Introducing the HALO PEO Marketplace: Brokers and PEOs, Matched to Close Faster

Today we are opening the HALO PEO Marketplace. Brokers bring deals. PEOs bring programs. HALO matches them, gives each side its own workspace, and lets the deal move without the email chain, the re-keying, and the three-week silence that currently sits between a broker's submission and a PEO's proposal.

This post explains what the marketplace is, how it works for each side, what it costs (nothing for the first year), and why we are insisting that it is not just a marketplace.

The problem we are trying to fix

Brokers and PEOs need each other and are bad at working together. We have written about this before, and the shape of the problem has not changed. A broker has a client who would be well served by a PEO. The broker knows two or three PEOs, sends the submission to whichever one answered the phone last time, and waits. The PEO receives a submission that is missing half of what it needs, requests the rest, waits, underwrites it by hand, and produces a proposal that arrives after the broker's client has stopped paying attention. Neither side can see where the deal is. Both sides re-key the same census, the same loss runs, the same class codes. The deal closes, when it closes, in spite of the process.

The reason this persists is that brokers and PEOs each think of the other as a vendor, and vendors do not share workspaces. We think that is the wrong model. The broker and the PEO are two parties to the same deal with different jobs. Neither is the other's customer. What they need is a shared surface where each sees their own view of one deal, with one set of documents, and one status.

That is what the marketplace is.

How it works for a broker

A broker joins the marketplace and gets a broker workspace in HALO IQ. The workspace is theirs: their clients, their submissions, their pipeline, under their own tenant with their own roles. It is not a lead form on a PEO's website.

When the broker has a client to place, they build the submission in their workspace. InboxIQ handles the intake: the broker forwards the loss runs, the ACORD 130, the census, and the current dec page, and HALO parses them, classifies each document, and attaches them to the client record. The broker fills in what the documents do not cover. The submission is complete before any PEO sees it, and the broker can see what is missing because HALO tells them.

Then the broker goes to market. The marketplace matches the submission to PEOs whose programs fit: the client's state, headcount band, industry, class mix, and the kind of WC program the client needs. The broker chooses which matched PEOs to send to. Each PEO receives the submission in its own workspace. The broker sees, on one screen, which PEOs have opened it, which are underwriting, which have declined, and which have proposals ready. When a proposal arrives, it arrives in the broker's workspace as a published document the broker can review and forward to the client.

The broker never re-keys anything. The documents parsed once, at intake, are the documents every PEO works from.

How it works for a PEO

A PEO joins the marketplace and gets a PEO workspace, which is the full HALO IQ operating environment: ConnectIQ for the pipeline, ModIQ for the mod and loss analysis, CarrierIQ for rates, PricingIQ for the PEO's own pricing rules, the proposal wizard, CanvasIQ for the proposal, Distribution Hub for carrier submissions, and the rest. The PEO configures its program profile: states, headcount ranges, industries it writes and industries it does not, WC program type, benefits availability.

When a broker's submission matches the profile and the broker sends it, the submission lands in the PEO's workspace as a deal in ConnectIQ, with the parsed documents already attached. The PEO's underwriter opens it and finds the loss runs aggregated by policy year, the class codes and payroll from the ACORD, and the census ready for the benefits analysis. There is nothing to request from the broker unless something is actually missing, and if something is missing, the request goes through the shared deal rather than through an email the broker will find on Thursday.

The PEO underwrites and builds the proposal inside its own workspace, with its own pricing rules enforced, and publishes it. The broker is notified. The PEO sees the broker's view of the status: opened, forwarded to client, client viewed. The PEO's pipeline is its own; the broker does not see the PEO's other deals, pricing, or loads, and the PEO does not see the broker's other PEO relationships.

What it costs

The marketplace is free for the first year for both brokers and PEOs. That is not a trial of a limited version. It is the full workspace for each side, with the matching, for twelve months, at no charge.

Two conditions. A credit card is required at signup. We are not charging it during the first year, and the reason we ask for it is to verify that the companies joining are real companies. A marketplace where brokers are sending client submissions to PEOs, and PEOs are publishing pricing to brokers, only works if both sides can trust that the other party is who they say they are. A card on file is the simplest way we found to keep the marketplace populated with operating businesses rather than curiosity signups.

The second is not really a condition but an offer: every new member gets a free one-hour setup call with someone from our team. For a broker, that is getting the workspace configured, the intake address set up, and a first submission walked through. For a PEO, it is the program profile, the pricing rules, the proposal template, and a first deal from intake to published proposal. We do this because the fastest way to see what the marketplace does is to run a real deal through it with someone who has done it before, and because our own PEO is on the platform and we know where the setup questions are.

Not just a marketplace

Here is the part we care most about, and the reason this post is not simply a launch announcement.

A marketplace that only matches brokers to PEOs would be a modest improvement. The matching is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is what happens after the match: the PEO's underwriting and proposal process, which in most PEOs takes days of manual work and produces a document the broker's client reads for ninety seconds.

HALO IQ is built so that a PEO can underwrite an account and produce a polished, data-rich proposal in about thirty minutes. The submission is already parsed when it arrives. ModIQ produces the mod projection and loss pick from the aggregated runs. CarrierIQ supplies the manual rates by class and state. PricingIQ applies the PEO's own rules. The wizard carries the data through the Workers' Comp, Benefits Analysis, and Investment Analysis steps. Executive Summary AI drafts the narrative from the structured data. CanvasIQ turns it into the document the client sees, published to a link the broker can forward. Every step is AI-assisted where AI helps, deterministic where determinism is safer, and visible to a human who can edit before anything goes out.

That is the point of the marketplace. Not that brokers and PEOs find each other, but that once they do, the deal moves at the speed of the broker's client's attention rather than the speed of the PEO's back office. Next week we will publish a minute-by-minute walkthrough of that thirty-minute flow, with a hypothetical account, so you can see exactly what each step does.

Who should join now

Brokers who have clients that belong in a PEO and are tired of sending submissions into a void. PEOs who want deal flow they did not have to generate themselves, and who are ready to underwrite it faster than they currently do. MGAs and program managers who sit between the two and want visibility into both.

If you are one of those, the marketplace is open as of today. Sign up, put a card on file, book the setup call, and bring a deal. The first year is on us, because we would rather earn the second year by being useful than by charging for the first.