Completed Acquisition of Health e(fx) Extends Equifax’s Affordable Care Act Management Solutions for Employers
EQUIFAX HAS ACQUIRED Health e(fx), a leading Affordable Care Act (ACA) technology solution provider. Like the ACA Management service delivered by Equifax Workforce Solutions, Health e(fx) helps employers and partners in the HR, benefits and tax space to manage the processes and adherence to the federal regulations pertaining to the employer mandate of the ACA.
Both Equifax Workforce Solutions and Health e(fx) have helped tens of thousands of employers handle federal ACA and state individual mandate regulations, while helping to minimize their risk of errors and costly penalties.
“This acquisition will expand on the value that Equifax Workforce Solutions offers to HR and payroll teams,” said Walter Gibson, III, senior vice president of Equifax Workforce Solutions. “The Health e(fx) team, relationships and cloud-native technologies are complementary to our business and existing ACA product and will provide us with additional opportunities to help meet evolving employer needs.”
Leading providers
Named by ‘CIO Review’ magazine as one of the 50 most promising healthcare solution providers in 2020, Health e(fx) offers a technology platform that includes full-service ACA and state individual mandate support and reporting, as well as workforce analytics. These services help make health reform easier for organizations with complex systems nationwide.
Health e(fx), which has more than 100 employees, will become part of the Equifax Workforce Solutions business unit, and maintain offices in Minneapolis, MN, and Thunder Bay, Ontario. Equifax Workforce Solutions is based in St. Louis, Missouri.
"Many of the country's largest employers and leading ACA service providers count on Health e(fx) to help make sense of health reform changes," said Michael Showalter, chief executive officer of Health e(fx). "Together with Equifax, we can continue to provide employers with the personalized service, deep health reform expertise and innovations and insights that help ease the burden of changing healthcare regulations and enable them to better support their workforce."
A complex landscape
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and became arguably one of the most significant overhauls of the U.S. healthcare system since Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the 1960s. Among other mandates, the ACA restructured how employers who meet the definition of an Applicable Large Employer must handle benefit eligibility and offers of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. It also requires annual reporting of health insurance information to the IRS on forms 1094-C and 1095-C. Employers who fail to comply with the employer mandate portion of the ACA could be subject to large penalties that can amount to millions.
Adding another layer of complexity, some states have implemented their own mandates. In those states, employers have additional reporting requirements and must file the same information with the state along with the IRS, again a potentially manual and time-consuming task for HR and payroll teams.
“The ACA is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and complying with ACA and state mandate reporting is complex for employers, as well as the benefits, payroll and tax partners who support them,” said Christy Abend, director of product strategy at Equifax Workforce Solutions. “Now more than ever, employers must have solutions in place to help meet their compliance commitments. Together with Health e(fx), Equifax is better positioned to deliver support for our customers and partners.”