Benefitfocus Advances Platform Leadership With Artificial Intelligence, Productivity Enhancements and New Category of Products

CHARLESTON, S.C., March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Benefitfocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNFT), a leading cloud-based benefits management platform and services provider, today announced a significant expansion of the BENEFITFOCUS® Platform and Benefitfocus BenefitsPlace®. Announced during the company's annual One Place keynote address was a fully-deployed, all-new advanced artificial intelligence (AI) engine, BenefitSAIGE, that supports world-class data interchange and automation enhancements and powers deeper platform insights and communications.

With these significant enhancements to the platform, Benefitfocus accelerates its best-in-class consumer experience by connecting benefits buyers and sellers in unprecedented ways:

• Leveraging advanced artificial intelligence technologies to offer deeper insights, designed to enhance the ecosystem experience for all participants, and driving smart content and recommendations that improve consumer experience.
• Improving ecosystem productivity through seamless data exchange, APIs and automation, designed to deliver unparalleled security and data protection.
• Offering a wider range of benefits products for personal wellbeing and security tailored for every stage in life.

Easier employee benefits enrollment and employer benefits administration

Leveraging advanced artificial intelligence technologies such as rules-based systems, robotic process automation, machine learning, predictive analytics and natural language processing, BenefitSAIGE learns from billions of interactions on the Benefitfocus Platform. An all-new, learning chat bot, offering 24-hour support, is embedded within the company's advanced AI framework to deliver smart recommendations. Benefitfocus' platform-wide intelligence makes it easier to enroll in the right benefits in "smart moments" that matter to consumers.

Alongside the company's intelligence engine sits market-leading data interchange capabilities. Benefitfocus is transforming industry data standards. The company's world-class data capabilities and extensive investments have produced an unprecedented 99.6% data accuracy on first-pass yield, eclipsing the industry average of 95%.

"Data accuracy is a critical part of our platform strategy as data drives the scale and connections of the ecosystem and increases the productivity of everyone on the platform," explains Ray August, President & CEO of Benefitfocus. "Employers expect employee paychecks to be correct, their deductions to be accurate, access to care when they need it and for their insurance cards to arrive on time. The American workforce is counting on these transactions to be right."

"We manage unprecedented volumes of benefits transactions," continues August. "We had 2.7 billion data transactions in 2018.  From each transaction we are focused on driving intelligence, and this is why we've invested heavily in BenefitSAIGE and world-class data."

"BenefitSAIGE is the connective tissue of our platform," states Jen Clark, Director of Artificial Intelligence for Benefitfocus. "It powers how we exchange data, inform consumers, create engaging interactions for all platform users and unlock the power of the worlds largest benefits community with our insights. The practical benefit to employers and consumers is being there, correctly, in the moment they need us to be. And in doing so, we add value for every platform participant because we do the heavy lifting and handle all of the connections, so they don't have to."

While the company's advanced AI capabilities create a better consumer experience, its platform insights help employers, brokers and carriers better engage with employees. These insights allow sellers and brokers to segment employer customers and their employee populations for improved benefit strategy, communications and engagement, while giving employers robust visual interactive tools to quantify the value of their benefits programs and serve their employees.

All-new mobile app gives consumers more control over their benefits portfolio

During the One Place keynote address, August and special guest speakers highlighted additional, new platform functionality and capabilities, supported by BenefitSAIGE, to enhance consumer support in the moments that matter, including:

• All-new Benefitfocus Mobile App for simplified consumer engagement, total rewards details, digital ID cards and benefits management.
• Personalized offerings and communications 52-weeks a year.
• A new Benefitfocus Wallet that enables flexible payment options beyond payroll deduction.

About Benefitfocus
Benefitfocus (NASDAQ: BNFT) unifies the entire U.S. benefits industry on a single technology platform to protect consumers' health, wealth, property and lifestyle. Our powerful cloud-based software, data-driven insights and thoughtfully-designed services, enable employers, insurance brokers and carriers to simplify the complexity of benefits administration and deliver a world-class benefits experience. Learn more at www.benefitfocus.com, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Safe Harbor Statement
Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual results or performance might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: the need to innovate and provide useful products and services; our ability to compete effectively; the immature and volatile nature of the market for our products and services; risks related to changing healthcare and other applicable regulations; our ability to maintain our culture and recruit and retain qualified personnel; management of growth; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in our SEC filings, copies of which are available free of charge within the Investor Relations section of the Benefitfocus website at http://investor.benefitfocus.com/sec-filings or upon request from our investor relations department. Benefitfocus assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

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SOURCE Benefitfocus, Inc.

Benefitfocus, Inc., 843-284-1052 ext. 3527, pr@benefitfocus.com