SEB Acquires 50% of Banyan and Adds Disability Management Expertise
(firmenpresse) - TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/04/14 -- Smart Employee Benefits Inc. ("SEB") (TSX VENTURE: SEB) is a technology company providing "business processes software solutions and services" to corporate and government clients with specialty practices focused on "managing group benefit solutions and health claims processing environments". SEB is pleased to announce it has acquired 50% of Banyan Work Health Solutions Inc. and BITS Licensing Inc. (collectively "Banyan").
Banyan operates as a full spectrum Disability Management (DM) TPA provider serving employers and disability insurers. Its offerings include claims management, field rehabilitation services and a full range of specialized assessments/interventions to support its holistic approach to DM. Banyan is also a provider of Disability Benefit Technology solutions. Banyan is now well established across Canada and extends into the United States, Australia & New Zealand.
TRANSACTION TERMS: The purchase price to acquire 50% of the equity interest in Banyan was $3.0 million, consisting of $2.0 million of cash and $1.0 million of SEB shares. A portion of this purchase price was performance based. $1.575 million of the cash portion was paid at closing, while the remaining $425,000 of cash is payable over 4 years, based on Banyan achieving certain earnings performance criteria post-closing. Of the $1.0 million of SEB share consideration, $750,000 of the shares was released at closing, subject to a contractual escrow over 36 months, while the release of the remaining $250,000 of shares is subject to Banyan achieving the same performance criteria post-closing that is applicable to the cash consideration. The $1.0 million of SEB share consideration consisted of 2,000,000 SEB shares. If the performance criteria are not achieved by the expiry of the escrow period, all or part of the 500,000 SEB shares subject to the performance escrow will be cancelled, as will be all or part of the $425,000 of performance cash payments.
Additionally, 1,000,000 share purchase warrants were issued as retention warrants to key Banyan employees. The retention warrants have an exercise price of $0.50 per share and a term of 48 months, with one-third of the warrants vesting at the end of each year for the first 36 months.
States John McKimm, President/CEO/CIO of SEB, "Absence and Disability Claims costs Canadian employers tens of billions of dollars, annually. Absenteeism costs alone, based on recent Conference Board of Canada reports exceeds $16.0 billion: SEB's business model includes 'Disability' as a key growth area in the health claims benefits processing environment. The adoption of technology to automate business processes has been severely lacking in this area for decades. SEB has conducted extensive research on the disability area and believes Banyan to be both a technology leader and a thought leader in outcome oriented Holistic Disability Management. Banyan is an excellent fit within the SEB benefits strategy and business model.
"Banyan is unique in its adoption of technology to streamline, automate and drive outcome oriented disability business process. In addition to being a recognized leader in the re-invention of claims practices, Banyan has invested substantially in technology applications and solutions.
"These solutions combined with the Disability Management 'know how' are highly complementary to the SEB technology platform for administering, adjudicating and managing benefit environments including claims processing. Banyan and SEB have been working closely for a number of months and are actively involved as partners in responding to government and insurer RFI's and RFP's in the industry. SEB and Banyan's technology solutions, combined, provide the most unique combination of solutions for automating disability claims administration and adjudication in the market place today. The combination of service and technology solutions has rapidly gained significant traction, particularly with insurers in Australia and extending into New Zealand. Additionally, the partnership has made substantial progress with several very large government RFI and RFP opportunities. Banyan has a very successful history of profitable operations including a number of Canada's most recognizable and largest corporations and insurers in its client base."
States Maria Vandenhurk, founder and CEO of Banyan, "Banyan has been working closely with SEB on a number of opportunities, domestically and globally. SEB brings a strong base of technology expertise including claims, administration and adjudication technology solutions, specialty practice expertise in HRIS systems including PeopleSoft and a unique capability and proven solutions to tie legacy data systems to new technology systems in a way that allows real time accessibility and integration of legacy data with new technology solutions. This significantly enhances the value of Banyan disability applications to existing client and new client opportunities. The combination of SEB and Banyan expertise and solutions will allow Banyan to become an undisputed thought leader/innovator and technology leader in providing disability management and adjudication services in Canada and abroad. In combination with SEB, Banyan achieves a bench strength that enables it to dramatically expand its leading edge Disability Management practices, strategically embedded in advanced technologies."
ABOUT BANYAN: Banyan is a privately owned company founded in 1995. Banyan is both a practice and thought leader in providing a vast array of bilingual disability management services across Canada, assisting employees with stay at work ("SAW") and return to work ("RTW") solutions. Banyan's goal is to assist disability insurers and employers in designing and implementing disability management programs that make business sense while returning employees to health and productivity.
Banyan brings a full spectrum offering including claims, rehab, vocational, behavioral and physical assessment/treatment services. The services are specifically tailored to meet the needs of the disability insurance market and have a legacy of outcome measures to support their effectiveness. The services are supported by innovative proprietary IT workflow tools that enable advanced metrics, quality assurance and insight into the work in flow. These workflow tools have been critical to Banyan's success in achieving the best SAW and RTW outcomes in the industry.
Banyan's case management software provides an innovative and secure, role-based workflow application that incorporates extensive automation, specialized quality assurance capability and valuable metrics to drive optimum case management behaviors at the optimum time. Banyan's technology embraces predictive modeling analytics that are leveraged to optimize key elements of the case management process including case assignment, auto-adjudication and critical case management activities. This leading edge system securely stores all documentation on the case while tracking all activities associated with the case, ensuring a secure audit trail, essential to the management of sensitive personal information.
This platform allows Banyan to extract Key Performance Indicators as outlined below and flex properties enable the easy addition of new data points at any time:
Based on extensive experience in the absence management and return to work arenas, Banyan has also developed applications to support absence tracking and identify opportunities for early intervention. This software serves as a web portal providing a complete environment for the tracking of all employee absences, including casual, STD, LTD and workers compensation related absences. In addition, the system has the capacity to track and provide meaningful analytics on near miss and first aid related incidents that can inform employee health and safety programs to optimize prevention efforts. This unique platform also auto-populates all of the provincial WCB forms and provides timely notifications to ensure critical timeframes for reporting incidents and absences are not missed.
Banyan's Absence Management software has comprehensive metrics, analytics and reporting capabilities to enable the information entered into the system to be examined to its most granular level to provide insightful reports to senior management. A key part of this functionality is to highlight trends in absence and to identify areas of the organization where the cost of absence is high.
Banyan's track record and unique capability in DM has made Banyan a sought after partner both locally and internationally to assist organizations in reinventing their claims practices. Banyan is a proponent of metrics-based iterative continuous improvement work culture, using tools like predictive modeling to continually inform and refine the claims approach. Banyan understands how smart technologies can both drive the right behaviours and provide deep and wide intelligence to inform positive change and to exponentially transform an organization's claims experience, ultimately assisting workers back to suitable work more often and earlier on in their recovery process.
ABOUT SEB: SEB is a technology company providing software, solutions and services specializing in managing group benefit solutions and healthcare claims processing environments for corporate and government clients. Health Claims Processing alone is a $60.0 plus billion industry, of which over $37.0 billion is employee group benefit plans and over $25.0 billion of other healthcare benefit claims (e. g. workers' compensation claims, travel benefits, various federal and provincial government programs, dental associations, drug associations, etc.). In the employee group benefits industry, SEB operates as a Third Party Administrator and Insurance Brokerage utilizing its software platform to provide "totally hosted PCI compliant supply chain solutions" for managing the complete group benefits business processes between insurers, clients, brokers, consultants, technology service providers and healthcare service providers. In healthcare claims processing, SEB also operates as a systems integrator utilizing its technology platform together with other technologies to provide customized, fully integrated solutions for specialized environments (e.g. travel claims, student benefits, hospitals, unique government applications etc.). The technology and expertise deployed in this area also allows SEB to provide other related supply chain, systems integration and human resource solutions and services to the same clients.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release is intended for information purposes only. Statements made in this news release may contain "forward looking" information about the company's future business prospects. These statements while expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth or implied by such forward looking statements. Investors should consult a professional advisor before making any investment decision.
For further information about SEB, please visit .
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
Smart Employee Benefits Inc.
John McKimm
President/Chief Executive Officer
(416) 460-2817
Smart Employee Benefits Inc.
Shelly Frank
Vice-President, Marketing
(888) 939-8885 x 358
First Canadian Capital Corp.
Dan Boase
416-742-5600 or 1-866-580-8891
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Datum: 04.11.2014 - 23:31 Uhr
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News-ID 349706
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