HR Tech Outlook: Specials Magazine

For years, employee benefits conversations have revolved around medical insurance. This makes sense, as healthcare is often the most expensive component of an employer’s benefits package. Naturally, most decision-support tools have also been designed to help employees navigate that complexity. But somewhere along the way, a significant gap emerged. While healthcare remains significant, dental, vision, life insurance, HSAs, voluntary benefits, and financial products are not peripheral add-ons. They play a critical role in long-term financial security and well-being. Yet, for most employees, they remain poorly understood, underutilized, or ignored entirely. That realization became the starting point for Help Me Choose Benefits. The solution is rooted in real-world experience from leaders who have spent decades in the industry managing employee benefits, running benefit call centers, and working directly with large employer groups to help employees understand and use their insurance products and services. They have seen firsthand where employees struggle, where tools fall short, and where confusion leads to poor decisions. “We felt like existing tools in the market were heavily focused on medical benefits and largely neglected most non-medical benefits that employers offered to their employees,” says Brandan Bruce, president. “We wanted to create something that doesn’t just recommend benefits but actually explains why those recommendations matter to each individual.” Built on that experience, Help Me Choose Benefits goes beyond traditional decision-support tools. It streamlines benefits decisions with personalized recommendations powered by industry data, employee insights into health, family, and finances, and input from brokers and HR teams. More importantly, it delivers those recommendations through a virtual benefits counseling experience that clearly explains the “why” behind every suggestion in simple, practical terms.

Employers are under increasing pressure to support employee financial wellbeing without adding payroll disruption, administrative complexity or compliance exposure. Clair built its platform around a different approach to earned wage access by embedding On-Demand Pay directly into payroll and workforce systems instead of positioning it as a separate financial application. “Rather than offering earned wage access as a standalone consumer app, Clair embeds On-Demand Pay directly inside payroll and workforce platforms, making access to pay a native part of the employment experience,” says Nico, co-founder. The company believed reducing friction was essential for broader adoption. Employees can access earned wages within the workforce platforms they already use, while employers avoid introducing disconnected tools or altering payroll workflows. Clair designed its model to operate inside existing systems rather than alongside them. That embedded structure is also tied closely to the company’s infrastructure strategy. Clair uses verified employment and payroll data from workforce platforms including Intuit QuickBooks and Gusto to support underwriting, eligibility and repayment decisions. The company views workplace data as a stronger real-time indicator of financial behavior than traditional banking or credit signals alone. “Clair Atlas uses real-time employment data to make more responsible and more accurate credit decisions than legacy models built on backward-looking signals such as FICO,” says Alex, co-founder. Building Infrastructure around Payroll Systems Many organizations considering earned wage access products remain concerned about operational burden, repayment management and compliance risk. Employers often want to provide financial flexibility to employees without introducing exceptions handling or disrupting payroll administration. Clair structured its platform specifically to reduce those concerns. Repayment management occurs through the company’s infrastructure, eliminating the need for payroll adjustments when employees use On-Demand Pay. Employers can also offer the service without direct implementation costs.