At Kota, our mission is to increase access to traditional financial and insurance products. We realised early in our journey that achieving this mission requires 

 distribution of a better customer experience. We also realised that the killer technology infrastructure and integrations we had built to power our own solution could be used by our partners to improve their distribution. This was the origin of what we call our Embedded Solutions.

We have now officially launched our first Embedded Health Insurance product in partnership with Irish Life Health. This solution will allow Irish Life Health’s partners, including 

, and others, to seamlessly offer quotes and direct purchases of Irish Life Health products within their own websites and apps. For customers, it means a seamless purchasing experience through their chosen platforms and, ultimately, easier and better access to health insurance protection.

In many other verticals, embedded finance has enabled the growth and market expansion of products such as lending (Klarna), banking (Plaid), payments (Stripe) and other areas of insurance, like travel and home. For health insurance, the complexities of quoting and underwriting have stalled the progress of embedded solutions. We are changing this by building the technology, partnerships and new distribution channels to bring Embedded Health to life. 

Embedded Health allows health insurance providers to embed their offerings into third-party websites and apps. This means allowing an insurer’s offering to appear within the flow of a website and ultimately reaching more customers at the point of sale. We’ve built a demo site and brand to show you how this works, QuoteCare. 

Poor embedding solutions can break the customer buying process. We see many complex, multi-step products that look and feel terrible when embedded into other websites. There are a bunch of things that make them feel out of place; some of the worst are:

Kota solves all of these issues and more so that health insurers can focus on their customers and their sales processes. 

Kota’s Embedded Health technology provides a simple, fast and secure embeddable user interface. This is powered by Kota’s best-in-class ‘Embedded JS ’ platform that can be implemented in only three lines of code, making it simple for your partners to test, iterate and go live. It also does the heavy lifting of taking care of authentication, security, responsive UI, triggering events, quote and policy creation and much more. 

With our first partner, Irish Life Health, we’ve provided them with our Embedded UI JS, allowing them to provide great product experiences across desktop, tablet and mobile.  We worked closely with the Irish Life Health team to map and adapt their existing digital sales process and how they wanted their products to be displayed on third party sites. Today we see this come to life with their partners like 

We are only at the beginning of rolling out our Embedded Solutions. Beyond health, we’re already building Embedded Pensions and Embedded Life to allow providers in the market to distribute their products widely and seamlessly, meeting customers on the platforms they currently use.

If you see an opportunity to partner with us, or would like to learn more about our developer product and talk to us 

Introducing Embedded Health Insurance

Ensure you're familiar with social and private employee benefits in Germany, like parental leave and health insurance, that your team might expect. 

It’ll help you design an irresistible benefits package and maintain compliance with German employment laws.

Who Is Entitled to Employee Benefits in Germany?

German law classifies the workforce into:

Full-time and part-time workers in Germany are eligible for all mandatory employee benefits. 

However, part-time workers may receive some benefits at a prorated rate, depending on their work hours.

On the other hand, contractors are not automatically eligible for all benefits. But they must have health insurance — either private or social. 

Contractors can also voluntarily contribute to statutory pension insurance.

Most mandatory benefits in Germany fall under the social security system (

), which employers and employees jointly fund.

Statutory Accident Insurance — which is entirely funded by the employer.

Let’s see what each mandatory benefit entails: 

1. Statutory Health Insurance (Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung)

Germany provides basic healthcare coverage to all eligible residents through its statutory health insurance (GKV) system.

All German residents, including employees, are eligible for public health insurance. 

Employees with an income below a certain threshold — known as compulsory insurance limit or 

 — are automatically enrolled (by the employer) in the GKV.

The compulsory insurance limit for statutory health insurance is 

Those earning above this limit can choose between statutory and private health insurance (

 or PKV). We’ll discuss PKV later in the article.

The statutory health insurance fund covers various medical services, including doctor visits, hospital stays, medications, preventive services, etc.

Every German employee is entitled to various paid leaves.

Germany has 9 nationwide public holidays:

According to Section 3 of the Federal Holiday Act, German employees are entitled to paid annual leave.

The minimum annual leave duration depends on the employee's workweek:

Public holidays are not included in the paid annual leave entitlement.

For part-time employees, vacation days vary based on their work-hour distribution.

Employers can offer more than this minimum requirement based on collective agreements.

 Employees receive their regular salary during the leave.

German employees are entitled to paid sick leave (when they cannot work due to illness or injury).

The parental benefits in Germany include:

It’s a period of paid absence for mothers before and after childbirth. All employed women in Germany are eligible for maternity leave.

6 weeks before the due date and 8 weeks after childbirth (12 weeks in the case of premature or multiple births).

Maternity Protection Pay (Mutterschutzlohn)

It refers to the pay that pregnant and nursing mothers receive during maternity leave.

The mother receives 100% of her average net income, calculated based on her earnings in the three months or 13 weeks leading up to the leave.

It gives new parents time off from work to care for their newborn or adopted child.

In Germany, the minimum wage is a legally mandated hourly rate employers must pay their employees.

In 2023, workers are entitled to a minimum wage of €12 per hour.

For those clocking a standard 40-hour work week, this translates to:

German employees are entitled to various pensions covered by social security pension insurance (

The old-age pension is a monthly payment to retirees.

In 2023, the average old-age pension in Germany for 45 years of insurance contributions is €1,543 per month.

The exact amount of old-age pension depends on the following factors:

B. Invalidity Pension (Erwerbsminderungsrente)

Invalidity, or ‘reduced earning capacity pension,’ is a monthly payment to people who cannot work full-time due to illness or disability.

There are two types of invalidity pension in Germany:

To be eligible for a German invalidity pension, an employee must have contributed to the pension insurance fund for at least 5 years. 

The pension amount depends on an employee’s past social security contributions and degree of incapacity.

C. Survivor’s Pension (Hinterbliebenenrenten)

The survivor's pension provides monthly financial support to the dependents of an insured employee in the event of their death.

10 Important Employee Benefits in Germany (+ Common Perks)

We’re excited to share that we have raised a €5M Seed round led by our new partners, EQT Ventures, with participation from our early partners Northzone and Frontline Ventures, as well as some incredible new angels including Job van der Voort of Remote, Romain Huet of Open AI (formerly of Stripe), David Clarke formerly of Workday and many others.

We founded Kota last year with a mission to increase access to traditional financial and insurance products for a new generation of employers and employees. At the end of 2022, we launched our private beta and, earlier this year, launched to the market, bringing new customers onto the Kota platform. Today, we’re covering employees in over 30 countries, have integrations into world-leading health insurance, life insurance and pension providers such as Irish Life, Allianz, Smart Pension, and have people-first companies like &Open, Spotlight Oral Care, Unmind, Fonoa and many others trusting Kota to cover their teams. 

Partnering with EQT Ventures is helping us to take our mission to another level. We feel incredibly lucky to have Naza and the EQT team supporting us, bringing their founder-operator backgrounds and a highly proactive, momentum-driven approach to the Kota team. This additional €5M brings the total funding to €7.6M and the support from new and existing investors gives us the opportunity to accelerate and create a new category in this industry.

Simply put, we exist to save companies money and time so that they can more easily protect their team. We’re only at the start of this journey, but in our first few months, our product has been having a real impact on customers: 

Our customers have been able to onboard employees to Kota in as little as two minutes, and much to our delight, our enrolment rates have been significantly higher than the industry average, and NPS scores from employers and employees are even better than we hoped for. Whilst we know it won’t last forever, we’ve yet to lose a single customer - and we’ll be working hard to maintain this as we grow and bring our offering to more teams. 

As we progressed our platform thesis, we saw opportunities to work with adjacent players in our space. We launched our developer API and embedded insurance solution to bring the underlying infrastructure and APIs that we built for ourselves to other platforms. We’re enabling them to move away from providing these benefits manually and become a distribution channel to enhance their own products. In powering this experience within other products, we’re furthering bringing this industry online.

While funding is a milestone and more validation of our hypothesis, we know it’s a means to an end. We’re staying focused on building the best product for our customers while expanding our market availability and the coverage options. 

A big thank you to our amazing team and our investors – namely Naza at EQT, Deepka at Northzone and Zoe at Frontline, for being great partners. We look forward to building together over the next decade.

Finally, we want to say thank you to our incredible customers for joining us on this journey and for trusting us with such an important part of your team's well-being – we’re working every day to ensure we’re building the best option on the market. 

Kota raise €5M Seed led by EQT Ventures

Spanish employees enjoy various statutory and supplementary benefits, including medical insurance and retirement benefits. 

Before hiring employees in Spain, you must brush up on these benefits.

It’ll allow you to craft a competitive benefits package tailored for Spain, ensuring you attract and retain the finest talent. More importantly, it’ll help you comply with Spanish labour laws.

Let’s explore the popular employee benefits in Spain. 

Who Is Eligible for Employee Benefits in Spain?

The eligibility for Spanish employee benefits depends on the types of employment contracts under the Spanish Labour Law (

The Spanish law requires you to offer certain employee benefits, known as statutory benefits. These can be:

How do Spanish social security benefits work?

It works through contributions from employees, employers, and the government. 

The Spanish government subsidises social security contributions and provides direct payments to the system (depending on the annual budget).

The employer and employees contribute — a percentage of the employee’s gross salary — to the 

. Employers process the contributions through their payroll system.

The exact employer and employee contribution depends on:

Let’s check out Spain's eight statutory employee benefits:

The Spanish government provides essential healthcare to its citizens through the 

Employees contributing to social security and pensioners are automatically eligible for public health insurance.

SNS provides various medical benefits, such as:

The following paid leave entitlements provide Spanish employees with time off, aiding work-life balance.

Full-time employees in Spain are entitled to a minimum of

 (or 30 calendar days) of paid annual leave. 

The duration can increase based on employer or sector agreements. 

Employees receive their complete salary during this leave, and any unused days can carry over depending on company or collective policies.

The annual leave is pro-rated for part-time employees and full-time workers who have not completed a full year in service.

B. Public Holidays (​​Fiestas Públicas)

Spanish employees enjoy 14 paid public holidays, including national, regional, and local holidays. 

The exact breakdown of these holidays can vary based on regional festivals and local authorities. Refer to your regional calendar to determine the actual dates.

However, the nine nationwide public holidays in Spain are:

C. Sickness and Disability Leave (Incapacidad Temporal)

The Spanish labour regulations allow employees to take paid time off due to common illnesses or non-occupational injuries.

An employee can avail of the sickness or disability benefit for up to 365 days, with a possible extension of 180 days. Employment and collective agreements determine the exact durations.

The sickness benefit kicks in only from the fourth day of an employee’s sickness. The first three days are unpaid.

From the 4th-20th day of sickness, the employer must pay the sickness allowance to the employee. They can receive reimbursements from the social security system for the payment. 

After the 20th day, the Spanish social security system pays the employee directly.

Workers registered with Spain’s social security system receive paid maternity (

The partner leave is available to the biological mother's partner (the second parent).

Eligibility for Maternity, Paternity, and Partner Leave

Eligibility hinges on the employee’s age and social security contribution history:

Duration for Maternity, Paternity, and Partner Leave in Spain

The total duration of paid parental leave depends on the type of birth:

Pay Rates for Maternity, Partner, and Paternity Benefit

Eligible employees are entitled to 100% of their salary during maternity, paternity, and partner leave. 

The government makes the social security payments directly to the employee's bank account.

3. National Minimum Wage (Salario Mínimo Interprofesional)

Spanish workers are entitled to the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), which is reviewed annually by the government.

In 2023, the legal minimum wage in Spain is €36 per day or €1,080 per month, depending on whether the employee is paid daily or monthly.The minimum wage for hourly workers is €8.45 per hour.

4. Contributory Unemployment Benefit (Prestación Contributiva de Desempleo)

Spanish individuals who are involuntarily out of work can access government-funded unemployment benefits. 

For example, a worker laid off by the company due to financial difficulties could be eligible for this benefit. 

Eligibility requires unemployment certification from the Spanish State Employment Service (SEPE) and minimum social security contributions based on age. 

The benefit initially covers 70% of the employee's final salary for the first 180 days, then reduces to 50% afterwards.

Find more information on the Unemployment Benefit

The Spanish government offers four types of statutory pension benefits. 

The government determines the pension amount as a percentage of the base rate. The base rate (or regulatory base) is the average of an employee’s contribution bases (earnings) over a specified period.

Spain has a provision for a non-contributory pension (

) for individuals lacking sufficient contributions but facing financial hardships.

10+ Employee Benefits in Spain to Keep Your Spanish Team Happy

Reaching the State Pension age in Ireland doesn't mean you must quit work and retire. 

Ireland allows its workers to work past the age of 66 while claiming their State Pension. 

If you’re receiving the State Pension (Contributory), working after 66 won’t affect your pension entitlements. However, your pension payment may be affected if you receive the State Pension (Non-Contributory).  

Can I Claim the State Pension and Still Work in Ireland?

Irish workers can continue working full-time or part-time while claiming the State Pension.

The State Pension is a weekly payment made by the government to people aged 66 or above and is of two types:

If you receive the State Pension (Contributory), working while claiming the State Pension will not affect your pension entitlements.

But if you’re not qualified for a contributory State Pension payment and receive the State Pension (Non-Contributory), your pension entitlements may be affected. 

You will receive the State Pension (Non-Contributory) at a reduced rate since it’s a means-tested payment. 

A means test assesses all your income sources to check if you qualify for the payment. 

Cash income earned through employment, self-employment, occupational/private pensions, and capital like savings, investments, and property (except your home) is assessed in a means test.

, most employees retire around 65. However, some employment contracts may specify a mandatory retirement age. 

Psst…Your retirement age isn’t the same as the State Pension age (66), which is when you qualify for the State Pension. 

If you wish to work beyond the retirement age:

You can also choose to work after retiring from your old job and join the same field or industry or take up an entirely different career. 

Let’s see how joining different employment sectors can impact your State Pensions.

Wondering about tax relief on your contributions?

Tax Relief on Your Irish Pension Contributions

5 FAQs About the State Pension in Ireland

Here are some commonly asked questions about the Irish State Pension: 

The State Pension in Ireland is a social welfare payment made by the Department of Social Protection. 

It’s a weekly payment for people aged 66 and above to help them sustain their basic cost of living in retirement. 

Two State Pension schemes are available in Ireland:

The personal rates and maximum rates for both schemes vary as you can get an increase for qualified adult dependents (IQA) and qualified child dependents (IQC). 

2. When Can You Claim the State Pension in Ireland?

The State Pension is paid to workers aged 66 and above. This qualifying age is known as the State Pension age. 

You can’t claim both the non-contributory pension and the contributory pension at the same time. 

But you can apply for both of them, and the Department of Social Protection will assess your eligibility based on your PRSI (Pay Related Social Insurance) contributions record and decide which scheme will benefit you.

3. Can I Claim an Irish State Pension If I Live or Work Abroad?

You can claim the Irish State Pension (Contributory) if you live or work outside Ireland.

However, you can’t claim the State Pension (Non-Contributory) because it requires you to reside in Ireland to qualify for the pension payments. 

If you work or live in other European countries:

If you work or live outside the UK or other EU countries:

Ireland has signed bilateral social security agreements with these countries, which allows Irish workers to join the State Pension scheme.  

To claim the State Pension from abroad, send your 

by post to the Department of Social Protection in Ireland at: 

They will contact the relevant institution in your country of residence to start the pension claim process. 

4. Till What Age Can I Continue to Work While Receiving State Pension in Ireland?

As of October 2023, you can continue working full-time after 66 while receiving your pension payment for as long as you want. 

However, you will receive your pension entitlement at your standard personal rate (please contact the DSP for information about the increases for qualified adults and child dependents). 

From January 2024 onwards, the Irish government will introduce a new flexible pension age model. 

This new model also allows you to continue working for as long as you wish while claiming the State Pension. However, it will give you 

greater flexibility in terms of the age you can start drawing down

5. How Can Working After Retirement Boost My Pension Income?

Pension payments for those working until 70 will 

increase by approximately 5% for each year

So, by age 70, Irish workers will get a higher pension entitlement of up to 24% on retirement. 

Offer Additional Benefits to Boost Employee State Pension With Kota 

According to a 2023 survey by Ireland’s Retirement Planning Council (RPC), 

(above 50 years of age) plan to continue working full-time after retirement. 

The main reasons cited by the workers were the high cost of living in Ireland, the need to stay active and engaged, maintain social connections, and passion for their work. 

As an employer, you can help your employees boost their retirement savings by supplementing their retirement income and offering extra retirement benefits with 

Kota is a digital pension app that lets you: 

All that and more without incurring any brokerage or administrative costs!

offer scalable retirement benefits to your employees

Can I Claim State Pension and Still Work in Ireland? + 5 FAQs

Our mission is to increase access to traditional financial and protective products for a new generation of employers and employees.

For us, ‘Yonder’ was the name that brought our mission to life. It was inspired by the things in life that are far away yet important now, like your retirement. 

Whilst our mission has remained the same, our vision has grown. We’re building the infrastructure and platform to bring health, life insurance and pension providers online across the globe - a new category that will allow modern, distributed companies to easily and more affordably access core benefits. 

When you’re building a new category, you need a name that you can own. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t the only people who loved the name Yonder. In case you hadn’t already noticed, there are a few other companies that shared the name with us.

Kota is the name we’ve chosen to bring us through the next stage of our journey. 

When we decided to change our name, we had a few non-negotiables:

For those of you who are customers, partners and friends, you might ask how this affects you, and the simple answer is it won’t. You’ll notice changes only to our name and logo across our web and mobile app. 

We are more excited than ever to create a category-defining company and improve the lives of millions of people in the coming years. Our ambition continues to grow, and our new name marks the start of a new phase of our growth as we deliver more happiness and good fortune to you - our customers, partners and friends!

We're saying goodbye to Yonder

Yonder renames as Kota

The auto-enrolment pension scheme in the UK provides employees with easy access to a workplace pension plan. 

It was rolled out in stages from 2012 to 2018 — starting with large employers and followed by medium and small employers. Since 2018, all UK employers have been legally required to auto-enrol their eligible employees into a qualifying pension scheme. 

Let’s explore the UK’s automatic enrolment scheme in detail.

What Is the Automatic Enrolment Pension Scheme in the UK?

Introducing Embedded Health Insurance

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