HR Tech Interview with Sina Chehrazi, Chief Executive Officer at Nayya

Hi Sina, please tell us about your role at Nayya and how you arrived here.

Hello, it’s great to meet you – I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Nayya. My journey to Nayya has been an interesting one, I actually began my career as a lawyer. But it was my passion for entrepreneurship and technology, as well as my personal experience as the son of a Neurosurgeon, that inspired me to start my own journey within the healthcare and insurance space. Nayya is a result of the incredible amount of exposure I have had to the many different challenges consumers face when it comes to their healthcare and insurance.

What is Nayya and what are your core services and solutions?

Nayya is a data science and AI driven company that is focused on reinventing the way consumers choose and use their benefits through personalization. Our core offerings  surround the benefits experience: Choose is a personalized decision support engine that helps employees during open enrollment and Use is a personalized benefits concierge that helps employees keep track of their benefits and use them wisely throughout the year, so they can save money.

In essence, our offerings bring clarity to a very complex process, which is helping consumers understand the plans and benefits that best fit their needs during enrollment. And at the same time, we offer consumers proactive reminders to save money, with alerts such as: claims & reimbursement opportunities, prescription savings, real-time plan auditing, in-network care recommendations and more.

Recommended: Guardian Life Collaborates with Nayya to Enhance Benefits Enrollment Experience

How do you expand on the existing HR technology offerings already available in the market? How do you differentiate your platform from other HRtech companies?

In the last few years, we’ve witnessed the growth and innovation sparked by the explosion of data from companies like Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and so many others across a variety of industries. And now we’re starting to see that same innovation in the healthcare and insurance space.

What makes Nayya different is that we’re focusing our efforts on taming big data to bring personalization to benefits. Currently, we’re harnessing more than 3 billion external data points alongside 200 million rows of claims data via our AI engine to give consumers a tailored benefits experience, one that takes into account a consumer’s personal attributes, lifestyle and family to provide personalized benefit recommendations.

Nayya has a privacy-forward approach – we are SOC2 and HIPAA compliant. And Nayya is also built on flexibility – our solution can be used as a stand-alone platform or can be integrated with a company’s current HR platform.

Tell us more about your collaboration with Guardian and how they benefited from your employee experience tool?

Our collaboration with Guardian was really built on our shared desire to help consumers navigate an increasingly complex healthcare journey. Nayya is focused on bringing personalization to benefits and Guardian is a great example of a company focused on innovation on behalf of the consumer. Together, we’re giving consumers a tailored benefits experience – and one that is meeting consumer demand. It’s been a year since COVID-19 has changed the way we all do business – and our partnership is a proof point in how true innovation is born to solve HR and consumer challenges.

What is the most contemporary definition of “employee experience”? How is this different from traditional HCM?

The employee experience is basically what people endure during the course of their tenure at an organization – and every company invests in making sure this experience is a positive one. A positive experience translates into better performance, engagement and helps a company attract and retain top talent.

This is different from traditional HCM because in today’s world, “experience” has a different meaning. As I’ve said before, companies like Amazon have changed the experience by injecting personalization into their entire user experience. What Nayya offers HCM companies is the same experience, but targeted in helping them give their employees a better way to choose and use their benefits. Employees that feel valued, protected and compensated work better – and that starts with their benefits.

Recommended: Global Fintech Interview with Christopher Smith, Head of Group Benefits at Guardian Life

How do you see the rise of AI ML and automation platforms scaling from here in the insurance industry? How would these trends evolve with the increased adoption of HR tech tools?

The rise of AI technology and machine learning combined with automation has created an array of new services and technologies for the HR professionals everywhere. However, with so many options to choose from, the market can become disparate. Nayya  is providing the industry with a flexible solution that gives employers  and their employees one, centralized place to choose, use and engage with their benefits throughout the entire year.

Your prediction on the “future of HRtech industry” – how are you planning for the challenges at Nayya?

The future of HRtech will be anchored by consumer demand and incoming trends we will see coming at (hopefully) the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Nayya, our northstar has always been the consumer – and because of that, we will continue to bring innovation to the benefits experience. Our mission is to give consumers financial peace on their best days and confidence on their worst, and we will continue to innovate towards that.

Tag a person from the industry whose answers you would like to read here:

Jeff Wald – Founder of WorkMarket

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Thank you, Sina! That was fun and hope to see you back on HR Technology soon.