SEB & Everyday People Financial Partner to Launch Health Spending Account Mastercard® Program Across North America

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, May 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SEB Administrative Services Inc. (“SEB Admin”), a subsidiary of Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (“SEB” or the “Company”) (TSXV: SEB) (OTCQB: SEBFF), an Insurtech provider of cloud based, end-to-end IT and Benefit Processing solutions for the life and group benefits marketplace and government, is pleased to announce that it has signed a letter of intent with Everyday People Financial Inc. (“EP” or “Everyday People”), a financial technology and consumer financing company, to launch a bespoke healthcare spending account program, offering a challenger product to traditional employer health spending accounts.

Healthcare spending accounts help business owners save on medical costs by turning an after-tax personal medical expense into a before-tax business expense. This plan is a smart and efficient option for the modern-day entrepreneur. It also helps the plan member minimize coverage gaps between government funded health care and other health insurance options.

The health spending account is particularly applicable to small companies and self-employed business owners. There are over 1.2M small businesses in Canada. Over 97.0% of all businesses in Canada are small businesses. In Canada, small business represents over 15.0M employees, and 2.5M gig workers. The Mastercard^® Healthcare Spending Account (“HSA”) solution is unique to the Canadian marketplace.

EP and SEB are the first to introduce into the Canadian market this integrated membership-based employee healthcare spending account and credit card program. This program represents a large specialty opportunity targeting the HSA market, currently estimated at over $8 billion premium in Canada. The objective is to capture a minimum of 20% market share in the overall HSA Canadian marketplace.

States Mohamad El Chayah, COO of SEB and President & CEO of SEB Administrative Services, “This innovative program will streamline operations, increase accuracy and boost efficiency, and offers employees a reduction of out-of-pocket burden and costs normally associated with traditional health spending accounts. Members of this HSA program are issued a spending account for health care and wellness services tied to a Mastercard^®. This provides more financial flexibility in managing health care options and an improved customer experience, allowing immediate reimbursement of health care expenditures at the point of sale.”

Within the joint venture, EP will operate as the program manager and SEB will operate as the HSA program administrator and adjudicator. SEB has an established customer base of employers who use SEB’s proprietary SaaS-based benefit solutions to self-administer health benefit programs for their employees.

States Barret Reykdal, CEO of EP, “A joint venture with SEB to offer a health spending account program for small business owners and their employees is yet another way that EP, along with one of its partners, provides people with greater financial flexibility. Giving small business employees access to a blended credit card health spending account helps fill coverage gaps, allows individuals to manage healthcare spending and direct funds according to their personal life situation. The solution provides an instant, easy to use, efficient method of transacting in the form of a credit card based platform. Today, EP offers similar specialty credit payment card solutions in multiple markets. The HSA solution adds to EP’s extensive digital banking solutions portfolio.”

About SEB Administrative Services Inc.:
SEB Administrative Services Inc. (“SEB Admin”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (“SEB”), is a third-party administrator (“TPA”) providing leading edge cloud-based, fully bilingual, benefit processing solutions using SEB Admin’s proprietary and customized technologies, solutions and services of Partners. SEB Admin’s “FlexPlus” platform provides single sign-on connectivity for all group benefit stakeholders. FlexPlus^® has over 20 modules supporting multiple revenue models, capturing over 90% of all benefit processing activities for all benefit types. Each module can operate standalone or as an integrated solution. SEB Admin manages benefit plan environments for more than 50 of Canada’s name brand companies and government entities. SEB Admin has over 370,000 plan members under administration and more than 160,000 additional plan members under contract and in transition; in total representing more than $1.3B of premium. FlexPlus^® cloud-enabled solutions support all plan designs – traditional, flex, cafeteria, hour bank, dollar bank, marketplace – via co-sourced, fully outsourced or SaaS models. Our solutions turn cost centers to profit centers for many of our clients and partners.

For further information about SEB Administrative Services Inc., please visit: www.seb-admin.com.

About Smart Employee Benefits Inc.:
SEB is an Insurtech company focused on Benefits Administration Technology driving two interrelated revenue streams – software/solutions and services. The Company is a proven provider of leading-edge IT and benefits processing software, solutions and services for the Life and Group benefits marketplace and government. We design, customize, build and manage mission critical, end-to-end technology, people and infrastructure solutions using SEB’s proprietary technologies and expertise and partner technologies. We manage mission critical business processes for over 150 blue chip and government accounts, nationally and globally. Over 90% of our revenue and contracts are multi-year recurring revenue streams contracts related to government, insurance, healthcare, benefits and e-commerce. Our solutions are supported nationally and globally by over 600 multi-certified technical professionals in a multi-lingual infrastructure, from multiple offices across Canada and globally.

Our solutions include both software and services driven ecosystems including multiple SaaS solutions, cloud solutions & services, managed services offering smart sourcing (near shore/offshore), managed security services, custom software development and support, professional services, deep systems integration expertise and multiple specialty practice areas including AI, CRM, BI, Portals, EDI, e-commerce, digital transformation, analytics, project management to mention a few. The Company has more than 20 strategic partnerships/relationships with leading global and regional technology and consulting organizations.

For further information about SEB please visit: www.seb-inc.com.

About Everyday People Financial Inc.:
Everyday People is a financial technology and consumer financing company founded on the belief that everyone deserves access to credit, instant payments and the opportunity for homeownership. Through our technology driven ecosystem, our alternative and speciality credit financing programs offer credit and payment cards, homeownership facilitation, consumer lending, digital banking, and credit collection services. Our Mission is to help our clients be their best financial self. We’re with them every step of the way, listening and adapting to offer the kinds of credit products and services that help everyday people add extraordinary value to their everyday lives. For more information visit: www.everydaypeoplefinancial.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain information in this release may constitute forward-looking information. In some cases, but not necessarily in all cases, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “plans”, “targets”, “expects” or “does not expect”, “is expected”, “an opportunity exists”, “is positioned”, “estimates”, “intends”, “assumes”, “anticipates” or “does not anticipate” or “believes”, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results “may”, “could”, “would”, “might”, “will” or “will be taken”, “occur” or “be achieved”. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information are not historical facts but instead represent management’s expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events.

THE FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS RELEASE REPRESENTS THE COMPANY’S CURRENT EXPECTATIONS AND, ACCORDINGLY, IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. HOWEVER, THE COMPANY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY INTENTION OR OBLIGATION TO UPDATE OR REVISE ANY FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION, WHETHER AS A RESULT OF NEW INFORMATION, FUTURE EVENTS OR OTHERWISE, EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange Inc. nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc.) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

All figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.