Kansas City’s Benefitbay Raises $18 Million to Scale Its Broker-First ICHRA Platform

Benefitbay, a Kansas City company that helps employers move to Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, has raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Ten Coves Capital. For founder and chief executive Brandy Thompson, the round is a sign that the model she built is no longer a niche idea that needs lengthy explaining to consultants and employers, but something the wider benefits market is moving toward.

The company describes itself as a broker-first ICHRA partner serving the nation’s top brokerages, employers, and their employees. The investment is expected to fund the next stage of growth and strengthen the infrastructure layer that sits underneath ICHRA as that market matures. In practice, that means building deeper carrier and payroll integrations, extending the company’s payments capabilities beyond medical, and continuing to develop tools that help brokers and employers operate at scale. Benefitbay has built direct banking and carrier integrations, which it says lets it support larger enterprise clients without leaning on the middleware that competitors often rely on.

Alongside the Ten Coves round, benefitbay drew an investment from KCRise Fund III in late March. The company was founded with a deliberate broker-first approach and now supports more than 40,000 covered lives across a national network of brokerages. Until recently, it had grown almost entirely through word of mouth and trust within that brokerage community.

According to the company, employer conversations have shifted over the past few years from trying to understand what an ICHRA is to actually implementing one, especially among mid-to-large employers who have run into the limits of their self-insured plans. Benefitbay spent years assembling the operational infrastructure, broker relationships, compliance systems, and integrations needed to support that transition at scale. It reports a 96 percent client retention rate with mid-market employers and intends to hold that figure as it grows. The company says the investment is expected to carry it to profitability.

Benefitbay recently hired Kevin Mullins as its first president and chief financial officer, adding operational depth, financial discipline, and growth-stage healthcare experience as the company expands.

For Ten Coves, the appeal came down to three things: the broker channel as a durable source of demand for ICHRA, the company’s payments and reconciliation architecture as a meaningful technical advantage, and a record of winning and keeping large employer groups. KCRise Fund, which first met Thompson in 2024, pointed to benefitbay’s ability to compete against rivals that have raised far more capital, and to its early focus on the broker channel as a competitive edge in the benefits space.

The next phase, the company says, is about scaling responsibly alongside the market while keeping a high level of service, with demand rising from larger brokerages and enterprise employers.