For the last three years, Antonio Barradas has led Epassi in the Netherlands, building it into a multi-benefit platform that brings health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits together in a single service. Epassi’s mission is to connect employees to the benefits they want most through one seamless experience.
Antonio is the Regional Managing Director for Epassi Netherlands, Epassi UK and Zest, the employee benefits platform Epassi acquired in June 2025. His focus is on making each business stronger by sharing proven products, technology and commercial models across markets, while scaling Zest internationally.
Before Epassi, he spent over a decade in senior leadership and commercial roles at international tech companies including Just Eat Takeaway and RELX Group, helping drive growth across European and global markets. He’s always been drawn to technology that simplifies people’s lives, and sees a clear opportunity in the complementary strengths of Epassi and Zest.
Antonio shared with us why choice alone doesn’t drive benefits uptake, and what it takes to grow a platform across markets.
You’ve spent over a decade in senior commercial roles across Europe. What has that journey taught you about scaling digital platforms across different markets?
Scaling businesses internationally has reinforced that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to growth.
Even the strongest digital products need to reflect local realities, be that workplace benefit structures, cultural expectations, regulation or purchasing behaviours. Local differences can always create challenges, and the value proposition must be adapted to meet each market’s needs.
Epassi already operates successfully across multiple European markets, and the opportunity isn’t to reinvent the wheel. My role is to help us share those successes more effectively across the business by taking proven product and commercial models from one market to another, while adapting them to local employer and employee needs. The opportunity is to accelerate growth without losing sight of what makes each market different.
You’ve been leading Epassi Netherlands for three years, growing the customer base to more than 5,000 businesses. What did that experience reveal about what makes employee benefits platforms work in practice?
Our success in the Netherlands has demonstrated how a true multi-benefit platform can drive engagement at scale. A key learning from that experience is that choice alone isn’t enough to drive meaningful uptake amongst employees. Benefits need to be easy to access, relevant to employees and simple for employers to manage if they are to deliver real value.
In the new regional role, my focus is to take what has worked in the Netherlands and apply those learnings where they can add value elsewhere across the business, while also sharing proven strengths from Epassi UK and Zest with other markets.
Epassi has now brought together three businesses – Epassi Netherlands, Epassi UK and Zest – under one regional structure. What’s the logic behind that consolidation?
The core logic isn’t to make the three businesses the same, but to make each one stronger by sharing what already works. The Netherlands has shown how a multi-benefit platform can boost employee engagement; Epassi UK brings significant reach and a strong merchant and partner network; and Zest brings sophisticated benefits technology built around the needs of HR teams.
The regional structure makes it easier to take those proven products, capabilities and commercial models into new markets and deepen how we can help employers support their people.
My role is to connect those strengths more effectively by applying our experiences and learnings from across the region while ensuring our offerings remain relevant to the needs of each local market. By bringing these businesses closer together, we’re better positioned to deliver an even stronger experience to the businesses we serve, helping them improve the wellbeing – and, as a result, the productivity – of their workforces.
You’ve said the Netherlands has shown what a real multi-benefit platform does to engagement. What specifically does that look like, and why hasn’t it translated across markets on its own?
Strong employee engagement with benefits is ultimately driven by whether people want to use the benefits they are offered, and whether that process is easy for them.
A large part of that is providing meaningful choice. To meet the needs of a diverse workforce, with employees at different stages of life or with different priorities, a broad range of benefits is important. A multi-benefit platform makes it easier to meet those varied needs through a single experience.
But choice alone isn’t enough to drive uptake. To turn benefits availability into true engagement, offerings need to be easy to access, and simple to use and understand, and relevant.
That doesn’t automatically translate across markets as employee needs can vary significantly. Benefit structures, priorities and expectations differ country to country and so you can’t simply replicate one market’s model and expect the same results.
Zest has been described as the technology HR teams actually want. What does that mean in practice, and what gap does it fill that existing platforms haven’t?
Workforces today are made up of individuals with different lifestyles and priorities who expect benefits that feel relevant to their personal circumstances. A modern and effective benefits strategy needs to reflect that, offering personalisation and choice within one easy-to-use platform.
Our research shows that more than half of UK employees (51%) say better benefits technology would make them more engaged at work, highlighting how important effective digital solutions are in the delivery of successful HR schemes.
At the same time, HR teams need technology that helps them understand the needs of their employees, administer and adapt reward offerings to meet them and communicate easily with employees to drive uptake. Through its automation and self-service tools, Zest’s technology simplifies benefits administration and allows HR teams to seamlessly add new benefits, gain real-time insights into usage and manage reward strategies without the usual complexity.
Unlike the standard industry approach, Zest enables HR leaders to manage, configure and update their benefits offering independently and flexibly through strong self-service capabilities, on their own terms and without having to reach out for support at additional cost.
We’ve had great feedback from HR teams on how much Zest’s technology can alleviate some of the pressures facing HR teams today. That includes our new AI Benefit Consultant that provides employees with answers to their benefits-related questions, removing repetitive administration from HR teams and providing them with greater capacity to focus on strategic work that drives engagement and strengthens the employee experience.
Employee benefits take-up is often cited as a problem across the industry. What do you think is actually driving low engagement, and how does Epassi’s approach address it?
Low engagement is rarely caused by a lack of investment in benefits; in fact employers are generally investing more in rewards offerings. Poor uptake is more often caused by employees not being aware of what’s available to them, struggling to access their benefits easily, or not feeling that the offering is relevant to their individual needs.
Many organisations tell us that they struggle to communicate with their teams about benefits, and employees recognise that same gap. Our UK research found that seven in ten (69%) employees would like to receive regular, personalised notifications about the benefits available to them, proving employers have a clear opportunity to do more here to connect employees with the support already on offer.
Epassi – supported by Zest’s technology – sets out to address these challenges, allowing employees to access a wide range of health, wellbeing and other benefits through a user-friendly platform that makes it easier to discover and activate benefits. Employers are able to communicate directly through the app, and easily tailor rewards depending on what is being used, or not used, by employees, delivering personalised and relevant rewards that drive uptake. When benefits are accessible, relevant and well communicated, engagement tends to follow naturally.
With the mandate to scale Zest internationally. What markets are the priority, and what makes a market ready for this kind of product?
We’re seeing growing industry recognition across markets that benefits play a much bigger role in engagement, retention and attracting top talent, all of which drive more productive and healthy workforces. HR processes are also becoming more digital, and there is greater appetite among HR teams for better technology to manage increasingly complex benefits programmes.
There’s significant international opportunity for Zest as a result. My mandate is to scale the technology beyond the UK, and we are looking at where it can add the greatest value across Epassi’s markets. We’re not announcing specific priority markets at this stage, but the regional structure gives us a stronger platform from which to take proven products into new markets.
What does success look like for this regional structure in three years?
Success will ultimately be judged by whether the regional structure has delivered on what it has been created to do: strengthening our businesses through cross-market learning, driving higher levels of benefits engagement and take-up across our customer base and successfully scaling Zest internationally.
When we’re seeing these results, we’ll know we’ve achieved what we set out to do and I’m excited to help lead that next phase of growth.
