Key Findings & Highlights:

This NelsonHall vendor assessment analyzes bswift’s offerings and capabilities in Benefits Administration Services. bswift is a U.S. headquartered health and welfare administration services provider and a subsidiary of CVS Health Corporation (CVS). Since its acquisition in 2018, bswift continues to operate with the bswift brand and is an autonomous business unit within the CVS Health group.

bswift first entered the market as a SaaS provider dedicated to H&W technology in 1999 and steadily grew its service offerings. Today it offers comprehensive outsourcing services dedicated to servicing the North American market. Over the period 1999 to 2014, bswift was a private-equity owned company primarily servicing the 3k to 10k organization size and focusing on developing its technology solution alongside customer service. In November 2014, bswift became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aetna. Aetna itself has been transforming from an insurance company (focused on underwriting risk) to a healthcare company. The transformation was further cemented by the CVS acquisition of Aetna in November 2018, of which bswift as a subsidiary was included.

bswift became the benefits administrator for Aetna in 2016 and later, after being acquired by CVS Health, became the administrator for the combined organization. Its benefits administration business is part of the CVS Health “Health Care Benefits” segment. The Health Care Benefits segment offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary, and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, and behavioral health plans, medical management capabilities, Medicare Advantage, and Medicare Supplement plans, PDPs, Medicaid health care management services and health information technology (“HIT”) products and services which serves customers for employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers (“providers”), governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups, and expatriates.

bswift services ~17m participants on its platform across its direct and channel partner models. It supports benefits administration services to ~270 direct clients, accounting for ~8m participants. It targets its direct benefits administration services to organizations with over 2.5k employees/retirees. The remaining ~9m participants are supported via channel partners who leverage the white-labeled bswift technology across ~65k employers. The bswift channel partner network comprises ~60 organizations, including insurance brokerage/consulting firms, exchanges, payroll/HCM providers, and TPAs/PEOs. Its channel partners service employers with 2.5k employees or less.