For the past 15 years, Jared Reist has built Mountain View Benefits from a solo enterprise operating out of his basement into a Western Canadian leader in the group benefits and group retirement space. With its head office in Calgary and a successful regional office lead by Michael Frame in Kelowna, B.C., Mountain View Benefits (MVB) is well positioned to service clients throughout Western Canada. While trends in the market have long leaned toward merging independent companies with large conglomerates, Reist has resisted that pull in favour of providing personalized service to his long-time clients of all sizes. And clients appreciate the quality service that comes from this people-first business philosophy.
“We know that, especially in Western Canada, people love our local, independent, 100 per cent Canadian-owned model,” says Jared Reist, president of Mountain View Benefits. “Those three words – local, independent and Canadian-owned – really resonate with us.”
Mountain View has maintained this independence by forging strong relationships with insurance carriers and more recently industry alliance groups including Benefits Alliance in Canada and United Benefits Advisors in the United States. These strategic partnerships allow MVB to collaborate and share resources with a network of industry experts. The result is this smaller, local employee benefits company consistently punches above its weight to deliver consistent, reliable, top-tier value to clients.
This attitude is embedded deeply into the firm’s DNA, and every member of the 15-person team at Mountain View is dedicated to providing clients with the same benefit opportunities and experience whether they have two employees or 1,000. There are no cookie-cutter plans; the team gets to know clients well to ensure they are meeting their specific needs.
“There’s a great opportunity in the small group space. In B.C. and Alberta, about 97 per cent of businesses are considered small businesses, and that’s where Mountain View is a juggernaut. We give small businesses big-business attention, and we are very proud of that; it’s what we were built for,” says Craig Rieger, Employee Benefits/Executive Benefits Advisor.
And what they are built for is entrepreneurs. MVB appreciates the sacrifices and risks these entrepreneurs take to create and build their businesses, and the firm is proud of the deep roster of solo practitioners, independent contractors and small start-ups that MVB has grown alongside over the years. Today, Mountain View Benefits serves more than 750 clients in over 125 towns and cities across the West who are doing business in around 80 different industries.
The company adds around 150 new clients each year to the portfolio, and while MVB enjoys steady growth, the foundation remains its people, both internal and external. Reist has created a team of dedicated sales and service professionals along with renewal and implementation specialists who come together to ensure clients have the most positive experience possible. The culture is one of collaboration, innovation and teamwork where every member of the team is supported, valued and recognized as an equal contributor to the success of the company.
“Our staff is not at capacity. If we can continue being one employee ahead versus one employee behind, our clients will never suffer. Capacity will never be reached. I know it’s cliche, but what makes us different is we put people ahead of profits. We are focused on our clients and our people before profits,” says Reist.
This supportive environment breeds team members motivated to disrupt the industry as they push for efficiencies and improvements to the status quo. This is reflected in the relationships with clients that place customer satisfaction as the primary goal; the team knows that it’s more important to retain a client than it is to get a new one, and through service excellence, Mountain View has found the secret to doing both.
It’s this excellence that has made Mountain View a leader in employee benefits plans as well as group savings programs and health spending accounts, and most recently, Reist applied what he learned during his Executive MBA capstone project in 2024 to broaden his company’s scope. In November 2024, Craig Rieger, an experienced entrepreneur and former health care executive, joined Reist to build up the newest division: executive benefits.
“For my MBA, I was looking at Mountain View Benefits and how I could bring value to my company, and I decided that what’s missing all across Canada are strong, independent employee benefit firms focusing on executive benefits for the leadership team,” says Reist.
All of MVB’s clients have an ownership group and a few key employees that are integral to running the company, and he and Rieger set out to curate plans surrounding the notion that healthy executives lead healthy organizations. Given the stresses and health risks associated with being in top leadership positions, the duo created a program that afforded clients the same clarity and control in their health care decisions, executive investments and succession planning that they demand in their businesses.
The executive health division is anchored by five pillars: health advocacy and education, advanced health tests and screening, personalized primary and integrated care, unrestricted global access to treatment, and health and wellness spending through tax optimization. MVB’s executive benefits program offers a path to improved health, early diagnoses through advanced screening, early treatment and continuity of care with a designated health care team.
“In a healthcare environment where very few doctors are accepting new patients, and where surgery wait times can exceed a year, this kind of care provides confidence and continuity for leaders,” says Rieger.
The program includes global access to more than 800,000 providers and 7,000 hospitals in more than 100 countries, helping clients access first-class treatment and care on their own terms. MVB is partnering with industry leading providers including VUMI Canada and TELUS Health to deliver global health access, executive assessments and personalized integrated care, and as Rieger and Reist have employed the pillars themselves, they are uniquely positioned to educate clients on the benefits. The MVB team will continue to innovate and evolve the proactive personal health care strategies that make up the executive benefits packages.
With a focus on strategy, innovation and unbeatable service, Jared Reist and his team at Mountain View Benefits have earned clients’ trust as they continue to shape the industry with top-tier employee benefit and executive benefit plans.
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