrators is the parent organization of the nation’s largest multi-carrier, small group private health exchange, CaliforniaChoice, and America’s first ancillary benefits exchange, ChoiceBuilder. Together, the two exchanges currently offer access to 11 health plans and carriers to more than 27,000 small business clients and nearly 450,000 members across the state of California.
About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. The organization currently serves 12.4 million members in 8 states and the District of Columbia. www.kp.org
About Oscar
Oscar is the first health insurance company built to make health care easy. Headquartered in New York City, Oscar has been challenging the health care system’s status quo since our founding in 2012, developing seamless technology and providing personalized support to help our members navigate their health care. Oscar was the first insurer to offer $0, 24/7 telemedicine to members and to integrate direct scheduling with providers through our app.
Oscar plans also include access to a network of first-rate physicians and hospitals, as well as a personalized Care Team that supports members every step of the way, from finding a doctor to navigating costs. Oscar is known for its easy-to-use digital tools, including a website and mobile app that let members view their health history, speak directly with their Care Teams and virtual providers, and access their account information.
All products and services are provided exclusively by or through operating subsidiaries of Mulberry Health Inc., including Oscar Insurance Company and its affiliates. Say hi or learn more at https://www.hioscar.com or follow us at https://twitter.com/OscarHealth.
About Vericred
Vericred has built the first end-to-end quoting, enrollment and member management middleware (API) platform for health insurance and employee benefits. By simplifying the exchange of data between carriers and technology companies, Vericred is enabling the digital transformation of the health insurance and employee benefits industry. Vericred offers robust solutions for the employer market, as well as the under 65 individual, Medicaid and Medicare markets.
Vericred Launches ICHRA Affordability Calculator API
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
Expands infrastructure powering ICHRA solutions for brokers and employers
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vericred, a data services company simplifying the exchange of health insurance and employee benefits information, today announced the immediate availability of its ICHRA Affordability Calculator API. This new functionality is an extension of Vericred’s ICHRA Development Kit, which enables HRtech and InsurTech companies to build fully digital, end-to-end Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) solutions for brokers, employers and their employees.
Under ICHRA regulations, employers with greater than 50 employees must meet certain minimum contribution requirements or be subject to financial penalties. The minimum employer contribution is a complex calculation based on employee classification, age, home and work locations, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans available in these various locations. Vericred’s ICHRA Affordability Calculator API programmatically determines the minimum amount that an employer would need to contribute to their employees’ health insurance costs to comply with ICHRA affordability requirements.
Small groups, those generally with less than 50 employees, are not subject to the same requirements and may actually want an “unaffordable” ICHRA so that their employees can be eligible for ACA subsidies. The Calculator also determines the subsidy that an employee would receive if they opted out of an unaffordable ICHRA and, instead, purchased a plan directly through the federal or state-based public exchange. This allows InsurTech companies to develop robust decision support tools comparing each employee’s costs under affordable and unaffordable ICHRAs.
“There is considerable momentum for companies, large and small, to adopt ICHRAs as an alternative to traditional employer-sponsored coverage,“ said Michael W. Levin, Vericred’s co-founder and CEO. “Our ICHRA Affordability Calculator is yet another element of the infrastructure necessary for developers to create great ICHRA experiences for brokers, employers and employees.”
Vericred’s Calculator brings new functionality to its existing ICHRA Development Kit. The development kit includes the following additional data solutions:
- Group and Individual Quoting APIs, providing tech platforms with a means to generate quotes in both markets from hundreds of health insurance carriers, thus enabling brokers and employers to evaluate the cost differences between small group and individual health plans, and ultimately to enable employees to shop for individual insurance plans.
- Group to Individual Disruption Analysis API, enabling solutions that empower brokers and employers to examine how shifting employees from traditional group coverage to individual market plans would impact employees’ in-network access to their favored providers.
- Shop by Doctor and Shop by Drug, powering solutions that allow employees to shop for individual insurance plans based on their preferred doctors and prescription drugs.
For more information about Vericred’s ICHRA solutions, including the Affordability Calculator, contact sales@vericred.com.
About Vericred
Vericred has built the first end-to-end quoting, enrollment and member management middleware (API) platform for health insurance and employee benefits. By simplifying the exchange of data between carriers and technology companies, Vericred is enabling the digital transformation of the health insurance and employee benefits industry. Vericred offers robust solutions for the employer market, as well as the under 65 individual, Medicaid and Medicare markets.
Vericred Announces Level Funded Group Rating API
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
Industry-first API enables InsurTech platforms to quote level funded group medical plans across multiple carriers
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vericred, a data services company simplifying the exchange of information between health insurance and employee benefit carriers and InsurTech companies, today announced the immediate availability of level-funded plans through its Group Rating API. With this new functionality, Vericred is facilitating the distribution and quoting of these attractive alternatives to fully insured group plans.
Until now, level-funded plans have been quoted through carrier websites and broker portals, or through complex integrations with carrier APIs. As a result, it has been difficult for InsurTech applications serving brokers to offer multi-carrier level-funded quoting, thereby limiting visibility of these plans to the detriment of carriers, brokers and employers. Through this enhancement to its Group Rating API, Vericred is making it easy for these tech companies to quote and compare level-funded plans across carriers, and even against fully insured medical plans.
“Level-funded plans are rapidly increasing in popularity, with some brokers expecting more than 50 percent of their small group book of business to migrate to level-funded products over the next two years,” said Vericred CEO Michael W. Levin. “Our new API supports this exponential growth by enabling tech platforms to build carrier-agnostic, level-funded quoting solutions for brokers and employers. And for our carrier partners, this is a cost-effective pathway to achieve visibility for level-funded products across the quoting tools brokers are using today.”
Vericred is debuting this new functionality with two carrier launch partners: AllSavers, a UnitedHealthcare subsidiary, and Humana, and expects to add level-funded plans from additional national and regional carriers and TPAs over the coming months. Initially, the rating API will deliver “illustrative” or street quotes, which are subject to underwriting and approval. Later this year, Vericred intends to further expand its capability to underwritten quotes.
“Humana has invested significantly in its digital initiatives. Working with Vericred leverages those investments by making it even easier for our distribution partners to quote and enroll in Humana products. As such, we are thrilled that level funded group plans are now on the Vericred platform for quoting,” said Gary Davis, Humana National Leader – General Agents, Digital Initiatives, & Small Business Sales.
Sponsoring health insurance for employees has become a significant cost burden for businesses, with average annual premiums for single coverage ballooning from $4,824 in 2010 to $7,188 in 2019, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study. Level-funded plans, which package the cost savings and personalization of self-funding with the fixed-payment structure and risk mitigation of fully-insured plans, are an increasingly popular benefits option for employers struggling to address the rising cost of health insurance. The percentage of covered workers at small firms (3-199 employees) who were enrolled in a level-funded plan increased from 6 percent in 2018 to 11 percent in 2019, KFF reported.
About Vericred
Vericred simplifies the exchange of data between carriers and technology companies that are transforming the way health insurance and employee benefits are quoted, sold, enrolled and managed. Vericred offers robust solutions for technology companies and carriers focused on the employer market, as well as the under 65 individual, Medicaid and Medicare markets.
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Vericred Launches Health Insurance Card Scanning API
**NOTE: Ideon is the company formerly known as Vericred. Vericred began operating as Ideon on May 18, 2022.**
Bridging the gap to in-network providers and facilities
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vericred, a data services company simplifying the exchange of health insurance and employee benefits data, today announced the availability of its Card Scanning API, enabling applications to programmatically identify a user’s provider-network from their insurance card.
This solution helps solve one of the toughest health insurance problems: most members don’t know their health insurance network. For those building applications with any kind of provider search or referral functionality, this seemingly simple problem has been a gating factor to a great user journey — and the right information.
“As fewer health insurance plans offer out-of-network benefits, and those costs have continued to soar, finding an in-network provider is more critical than ever. Yet most people simply don’t know their network, so finding an in-network provider is very challenging,” said Michael W. Levin, Vericred’s CEO. “By extracting the network ID from an image of a user’s insurance card, we enable digital health and insurance apps to easily surface in-network doctors, hospitals, and other facilities.”
The Card Scanning API empowers provider search and doctor appointment apps, benefits administration platforms and other digital health companies to develop seamless digital experiences connecting users to the in-network providers they need; easily and accurately.
Vericred’s new API is especially important in the age of COVID-19. With telehealth on the rise, when a physical visit to a doctor or hospital is warranted, it is essential that patients be referred to an in-network provider.
How the Card Scanning API works:
- End-user uploads an image of their health insurance card to a digital health app.
- The digital health app transmits the image to Vericred, via the Card Scanning API.
- Vericred’s API identifies and returns the user’s network ID.
- The application then uses the network ID to search for in-network providers and facilities.
In response to COVID-19, Vericred is offering the card scanning API, at no cost, to its partners through the end of 2020. Please contact Vericred if you are interested in learning more.
About Vericred
Vericred simplifies the exchange of data between carriers and technology companies that are transforming the way health insurance and employee benefits are quoted, sold, enrolled and managed. Vericred offers robust solutions for technology platforms and carriers focused on the employer market, as well as the under 65 individual, Medicaid and Medicare markets.