At Kota, we support core benefits for over 45,000 employees across the globe. What we’ve learned is that the best benefits experiences are engaging for employees 

, we’re extending that simplicity to flexible spending allowances.

Flexible allowances - whether it’s a WFH budget, a wellness stipend, or a learning fund - have become a standard way for companies to support their teams. Indeed, a quick search reveals 

76,000 job descriptions across the UK & Ireland where an ‘allowance’ or ‘stipend’ is highlighted as an employee benefit.

The issue, however, is that HR and Finance teams across the world are losing their lunch breaks to manual reimbursements, payroll reconciliations and all the other admin that comes with offering these allowances.

Working with hundreds of HR and Finance teams, we’ve found two major frustrations with how flexible allowances are done today.

First: managing these allowances often means spreadsheets, manual reimbursements and employees simply ignoring budgets. Finance teams lose visibility and control; employees lose interest.

Second: the process often involves implementing a whole new platform for yet another point-solution. People teams end up juggling one tool for allowances, separate tech for pensions, another broker for private medical cover, and so on.

One of the things our customers tell us consistently is that they want 

: insurance, retirement and flexible allowances. They don’t want to manage multiple systems for pension, wellness and stipends. They want one benefits platform that does it all.

Based on our experience supporting benefits for over 45,000 employees globally, we know what great looks like: it’s engaging for employees, effortless for employers. With 

, we’re extending that simplicity to flexible, category-based budgets.

Employers create an allowance category - e.g., WFH Office Allowance or Learning & Development and issue a virtual card tied to that budget. Employees use the card easily and Finance knows exactly where the spend went.

Each card carries merchant category controls (MCCs) via Stripe Issuing. A wellness budget works at wellness merchants. A learning budget works at learning services. Every purchase is automatically on-policy.

They log in, see their allowance and card, check their balance and use it. No receipts. No claims.

Admins get real-time visibility, clean reports and simple alerts when balances run low. Everything sits inside the same platform they already use.

The moment an employee is added to your HRIS - like HiBob, Personio, Humaans, etc. - they’re onboarded onto the comprehensive benefits package you’ve set up, with the pre-defined eligibility rules you’ve set for them.

Spend Cards sit alongside insurance and retirement within Kota, offering companies one place to manage all their benefits and one place for employees to view everything they’re being offered.

Employees want to spend their allowances easily. 

Finance teams want clarity and peace of mind. 

Kota Spend makes all this possible without creating new workflows or extra admin.

Kota Spend now available in early access. 

 for a live demo and explore how flexible allowances can enhance your benefits offering.

This is not part of Kota’s regulated activity.

🇪🇺 Cards are issued by Stripe Technology Europe Limited, an electronic money institution authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland (firm reference number: C187865). Cards are issued under the Visa card scheme pursuant to a license from Visa Europe Limited.

🇬🇧 Cards are issued by Stripe Payments UK Limited, which is an electronic money institution authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number: 900461) for the issuing of electronic money. Cards are issued under the Visa card scheme pursuant to a license from Visa Europe Limited.

Introducing Kota Spend: Flexible Allowances, Made Simple. 

Introducing Kota Spend: Flexible Allowances Made Easy

Today is a big day for us at Kota: our health insurance offering goes live inside PayFit - the payroll platform used by over 20,000 SMEs across Europe. It’s a very exciting day for us for three big reasons.

1. Access to fast, reliable care has never mattered more

NHS waiting lists are at record levels, with millions of people facing delays for treatment and even routine GP appointments. As a result, more employees are turning to their employers for support: employer-sponsored private medical insurance is now at a 30-year high, and one in three working adults say private healthcare is “essential,” not a perk.

SMEs want to help their teams, but historically the cost and admin have made private healthcare feel out of reach. Bringing health insurance directly into payroll changes that equation.

2. PayFit shares our belief that small teams should be able to do big things

More than 20,000 SMEs rely on PayFit to run payroll quickly and accurately. They choose PayFit because it removes friction - it helps small teams pay people faster, stay compliant, and automate the busywork that usually slows HR and Finance down.

Kota has always aimed to do the same for benefits: to give small teams access to big-company care without needing brokers, paperwork, or specialist systems. This makes the partnership a natural fit. Together, we’re giving SMEs the ability to offer comprehensive health benefits without adding complexity.

3. This is exactly what our embedded solution was built for

A year ago, we launched Kota’s embedded solution to bring benefits into the tools HR and Finance teams already use. No extra platforms. No context switching. No stitching together disconnected systems.

Seeing Kota live inside PayFit is a perfect example of that vision in action: health benefits delivered directly inside the payroll workflow where people are already working day-to-day.

It also meets another growing need - companies want to consolidate tools, not add more. Offering healthcare directly inside PayFit removes the overhead of managing yet another system just to support employee wellbeing.

Here’s what PayFit customers can now do:

For SMEs, this means offering meaningful health benefits without extra tools or extra admin. For employees, it means faster access to care when they need it.

If you’re a PayFit customer and want to explore how to get health insurance up and running for your team, it's live inside their platform now. And if you’re thinking about expanding your product offering to include health benefits, we’d be more than happy to 

Kota brings private healthcare into payroll with PayFit

Payfit Kota Health Insurance

Kota has been selected for CB Insights' fourth annual Insurtech 50 list, recognising the world's most promising private insurtech companies.

Every year, CB Insights evaluates thousands of companies before making their final selection. Their analysis goes beyond the hype and takes into account the factors most predictive of success - customer references, partnerships, investor strength, commercial maturity, hiring momentum and more. 

This feels like an opportune time to once again thank our customers, carrier partners and the entire Kota team who have believed in this vision from day one. 

Kota Named Among CB Insights’ Most Innovative Insurtechs

CB Insights Names Kota in Top 50 Insurtechs Globally

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Kota’s Embedded Health Insurance solution goes live inside 

 fast-growing stablecoin payroll and employer of record platform. What this means is that 

 Toku users can now set up, manage, and pay for health and employee benefits directly from the Toku platform.

Finding Common Ground in the Future of Compensation

The similarities between Kota and Toku extend beyond our (almost) mirrored company names - most importantly, to how we view the future of compensation. 

The modern workforce is increasingly online and untethered by geographic constraints - helping to distribute opportunity more evenly around the globe. Kota was founded to make employee benefits reflect that shift, and we’re thrilled to be working with a partner like Toku who is doing the same for payroll. 

In Payroll, Toku has found a product where cryptocurrency can significantly improve the user experience. For the uninitiated, a stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to something more predictable - usually a fiat currency like the US dollar. Because of that, stablecoins avoid much of the volatility typical of other cryptocurrencies. 

Stablecoin payroll is gaining traction because it allows employees, wherever they are, to get paid faster without excessive Foreign Exchange and intermediary banking fees. 

Toku’s platform already supports more than 100 countries with built-in compliance for local tax rules, labor laws, and stablecoin-specific regulation.

What’s especially powerful is that you don’t have to rip out your existing payroll or HR system: Toku allows you to integrate stablecoin payments via API into your current setup. 

For employees, this means faster, clearer, more flexible payments. In most cases, stablecoin payroll settles in minutes - no more waiting for banker hours, weekend lags, or multiple bank intermediaries. It also means more financial predictability, especially for people in rapidly changing exchange-rate environments.

At Kota, the mission has always been to make employee benefits modern, simple, global. Benefits should fit within existing HR & finance workflows and play nicely with other tools - something that’s been held back by traditional brokers and their manual processes. 

Employee benefits play a vital role in attracting and retaining top talent, and Health Insurance consistently ranks as the most popular - with 57% of UK employees ranking it as the one they want most. For HR teams at global companies, however, offering benefits is needlessly complex due to distinct regulatory environments across borders. 

The goal is that when you use Kota + Toku together, benefits become part of your payroll flow, not a separate project. Benefits are visible, meaningful, and trusted by employees; manageable and compliant for companies; and flexible enough to adapt to different geographies and regulatory environments.

By embedding Kota’s infrastructure directly into Toku, payroll and benefits are unified in one compliant, scalable system, helping employers deliver locally relevant and efficient benefits alongside fast and reliable stablecoin payroll.

Putting Kota’s embedded benefits inside Toku’s stablecoin payroll stack makes rewarding your global team effortless:

We’re excited by what this enables: a world where globally distributed teams are rewarded quickly, fairly, transparently - and where HR & Finance teams are freed up to focus on moving the needle, not on needless admin. 

Thank you to everyone who helped bring this to life. We’re just getting started.

Toku Launches Health Insurance Cover Powered by Kota

Kota x Toku Health Insurance

We’ve raised a $14.5m Series A from Eurazeo, bringing our total raised to more than $22m with existing investors EQT Ventures, Northzone, and Frontline Ventures doubling down, and participation from 9Yards and Plug and Play Ventures.

Alongside our Series A, we’re also excited to announce we’re now licensed by the Central Bank of Ireland as an insurance intermediary. This makes us the only insurance benefits platform with regulatory approval across the EEA and the UK, giving us greater control over the experience we offer customers.

When we founded Kota in 2022, we set out to make core benefits, like Pensions and Health Insurance, work for the modern workforce. We realised back then that benefits were not just inefficient; they are fundamentally broken, outdated and inadequate, posing a real issue to a whole generation. They were hard to access and manage for companies, and under appreciated by employees.  

Benefits live mostly offline, fragmented across email, portals and PDF files, with intermediaries like brokers taking fees and slowing down the movement of data. This creates an inaccurate and painful experience, making benefits the 2nd biggest time drain for HR teams.

The harsh reality of this is that hundreds of millions of people don’t get access to basic benefits like 

. 99.8% of European companies have less than 500 people, and 22% of their employees work remotely - so making global benefits infrastructure accessible for lean, growing companies is crucial. 

Two-thirds of employees don’t understand the benefits they’re being offered, and 40% of them don’t even consider benefits part of compensation. It’s not their fault - the traditional benefits onboarding experience involves an email with a link to a PDF about what they’re being offered, and not much more. 

The result of all of this is frustrated employers going through a herculean effort and excessive cost to roll out benefits that their employees don’t end up using. Everyone is trying their best, but the system is broken, and the technology is not there to support them. 

Rolling out benefits shouldn’t be a thankless task - we believe everyone deserves much better.

We believe in a future where getting your team covered is simple, real-time and delightful – and this is only possible with integrations directly into the insurance carriers. It should just work. It’s either interoperable with your HR and payroll tools or it lives in your HR and payroll tools. 

In the last few years, we’ve built the rails to bring the industry online by integrating carriers to remove costly intermediation and making complex, regulated processes work end-to-end in one platform. Today, we support hundreds of companies, tens of thousands of employees, and power benefits for platforms like 

Our Series A is just another step in the right direction and a testimony to the progress the team has made. We’re excited to welcome Eurazeo and Elise Stern to the team. Elise has been close to Kota for a while and has an unbounded energy and curiosity for this space.

Our existing investors, EQT Ventures, Northzone, and Frontline Ventures, have doubled down on this round, and we’re lucky to have the support from a group who have passionately been with us since pre-seed and seed.

We’ve also added some amazing angel investors from some of the biggest names in HR tech, fintech and insurance, and count ourselves lucky to have them on our side.

We’re expanding our reach of insurance carriers to more markets, ensuring our customers can access the best cover, no matter where they are. We’re deepening our focus on our core products to build the best experience on the planet to empower and support our customers. 

Finally, I wanted to thank our incredible customers who share our vision for the future of work - we wouldn’t be here without their trust and feedback. I also want to thank our team, who are obsessive and relentless about this mission, and care deeply about building the best product in the world.

If you’re interested in joining us and looking to do some of the best work of your career, 

We’ve raised $14.5m to build the employee benefits infrastructure for the internet

Announcing our $14.5M Series A

Employee benefits are non-wage compensations provided by employers or the State for employee well-being. 

In the UK, employee benefits fall into three categories: 

Read on for a complete breakdown of UK employee benefits and why they are essential. We’ll highlight 20+ employee benefits examples to help you build a thriving workplace.

Who Qualifies for Employee Benefits in the UK?

Employee benefits are generally provided to those classified as “workers” in the United Kingdom.

UK law defines a “worker” as someone who has entered into a contract (express or implied) to perform work personally. This includes:

Workers are entitled to key statutory benefits - such as holiday pay, sick pay, and a workplace pension - regardless of whether they work full-time or part‑time. 

But what about freelancers and contractors?

Independent contractors, freelancers, and self‑employed individuals typically fall outside this “worker” definition. That means they aren’t automatically entitled to these benefits.

UK law requires employers to provide mandatory (statutory) benefits to all eligible employees. These benefits include:

, employers must enrol eligible employees into a workplace pension scheme and contribute to their retirement savings.

 found that 46% of UK companies go beyond the 3% auto-enrolment minimum, offering extra pension contributions to support their workforce. This shows a growing trend - employers are stepping up their benefits game to attract and retain top talent.

Effortlessly Manage Workplace Pensions With Kota

is a modern digital benefits platform that helps businesses set up and manage 

, a trusted pension provider in the United Kingdom, to offer employees extensive pension coverage and retirement benefits. 

Make workplace pensions hassle-free with Kota. 

All UK employees are entitled to legally guaranteed paid leave (holiday pay or statutory leave entitlement) as follows:

Public and bank holidays aren’t automatically included in this mandatory benefit. As an employer, you can choose whether to count them as part of the 28 days of annual leave or offer them separately.  

For example, you could offer extra paid holidays beyond the legal minimum (often after one year of service) and allow staff to “buy” additional leave through 

3. Paid Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Leave

As an employer in the United Kingdom, you must offer paid parental leave to your employees in the form of paternity, maternity, and adoption leave.

Female employees on maternity or adoptive leave can take up to 52 weeks, with 39 weeks paid. 

This leave is split into two parts (the leave structure is the same for adoptive leave):

In 2025, eligible employees on maternity or adoption leave receive:

Employed fathers or partners (including same-sex partners) can take either one or two weeks of Statutory Paternity Leave. 

Employees can take two weeks of extended leave in cases such as shared parental leave, adoption or surrogacy arrangements, or health complications involving the mother or child.

In 2025, the paternity allowance is £184.03 per week or 90% of the employee’s average earnings (whichever is lower).

You must report statutory parental leave payments (paternity, maternity, and adoption pay) to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). You must also maintain accurate records of leave, pay, and any adjustments to comply with UK labour laws.

In 2025, your employees are entitled to a minimum Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) of £116.75 per week for up to 28 weeks.

Sick pay begins on the fourth day of your employee’s absence, meaning SSP covers all days off due to illness after the first three. 

If your company has its own sick pay scheme, you can offer more than the statutory minimum, but never less. Such schemes, also known as contractual or occupational sick pay, must be clearly outlined in your employee’s contract.

Supplementary Employee Benefits in the UK 

Employers often offer additional, non-statutory benefits - beyond the mandatory ones - to enhance the overall employee benefits package. 

Here are some valuable supplementary employee benefits in the United Kingdom:

Let’s discuss these employee benefits examples in detail:

The National Health Service (NHS) offers free healthcare to UK residents. 

, including long waiting times and strain on the system. 

That’s why many employers provide private medical insurance (or private health insurance) schemes to their UK employees. 

Private medical insurance ensures health benefits, such as:

It provides a range of different services, which cover:

Private health insurance is a flexible benefit that allows employers to tailor coverage levels to suit individual needs.

Companies can partner with health insurance providers to offer a range of plans as part of a robust employee benefits package. You can bear the plan's full cost or share the premium with your employees.

Moreover, your employees can decide the coverage level they need, such as choosing a basic plan to save money.

Offer Comprehensive Employee Health Insurance with Kota

, a leading UK health insurer, ensuring top-quality care for your employees.

 and roll out more engaging health cover with less ongoing admin.  

Life assurance as an employee benefit refers to Death-in-Service, a type of group term assurance. It provides a lump-sum payment to your employee’s family or dependents if they pass away while employed by your company. 

As an employer, you set the level of cover. 

It’s usually a multiple of the employee’s annual salary — often up to four times. You can also choose to offer different cover levels based on factors like job role or age. 

3. Income Protection (Long-Term Disability)

Income protection provides a monthly income to your UK employees who are unable to work due to illness or disability, whether temporary or permanent. 

It’s also known as Group Income Protection (GIP) or disability insurance.

Typically, GIP replaces about 50–60% of your employee’s salary, with your contributions being roughly 1–1.5% of the payroll to fund the plan.

Here’s how this employee benefit works:

Critical Illness Cover (CIC) provides a lump-sum payment to your employees diagnosed with serious illnesses, such as:

Dental insurance is an attractive benefit that covers both routine and emergency dental treatments.

In the UK, there are two main types of dental plans:

Employers can offer dental insurance as a standalone benefit or integrate it into a broader private medical insurance plan.

Health cash plans offer an affordable way for employees to cover routine medical and dental expenses.

How does a health cash plan differ from health insurance?

Health insurance covers treatments for diseases that occur after enrollment, while a health cash plan pays for ongoing, routine treatments. 

Under health cash plans, your employees pay a fixed monthly fee (say, £10) and can receive reimbursements up to set limits - such as £200 for dental care, £100 for physiotherapy, and £100 for optical expenses.

Employee Benefits UK: What to Offer in 2025 (20+ Examples)

We’re excited to announce our latest embedded benefits partnership with 

an exciting new global workforce management platform!

Kota Embed gives organisations using the Helios platform a faster, simpler way to set up and manage health benefits from providers like Freedom Health for their teams - helping them stay compliant, locally competitive, and ready to grow!

Companies Are Now Borderless, but Benefits Infrastructure Hasn’t Kept Up

Thanks to Helios, employment and payroll is about to  become significantly easier for globally distributed companies. Our partnership is ensuring that employees’ benefits are at the forefront of this offering, and are not lagging behind.

Setting up and managing health insurance in multiple countries often means juggling local vendors, navigating regulatory nuances between countries, and wrangling spreadsheets. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to scale.

By combining Kota’s international benefits infrastructure with Helios’ centralised approach to workforce operations, this integration simplifies one of the most fragmented, compliance-heavy parts of running a global business. 

I sat down with Rick to dive into our shared vision for the future of work and the tools needed to bring it to life - you can check out the full interview 

With this integration, Helios customers can now:

All within the same platform they already use to manage global employment.

in mind - HR, People, and Finance professionals who are tasked with supporting distributed teams while keeping costs, compliance, and complexity in check. It removes the need to manage local brokers, chase down paperwork, or worry about whether coverage is up to standard. With Kota and Helios, benefits just work - alongside everything else.

When expanding into new markets, you’ve got enough to figure out. Now, benefits are one less thing on that list.

Helios Launches Local Health Benefits powered by Kota Embed 

Looking to attract and retain global talent? 

Offering tailored benefits to your employees is the golden ticket. 

Global employee benefits are non-wage incentives that acknowledge and address the diverse needs of an international workforce. Some examples include paid time off, company health insurance, occupational pensions, and remote work stipends. 

Let’s explore various global employee benefits you can offer and how to manage them.

Why Offer Global Employee Benefits to Your Team?

Metlife's 2024 Employee Benefit Trends Study

, 73% of employees would be more likely to stay with their current employer if they had access to a broader range of benefits.

Offering a comprehensive benefits package to your employees wherever they are comes with several advantages, such as: 

Now that we've covered the why, let's discover what to include in your global employee benefits package.

What Are the Different Types of Global Employee Benefits You Can Offer?

Any global employee benefits package will typically be a mix of: 

A. Statutory Benefits (Mandatory Benefits)

Statutory benefits are legally required benefits that you must provide, with specific requirements varying by country based on labour laws.

Usually, statutory benefits include essentials like healthcare, pensions, paid time off, and unemployment insurance.

Some benefits, like a state pension scheme, could be part of the country’s social security program. 

Mandatory benefits are typically funded through employee, employer, and state contributions.

As an employer, you may also be responsible for processing contributions, submitting them to the concerned authority, maintaining accurate records, etc.

Let’s look at some common statutory benefits globally:

Supplementary benefits are optional benefits you can offer your employees — going beyond the legally mandated ones.

To enhance your workers' overall compensation package and keep them satisfied and motivated. 

Some popular supplementary benefits globally include:

Fringe benefits are additional non-cash perks aimed at attracting and retaining talent. 

Unlike supplementary benefits, which enhance core benefits like health or retirement plans, fringe benefits offer non-essential luxuries to improve your employees' experience and workplace satisfaction.

Examples of Employee Benefits Offered Across Different Countries

Here’s what the employee benefits landscape looks like for different countries:

Here are additional resources for employers in the UK:

While global benefits offer several advantages, managing them can be challenging.

What Are the Challenges Employers Face While Managing Global Benefits?

Managing global employee benefits can present unique challenges to you and your HR teams:

You can overcome these challenges with the right global benefits management solution.

Effortless Global Employee Benefits Management With Kota

 is a cutting-edge software solution that simplifies global benefits management.

Partnering directly with trusted benefits providers across 

, Kota delivers hand-picked, cost-effective benefits for your employees.

Moreover, our benefits plans comply with your employee’s local employment laws. 

What Employee Benefits Does Kota Support?

Our core offerings are the essentials every global benefits package needs:

Introducing Kota Spend: Flexible Allowances, Made Simple.

Latest stories