Above: EA President Bayless Ydel, left, and EA CEO Bart Yancey anticipate the Birmingham company’s purchase of a division of Boston’s HighRoads will lead to greater growth.

Enrollment Advisors doubles in size with HighRoads acquisition from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

Enrollment Advisors (EA) is purchasing the employer and technology division of Boston-based HighRoads in a deal that doubles the size of the Birmingham-based company and adds some of the nation’s biggest corporate names to its client list.

“The primary thing that won’t change is our culture,” EA CEO Bart Yancy said. (Michael Tomberlin/Alabama NewsCenter)

The expanded company, which will remain headquartered in Birmingham, now has a larger national footprint and doubles both its number of employees and its revenues. EA is now one of the country’s largest plan management and health care compliance companies, with offices in offices in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, Canada.

“This acquisition will extend our core midmarket business and create greater value for our clients,” said EA CEO Bart Yancey. “EA is now able to offer our concierge-level service to a larger client base, while providing industry-leading benefits plan management technology and domain expertise.”

HighRoads has long focused on providing employee benefits services and management for large corporations, mostly Fortune 500 and even Fortune 250 clients. Officials said it fits in with what EA has already been doing without much overlap.

The acquisition gives EA ownership of HighRoads’ proprietary software and technology infrastructure that has been praised within the employee benefits industry.

Birmingham is home to three EA locations downtown with its headquarters and two 50-seat call centers. (Michael Tomberlin/Alabama NewsCenter)

“HighRoads’ technology is a natural fit for EA,” said Michael Byers, the CEO and president of HighRoads, who will become executive chairman at EA. “Together, we’ll offer a complete portfolio of benefit solutions for our Fortune 500 clients and accelerate the pace of new technology innovation in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment.”

Bayless Ydel, president of EA, said the acquisition is the most significant in EA’s history.

“The last three to four years have really seen that accelerated growth, including one year there was 100 percent growth, which was very exciting,” Ydel said. “We really feel like we were laying the foundation for the next phase of our growth.”

Ydel said HighRoads gives EA a different capability while also complementing what the company has been doing for its dozen years of existence.

Birmingham, which is home to three EA locations downtown with its headquarters and two 50-seat call centers, is expected to see job growth from the deal.

The combined company will continue to be based in Birmingham near Railroad Park. (Michael Tomberlin/Alabama NewsCenter)

“The company will be run for Birmingham, which is great for the city,” Ydel said.

Yancey said the acquisition is the latest evolution in what EA started when it was formed in 2003 as a subsidiary of Highland Capital Holding Company. Yancey and Ydel purchased the company a year later to form the stand-alone company as a single source for employee education, enrollment and benefits administration tailored to individual companies.

“We saw an opportunity to take advantage of the healthcare market and where things were going then, and then, more importantly, to develop a unique model in our space and to do things differently than other players in our space,” Yancey said. “For us, all of that started with the culture of our company and why we do what we do.”

Yancey said while EA will be much larger, adds 16 states to its national footprint and its first international operation in Canada, he wants to see the core of the company remain what it has always been.

“The primary thing that won’t change is our culture,” he said. “That’s where everything starts and finishes with our company. We look at it as a pretty unique opportunity to welcome outside individuals into that culture and to only grow and enhance the culture here and what we’ve been able to develop and truly what makes us different within the market.”