Vivup, a leading provider of world-class health and wellbeing benefits, and Perkbox, an award-winning global benefits and reward platform, announced an agreement to combine and a strategic majority investment from Great Hill Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in high-growth, disruptive companies. This brings together combined strengths with the goal of offering a truly market-leading solution for the UK’s public and private employee benefits sectors. Great Hill Partners’ investment will help the newly strengthened organisation scale its go-to-market capabilities, innovate product offerings, and accelerate organic and inorganic growth opportunities. Omni Partners (“Omni”), a lower mid-market focused investor in UK private companies, invested in Vivup in 2022 and will retain a minority stake to continue supporting the combined company’s growth. The agreed transaction is subject to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorisation.
Vivup and Perkbox are powered by a global team of professionals, together supporting over 4 million employees across almost 7,500 organisations. This includes over 85% of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), helping improve the lives of its people via leading employee wellbeing, benefits, engagement, and recognition & reward solutions. Powered by complementary expertise, this newly integrated proposition of world class products will be instrumental in supporting more organisations and their employees across Europe and APAC. Vivup brings a strong heritage and expertise of working with the public sector providing leading wellbeing, family care, and product expertise in Salary Sacrifice Benefits, giving employers tools to connect their workforce and help their people thrive. Perkbox is a leader in Employee Discount Schemes and Reward and Recognition technology that enables organisations to better motivate and financially support their employees. Vivup and Perkbox brings together two like minded organisations with an aligned mission and set of values that will help employers to better care for, connect with and celebrate their employees.
Day-to-day executive leadership will remain consistent across the combined businesses with Vivup CEO Simon Moyle serving as the newly formed company’s Group CEO, and Perkbox CEO Doug Butler serving as Group executive chairman. After 20 years in management and leadership roles delivering innovation and development in the UK retail services market, Moyle has spent the past five years leading the transformation and rapid growth of Vivup into the market leading employee benefits provider it is today. He has led Vivup to achieve record growth and created an award-winning culture that is people centric and empowering. Butler, who became Perkbox’s CEO in December 2023, brings over 30 years of leadership experience, having run businesses across the technology, telecommunications and the employment engagement sectors. Butler is a long-time executive working with Great Hill, most recently as CEO of former Great Hill portfolio company Reward Gateway, a global HR technology and employee engagement company. Great Hill Partners’ Drew Loucks, Chris Busby and Mats Heimes will join the company’s Board of Directors.
Simon Moyle said: “It is amazing to bring these two great organisations together. Pending FCA approval, we will be in the best possible position to support people and organisations across the UK in a very special and unique way. It is rare to find a combination such as Vivup and Perkbox where between us, we have the leading products needed across voluntary benefits, wellbeing and recognition and reward, yet very little overlap in the areas in which we currently operate. When I joined Vivup over five years ago, our team consisted of 17 people. Since then, our team has expanded significantly to almost 400 and with the addition of our Perkbox colleagues, we will now be over 500 strong. I am so proud of every member of our team and cannot wait to welcome our new Perkbox colleagues and support over 4,500 organisations. These last five years have been amazing but our future as a combined company is going to be even better!”
“Bringing the combined resources and technical product and support capabilities of Vivup and Perkbox together will be boon to the thousands of public and private sector clients and millions of employee users who rely on our solutions to meet their needs and challenges,” added Doug Butler. “I’ve always admired Vivup’s mission and growth under Simon’s leadership and, now supported by Great Hill as an investor, our complementary technology, service offerings and people centric cultures create a perfect combination to support HR professionals and their people.”
Great Hill Managing Director Drew Loucks noted: “Today’s exciting milestone creates a new industry player that is well-positioned to capitalise on a large and growing market opportunity. Doug and Simon both have strong track records of scaling industry-leading businesses by creating successful, client-centric cultures and innovative product offerings. We are excited to support the teams and bring Vivup and Perkbox together to deliver a more powerful employee wellbeing, benefits and engagement platform in the UK.”
Charles Gallagher-Powell, Partner at Omni added: “This deal validates our strategy of partnering with mission-led, fast-growing businesses to help push them to greater heights. Recognising these attributes in Vivup, plus a shared ambition and culture, drove our decision to invest in 2022. We’ve loved every minute of working with Simon and the team since then. We couldn’t be prouder of what Vivup has achieved and are excited to support the new combined entity as a minority shareholder.”
The investment from Great Hill Partners has also enabled Vivup to complete the acquisition of The Employee Resilience Company (TERC Ltd), providers of specialist counselling, psychotherapy and employee assistance provision, and Work & Life Partners, specialists in childcare, eldercare and petcare. Both transactions further support Vivup and Perkbox’s focus on becoming the leading provider in the mental health, wellbeing and family care space.
Great Hill Partners’ investment in Vivup and Perkbox builds upon the firm’s significant expertise in the employee benefits space, including investments in Reward Gateway, bswift, RxBenefits, Retiree First, ParetoHealth, PlanSource, and more. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
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