Utah Co. to have office of employee benefits co.

Brice Wallace 

Human Interest Inc. is interested in having more than 300 humans in a Utah County office in the next five years.

Founded in 2015, the San Francisco-based company offers 401(k) and 403(b) plans as it seeks to make it easy for small and medium-sized businesses to help their employees invest for retirement.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity board, at its May meeting, awarded a tax credit incentive of up to $428,864 for the company, based on expected creation of 306 high-paying positions over five years.

“We are excited to open an office at ‘Silicon Slopes’ to tap into the large pool of highly qualified talent in Utah,” Rakesh Mahajan, the company’s chief revenue officer, said in a prepared statement. “Our organization has seen three times the growth in the past year, and this investment in Utah will fuel that momentum.”

In a news release at the company website, Mahajan said the company has “big aspirations to revolutionize the retirement industry and are committed to pushing the bounds of what customers come to expect from a 401(k) provider, and this is just the beginning. I am excited to share that we are opening our second office in Utah’s ‘Silicon Slopes’ to deliver an{mprestriction ids="1,3"} entirely U.S.-based customer experience.”

Company officials told the Go Utah board that the new positions at the $3 million project will be a combination of local hires and consolidating the company’s current primarily-remote workforce.

The company has 800 employees in 43 states, “and that’s what we’re looking to change,” Jared Gardner, the company’s vice president of growth, told the board. The company, he said, will create an operational center and be “bringing our remote workforce into Utah” with the 300 jobs over five years.

The company currently has over 15,000 companies using its platform, up 149 percent year over year, and has raised nearly $500 million from investors.

“There are 6 million small businesses in the U.S.,” Gardner said. “That is a lot of people across the U.S. that don’t have access to retirement savings.”

Go Utah documents indicate the project will result in new total wages of nearly $74.4 million over five years and new state tax revenue of nearly $2.9 million during that period. The average wage of the new positions will be $65,000.

“What I kind of like about it is that they’re targeting the segment for retirement, looking at small and mid-sized businesses to bring 401(k)s and other services to them, which is kind of exciting,” said Steve Neeleman, chairman of the Go Utah board’s incentives committee.

“We welcome Human Interest to Utah’s business community,” Ryan Starks, Go Utah’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “As Utah was recently ranked the No. 1 best state in the U.S. for starting a business, Human Interest’s services will greatly complement and serve Utah’s small and midsize business ecosystem.”

“We welcome Human Interest as they make their first investment in Utah,” said Scott Cuthbertson, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “As a small-business 401(k) provider, Human Interest not only brings quality jobs to Utah but also adds a helpful resource to the state’s small business environment.”

Go Utah does not provide upfront cash incentives. Each year that an incentivized company meets the obligations in its contract with the state, it will qualify to receive a portion of the new, additional state taxes the company paid to the state.{/mprestriction}