Twenty-five years ago, Flex-Plan Services was started by Jim and Stan Aitken as a third-party administrator of Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) in Washington State. In those 25 years, we’ve grown our technology, expanded our business nationwide, and have grown our services to include much more than strictly “Flex-Plans.” In order to better align with our service offerings, culture, and overall growth, we made the decision to rebrand the company.
We started with a company-wide assessment of our core values. We randomly divided the company into groups of 5 or 6 and each group had a brainstorming session to help determine who we are and what we value as a company. As we looked through the results, six words (or variations of them) kept coming up: Family, Expert, Responsive, Teachers, Authentic, and Leader.
Once we had our core values established, we began brainstorming names that resonated with, and summed up those five words. We kept coming back to the fact that we act as guides and educators in the benefit world. The idea of helping participants, employers, and brokers navigate the waters of employee benefits and IRS tax law started to become our focus of the brainstorming. One word that came up was Argo, it was a famous ship used in Greek mythology, and the constellation Argo Navis was derived from it.
- Argo Navis was once the largest constellation in the sky but is no longer an officially recognized constellation. It has been split up into four constellations; Carina the Keel, Vela the Sails, Puppis the Stern, and Malus, the Mast (now called Pyxis Nautica the Mariner’s Compass). In Greek Mythology Argo Navis represents the Ship used by Jason and the Argonauts to fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis in the Black Sea.
We loved the idea behind the Argo Navis and the navigational aspects of the constellation’s separate features, but we didn’t like the sound of Argo, or Navis. So…we came up with Navia! Navia reminded us of being navigators for our clients while giving us a unique and original name.
Cheers to change, evolution, and growth!! We couldn’t do it without all of our participants, clients, and partners. Thanks to all of you for being part of the Navia family!
– The Navia Team
