A Strategic Pivot to Retirement

Stax.ai didn’t start in the retirement industry—we found our way here through a series of market explorations. In 2021, our parent company, Aptus Engineering, Inc., was focused on engineering consulting and development services. That changed when Pinnacle Plan Design, a TPA based in Tucson, AZ, approached us with a challenge: they needed a system to sort and file scanned asset statements from various brokerages.

We introduced them to Stax.ai—at the time, an AI document workflow automation tool we built for healthcare. We set up their workflow, and they used it successfully for a year before we realized the potential the retirement space held.

In 2022, we committed to scaling within the retirement industry. With Pinnacle’s referral, we gained additional clients, including Nexus Administrators, whose leader, Tom Tsaris, later became one of our investors during our Seed funding round.

By Q2 2023, we had phased out all non-retirement operations to focus entirely on the TPA market.

Revolutionizing Trust Accounting

TPAs initially used Stax.ai to automate the manual process of sorting, splitting, and filing asset statements into client directories. This was—and for many still is—a labor-intensive task.

Our platform allowed users to configure workflows, and we provided a template specifically for statements processing. However, we soon realized that TPAs didn't just need the statements filed—they needed the data within those statements for trust accounting. So, we enhanced our offering to extract key financial details—balances, contributions, distributions, fees, income, gains/losses, and transactions—and auto-populate trust accounting reconciliation spreadsheets.

This was a game-changer.

Tackling Record-Keeper Reports with Bots: A Lesson in Complexity

As the industry shifted away from brokerage accounts and toward record-keepers, TPAs faced a new challenge. Record-keepers like John Hancock, Voya, Empower, and American Funds provided trust reports online, meaning TPAs had to manually log in, download reports, and transform them for compliance software.

Our solution? Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—or bots, as we like to call them. While this worked in theory, the reality was far more complex. The bots struggled to adapt when record-keepers made updates to their portals, and the maintenance required became unsustainable. Even using AI to debug the bots couldn't justify the resources we poured into this initiative.

By February 2024, we made the tough decision to sunset the record-keeper bot workflow.

Expanding Beyond Documents: A Realization

In 2023, we discovered that trust accounting and statement processing accounted for just 7% of the time TPAs spent on repetitive tasks that could be automated. Our mission was clear: we needed to tackle the other 93%.

Through surveys and analysis, we identified the most time-consuming workflows for TPAs:

• Census data collection and processing

• Distribution processing

• Plan takeover documentation

• Proposal generation, engagement agreements, and client onboarding

We built a roadmap to address each of these, but as we dove deeper into the implementation, we realized a fundamental problem.

A Fragmented Technology Landscape

While our AI document workflow system excelled in document-centric tasks, we found it wasn’t the right tool for every workflow. We were trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Upon further investigation, we pinpointed two major issues plaguing TPAs:

• Fragmented Tech Stack: TPAs used multiple systems for plan documents, project management, client communications, file management, compliance, and CRM. This required them to enter the same data into various platforms, creating inefficiencies and increasing the likelihood of errors.

• Lack of Operational Reporting: TPAs had minimal insight into where their employees were spending their time, making it impossible to identify areas ripe for optimization. The fragmented tech stack only made this harder.

It became clear that TPAs didn’t just need automation; they needed an integrated system that brought all their tools and data together.

The Road to Integration: More Than Just a Middleware

Initially, we considered making Stax.ai a data aggregator, integrating with existing TPA software. We reached out to established industry vendors, but were met with resistance, if not hostility. Our potential partners viewed us as competition, which made collaboration nearly impossible.

Faced with these challenges, we pivoted once again. Instead of integrating with these systems, we evaluated the time and cost of building our own solutions. To our surprise, building from the ground up was faster, cheaper, and allowed us to maintain control without the risk of being locked into vendor agreements.

One System, Total Control: Introducing the Stax.ai CX Suite

It became clear that TPAs needed a single, unified solution that addressed the full spectrum of their operations. Through extensive research and feedback, we learned that TPAs spent the majority of their time on the following activities:

• Email communications (often lengthy threads or blast campaigns)

• Project management (launching client projects and managing tasks)

• File management (Word and Excel documents stored in client directories)

• CRM (tracking deals, onboarding, and client contacts)

• Plan document setup

• Census data collection and scrubbing

From this understanding, we built the Stax.ai Client Experience Suite (CX)—a comprehensive, integrated system designed to handle [almost] all day-to-day TPA operations.

Fully Integrated, Seamlessly Automated

The CX system connects to email accounts, allowing AI-powered email management that generates summaries, suggests tasks, and links communications to clients automatically. Through CRM integration, email data is used to create client summaries and provide a pulse on the relationship’s health.

Our project management system ties directly into client files and data, making task automation a breeze. Whether it’s sending emails or managing files, everything is handled within the Stax.ai ecosystem, eliminating the need for third-party integrations.

With our payroll integrations and payroll reporting parsing capability, we also address payroll data needs for all of the TPAs' plan sponsors—whether they use a modern payroll system with API integrations or if they run their own payroll and generate Excel reports. This data feeds directly into the census projects, non-discrimination testing, and reconciliation against trust data.

A Custom-Branded Client Portal

To enhance client interactions, we developed a fully customizable portal. TPAs can brand it with their own logo and colors, offering a seamless, professional experience for their clients. This doesn’t just save TPAs time—it elevates their service, giving them a SaaS-like presence in an industry that’s been slow to embrace technology.

The Path to Becoming a One-Stop-Shop

While the first version of CX is a major leap forward, we recognize there’s more to do. As we build complex systems for plan document management, compliance, and valuation, we are still integrating with other software providers to ensure data flows smoothly across platforms.

In time, we aim to become the complete operating system for TPAs—a single platform that eliminates redundant work and allows our clients to focus on what matters most: serving their clients.

So... In a single line, why did we create CX?

To solve the inefficiency of fragmented TPA operations and manual processes.