NelsonHall’s recently published global BPS market forecast reveals that the overall HR services market will grow at 5.8% in 2018. Here I look at how each of the key HRS sub-service lines have performed in H1 2018. In order of number of contracts announced (highest to lowest), this covers Benefits Administration, Multi-Process HRS, Learning, Payroll, and Recruitment. I also prov[...]

Relative to other HR services, the application of intelligent automation in benefits administration is lagging, but is slowly making progress.  With respect to RPA, Conduent and Alight are among the first movers, with both using bots for manual calculations in pension administration. In addition, Alight has deployed bots for low-level transactional work that is typically offshored, and in[...]

  Over the last few years, developments around the participant experience for benefits administration services have been focused on helping employees become more effective consumers as they make their benefit selections (the “consumerization” era). In 2016, the next stage of evolution of the participant experience emerged as suppliers shifted their focus to utilization (the[...]

The gig economy has been a recent trending topic. While the concept of gig workers is nothing new, the attention being paid to it is, especially since this is an area whose growth has been facilitated by the digital marketplace. Here, I take a quick look at the challenges gig workers present for HR. Gig workers present a challenge on several fronts, especially when it comes to managing[...]

NelsonHall’s latest Benefits Administration Services NEAT vendor evaluation included customer interviews to ascertain current satisfaction levels and future expectations across a range of criteria. Below is a selection of some of the findings from our interviews with benefits administration customers.   Principal issues & operational priorities Some of the more prominent issue[...]

Last week Aon Hewitt announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell nearly all the businesses within its Outsourcing segment (including benefits administration, HR BPO, and Workday cloud HR services) to Blackstone. Initially, it may appear that this is a step backwards from some of its prior acquisitions, including Hewitt in 2010 for benefits administration, Exult in 2004 for HR B[...]

Following several years of growth, the HR outsourcing market continues to ride the crest of the wave, and is gearing up for a prosperous 2017 following investments across all service lines. We will shortly be publishing an in-depth blog on HRO predictions for 2017, but first I take a quick look at what happened in 2016 to lay the foundations for things to come, specifically in payroll services[...]

NelsonHall’s Targeting Benefits Administration Services market analysis report, which will be published later this month, finds that the top driver for organizations outsourcing benefits administration is to improve the participant experience. Accordingly, both retirement and health & welfare (H&W) services vendors have been investing heavily in their respective areas to enhance [...]

In this, the first of three blogs on the current benefits administration outsourcing market, I take a brief look at what’s been happening in H1 2016. Benefits administration accounted for ~40% of HRO contract activity in the first half of 2016, with a heavy emphasis on renewals and contract extensions. Approximately 90% of contracts were from private sector organizations, with a stron[...]

Financial planning for retirement readiness is a big concern for many individuals, and the stress is often magnified the closer one gets to retirement. For years, organizations and DC administration providers have been honing different approaches to address this. One of the biggest challenges in establishing a model that works stems from diversity within the workforce. Earlier approac[...]

Following a flurry of benefits administration activity in H2 2013 that focused on contract awards for corporate health exchanges for active employees, the first quarter of the year seemed to be just as busy for providers in both the U.S. and U.K. This is a strong stark contrast to H2 2013, when much of the activity in Q1 was focused on DC administration. Private sector activity outpaced pu[...]

In the last several months, Great-West Financial has undergone a major transformation, restructuring its DC administration business (Great-West Retirement Services) to provide a more holistic offering. While it’s clear that Fidelity dominates the DC administration market in terms of revenues, recordkeeping assets, and participants, it is a much tighter race thereafter.  Consequently,[...]

2013 proved to be an exciting year in benefits administration.  In the U.S., much of the focus was on corporate health exchanges for active employees while the U.K. was focused on auto-enrollment (AE).  Specific highlights of the year in the U.S. included: Aon Hewitt: added 15 clients to its corporate health exchange (total number of clients is at 18) Mercer: added 52 clients [...]

Per NelsonHall’s blog of December 12, 2013 was a healthy year for HRO, with overall contract activity up ~37%. We now take a look at what we can expect in 2014 by HRO service line. MPHRO We predict the Global MPHRO market will grow at mid-single digits CAAGR through 2017 The Shared Service Transformation segment will continue to grow mainly as a result of contract expansions and ren[...]