Eppione, a global provider of personalised and localised employee benefits, has secured €2.5m of additional investment funding, led by Delta Partners.
The company said the fundraise brings its total funding to €3.75m and will enable it to keep up with growth and launch into new markets.
Founded in 2016 by friends David Kindlon, Neil Fallon and Ernest Legrand, Eppione has teams in Ireland, UK, Australia and New York.
The aim of the Eppione platform is to make it simple for employees to select, amend and access benefits packages provided by their employer.
The People Analytics module creates automated reports into areas including gender pay gaps, workforce diversity and absence trends across the business.
In Association with
David Kindlon, co-founder and CEO, commented: “Eppione has gone from strength to strength, but this is just the beginning. We have always sought to be a world leader in the employee benefits market, and this injection of capital will progress that vision.
“Employee benefits have long been overlooked by many employers as well as employees who are often unaware of what is available to them.
“The pandemic changed that, but while attitudes have evolved, the solutions and processes for accessing those benefits have not.
“We are here to change that, making employee benefits personal, simple and valuable for both employers and employees”
Richard Barnwell, general partner at Delta Partners, said a new way of delivering localised employee benefits is crucial for all businesses.
“Eppione's platform delivers a customised benefit experience for each employee, no matter their location, and gives the company a painless way to sign-up and manage their entire benefit offering, while unlocking cost savings and expert advisory services through the integrated insurance brokerage,” Barnwell added.
Family business
David Kindlon’s family business is Kindlon Insurances, founded in 1993 by his father Thomas Ignatius Kindlon, better known to family and friends as Ney Kindlon.
That business has been a steady earner for the family, and David joined the firm after college when he was 24-years-old.
“It was a steep learning curve because I was thrown in at the deep end, and I suppose more was expected from me,” Kindlon recalls. “Or maybe little was expected of me, so you always wanted to prove a point.
“There were a couple of road blocks put in the way every time I tried to do something because I was the boss’s son. You get over those things and you move on, and you make things a success. And I suppose that’s what I strove to do.”
Before David Kindlon came on board, the insurance brokerage employed Ciaran Mulligan, who went on to great things with his own venture, Blue Insurance.
When Blue was acquired by Zurich Insurance in 2018, Mulligan grossed c.€70m. Now the wheel has come full circle, with the multi-millionaire investing in the start-up established by his former boss’s son.
First funding round
In a January 2020 Eppione funding round, Ciaran Mulligan chipped in €450,000. Cork insurance broker John O’Shaughnessy, formerly of Arachas, invested €200,000, and Kindlon rounded up €250,000 from four other investors, as well as parting with €50,000 himself.
For good measure, Enterprise Ireland came on board with c.€250,000.
Kindlon says his inclination to embark on the Eppione project stemmed from his enthusiasm for technology and gadgets.
He was one of the first guys in his peer group to have a Blackberry, for e-mail on the go, and he was aware of the trend for firms to focus on the connectivity issue in order to be better places to work.
“We shouldn't have to rely on our back garden,” says Kindlon. “I've always had a bit of a global ambition, and I realised that technology can help me do that. We are across the water from an island with 60 million people, and they are not dissimilar to ourselves when it comes to insurance and employee benefits.
“Where did my Eureka moment come from? The idea was to compete with big boys in the insurance broking space. We wanted to be the small broker with the powerful technology behind us that can blow the socks off the big guys.”
Married to an Australian, Kindlon has a fondness for long-haul travel. Attending a trade conference in Singapore, Kindlon met Ernest Legrand, a New Yorker with a background in IBM.
The two men got to know each other and Legrand bought into the Irishman’s concept, and set about developing the Eppione back-end.
The third leg of the Eppione founding triumvirate is Neil Fallon, an employee benefits specialist in Essex who Kindlon dealt with over the years on reciprocal insurance matters.
The business model
It took about a year for development of the initial Eppione minimum viable product. The idea was to offer a free platform for HR management and leverage off that to sell life cover, income protection, pensions and other benefits insurance.
Kindlon explains: “In a large company with a couple of hundred people, their largest line item is payroll. Depending on the type of business, the next biggest item will usually be the employee benefits, not just insurance but also travel cards and gym memberships and all those kind of things.
“When you have a large number of employees, it can be difficult to provide flexibility around those benefits if you don't have a system to manage the administrative burden.”
Life companies are more than capable of offering benefits visibility to company scheme members. Kindlon argues that with Eppione the employer isn’t stuck with the same insurance provider, and can therefore source better pricing through the Eppione broker service.
Apart from Ireland, Eppione is active in the UK where the company has an arrangement with a large HR consulting firm with 3,500 clients. The company is also on the ground in Perth in Australia, and Kindlon says the outside funding will pay for investment in these market as well as adding more features to the platform.
Photo: Eppione founders David Kindlon, Neil Fallon and Ernest Legrand
