Portugal-based Coverflex bags €15M to help companies retain talent through personalised compensation

Portugal-based Coverflex, an all-in-one platform that enables companies to design and personalise compensation offers, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €15M in a Series A round of funding.

The round was led by SCOR Ventures, with participation from Breega, MS&AD, Armilar, Stableton, BiG Start Ventures, and Shilling. 

High-profile business angels like Firmin Zocchetto (CEO at PayFit), Job van der Voort (CEO at Remote – a client), Nuno Sebastião (CEO at Feedzai), Humberto Ayres Pereira (CEO at Rows – a client), Hugo Arévalo (Co-founder at ThePower Business School), Alessandro Petazzi (Co-founder of Musement), and Davide Dattoli (Founder of Talent Garden), among others, also participated in the round.  

The company has raised €20M in funding to date.

“In the current macro environment, this Series A round validates our ambitious vision, product-market fit in Portugal, and a market opportunity in Europe, especially in Italy – Edenred’s most profitable market in the world despite having a strong pushback from both merchants and users recently,” says Miguel Amaro, Coverflex CEO. 

The Portuguese company says it will use the proceeds to grow its team to more than 150 people by the end of 2023, mainly in its product, sales, and engineering teams. Currently, Coverflex has 100 employees across Europe and LatAm. 

The funding comes at the right time for Coverflex as the “employee benefits & well-being” market is at €200B, with Europe representing more than 40 per cent. 

However, employee benefits engagement is less than 20 per cent, where companies are wasting billions of euros on unused, one-size-fits-all packages.

“At SCOR Ventures, our top priority is to build a diverse portfolio of innovative solutions solving risk for individuals, businesses, and our planet. We believe employers have an opportunity to reshape employee benefits management and improve employee satisfaction while closing the care and protection gap using a new generation of tools and services. Coverflex empowers companies and staff to deliver this ambition,” says Will Thorne, Head of SCOR Ventures, who joins the company’s board.

Helps companies focus on employee benefits

Luís Rocha, Miguel Santo Amaro, Nuno Pinto, Rui Carvalho, and Tiago Fernandes founded Coverflex in 2021 to help companies of any size to design, consolidate and personalise their compensation offers with health insurance, meal allowance, fringe benefits, and discounts.

Coverflex aggregates multiple providers and helps companies cut costs with tax-efficient benefits insurance, meal allowance, and exclusive discounts.

As a result, it gives companies a competitive edge in retaining their most valuable asset – people.

“People are companies’ most valuable asset. In one of the most transformative and challenging markets of our time, Coverflex proved its market fit.” Ben Marrel adds, “two years ago, we believed that Coverflex would be a game changer. Today, we know it is”.

Coverflex claims its solution has been implemented in more than 3,600 companies, including Santander, Natixis, OysterHR, Bolt, Emma, Revolut, and Smartex. 

The company says the platform has also witnessed +400 per cent growth year-on-year. 

As a part of the European expansion, Coverflex aims to disrupt the meal voucher (“buoni pasto”) and welfare market in Italy with the launch of a platform with low, sustainable merchant fees to bars, supermarkets, and restaurants.

“In Italy, fees go up to 20 per cent per transaction, the highest in Europe for this kind of market. Current providers charge high commissions and pay in 60-90 days, which leads to restaurants and supermarkets opting out of the system,” says Chiara Bassi, Country Manager – Italy at Coverflex.