Epassi is reshaping its regional leadership structure as it looks to accelerate growth across its European employee benefits business and make greater use of technology and commercial models developed in individual markets.
The employee benefits technology provider has appointed Antonio Barradas as Regional Managing Director, bringing together responsibility for Epassi Netherlands, Epassi UK and Zest, the UK benefits platform acquired by Epassi in June 2025.
The newly created role is intended to enable the businesses to share products, technology and commercial models across markets, with Barradas given a specific mandate to scale Zest internationally.
Barradas has led Epassi’s Netherlands business for the past three years, where the company says he grew its customer network to more than 5,000 businesses. He also brings more than a decade of senior commercial leadership experience from JustEat Takeaway and RELX Group.
From separate markets to a regional model
The move comes as employee benefits technology becomes increasingly important to how employers communicate, administer and measure their benefits.
Employers are under growing pressure to demonstrate value from benefits investment, while employees expect benefits to be accessible, personalised and easy to navigate. That is creating opportunities for platforms to move beyond simply providing a digital home for benefits and use data, communications and engagement tools to improve the experience for both employees and employers.
Epassi’s acquisition of Zest was part of this strategy. Zest’s platform enables employers to manage and communicate benefits and provide employees with personalised choices and access to total reward, policies, discounts and recognition. At the time of the acquisition, it supported more than 500 organisations and 300,000 employees.
Epassi has also continued to expand its European footprint, including through the acquisition of VIP District in Spain in 2025.
Can successful models travel?
That is central to Barradas’ new remit.
“These are three strong businesses that have grown up apart,” he said. “My job is to make each one better by using what the others have already built, and to prove that these products travel.”
The challenge is that employee benefits are often not entirely transferable between markets. Tax treatment, regulation, workforce demographics and established benefits practices can vary significantly.
The opportunity, therefore, is less about replicating an identical proposition everywhere and more about identifying which elements can travel successfully while retaining local relevance.
That balance will be particularly important for employers operating across multiple countries, where global consistency can simplify benefits management but local relevance remains critical to employee engagement.
Scaling Zest internationally
The other side of Barradas’ remit is to take Zest beyond the UK.
For Zest, the move could mean evolving from a primarily UK-focused platform into part of a wider European proposition. For Epassi, it provides an opportunity to combine Zest’s technology with the Group’s established networks and experience in other markets.
Epassi Group CEO Nickyl Raithatha said the new structure would allow the company to accelerate its approach to taking products into new markets while deepening its offer to employers.
For the sector, the development is another indication of the direction of travel for benefits technology: greater scale, cross-market learning and increasingly sophisticated platforms.
The test will be whether that scale ultimately translates into better engagement, greater insight and more value from benefits investment for employers and employees.
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