Announcing Great Hill's $220m investment into Reward Gateway

Today we’re announcing a major $220m (140m GBP) million investment in Reward Gateway by Great Hill Partners, a specialist investor in HR and Technology businesses. This investment marks a major milestone in our business and a major vote of confidence in the business model we’ve been running for the last 10 years.

When we started back in 2006, employee benefits in the UK were dominated by insurance commissions, expensive consultancy and complexity. The recognition industry wasn’t much better either, with over-priced product catalogues and poor value for employers and employees at every turn. Our success proves that clients really value an open and honest contract where they know exactly where their money is going, what is happening to their employee data and who is paying for the service.

I’m delighted that with this investment from Great Hill we’ve secured our independence again. With their ambitious, insightful support we’re truly going to be able to deliver on our mission of making the world a happier place to work.

Great Hill Partners are backing our independence. They give us freedom to focus on HR and deliver for business.

Great Hill are backing me and the existing management team to deliver our vision for employee engagement, broaden our “solve for HR” and increase the impact and ROI we deliver to our client’s businesses. As managers, we are co-investing back into the business alongside Great Hill, and so are our staff. We’ve always believed in employee share ownership and moving forward, management and employees will own 45% of the business between us. That’s one of the many ways we ensure you get great commitment when you choose Reward Gateway – every single person, in every country and at every level, is a shareholder who is connected to the business. And that is something that is even stronger today than it was 10 years ago.

Today, I’d like to say a huge thank you to our outgoing partners at Inflexion Private Equity who backed us as a young bright company in 2010. On their watch we broadened our product range, opened a 24/7 service centre and launched in the USA and Australia. We’ve grown the client base by four times and have grown our own workforce up to 275 people in 6 countries. They’ve been an amazing partner, and as their time with us drew to a close they understood our hunger to stay independent. They allowed us to stay true to our values and look past the advances of the financial services industry, who saw us as another channel to market their expensive products. We will stay independent and continue charting our own course – solving for HR and delivering for business.

We have a lot of people to say thank you to today!

By the time you see this, I’ll have spent the whole day saying thank you to my team – the 275 amazing people in 6 countries who make Reward Gateway what it is and what it will be. So, it just remains for me to say thank you to you our clients. We’re exceptionally excited about the next steps in our journey with you in employee engagement, and we’re exceptionally grateful to be on the journey with you.

With very best wishes,

Glenn Elliott,
Founder & CEO

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