NYSE: TNET
TRINET GROUP, INC.CIK 0000937098 · Misc Business Services NEC
TriNet is a leading provider of HR solutions for SMBs. We offer technology-enabled services that include human capital expertise, employee benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans, payroll and payroll tax administration, risk mitigation, and compliance consulting. Our long-term… About this business →
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About TRINET GROUP, INC.
Source: Item 1 (Business) from the 10-K filed February 12, 2026. Description as filed by the company with the SEC.
Item 1. Business
TriNet is a leading provider of HR solutions for SMBs. We offer technology-enabled services that include human capital expertise, employee benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans, payroll and payroll tax administration, risk mitigation, and compliance consulting. Our long-term objective is to be the premier provider of HR services for a broad range of SMBs through industry-leading benefits, sales distribution excellence, and a world-class services delivery model.
Since our founding in 1988, TriNet has served, and continues to serve, thousands of SMBs. We are the largest publicly traded company in the U.S. that focuses primarily on the PEO business, in terms of market capitalization as of December 31, 2025. In 2025, we processed $70 billion in payroll and payroll taxes for our clients and ended the year with approximately 323,200 WSEs.
We aim to differentiate ourselves from other PEOs in three substantive areas. First, we offer a high-quality, technology-enabled service solution that is tailored to employee-centric SMBs. Our primary targeted industry verticals include technology, financial services, life sciences, nonprofit, professional services, and main street. Second, we offer our clients a premium HR advisory experience featuring high-touch services and efficient issue resolution, to yield a high level of customer satisfaction and retention. Finally, we believe our risk-based model allows our clients to better manage their benefits costs over the long term.
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Our medium-term strategy includes taking actions to increase revenue growth through improved benefits options and risk management capabilities, expanded sales force scale, tenure, and productivity, as well as expanded distribution channels. We continue to focus on improving our client and WSE experience to raise our net promoter scores and increase retention. In addition, we are focusing on cost discipline, operational efficiencies in our service delivery model, and prudent capital allocation, while being strategic with investments.
In late 2024, we began undertaking certain transformation initiatives to support our goals of being "best in benefits, best in platform, best in service." These initiatives are designed to evolve the technology and processes we use to support our sales and marketing efforts and our core customer-facing operational activities, enhance our customer support model, provide industry-leading best in benefits offerings and strengthen our talent and culture, while supporting our revenue growth, margin improvement and productivity. We have increased and are continuing to increase our use of technological solutions and AI in how we operate our business, including our up-front client consulting services, our sales and retention practices, and lead generation, which we believe has led and will continue to lead to stronger customer engagement measured through our net promoter score.
In 2025, we expanded our ASO service offering to include HR Plus which is a SaaS solution combined with our distinctive high-level of service. We believe our success with our ASO service has been enabled by our deep knowledge of and expertise with HR and the challenges faced by SMBs. In addition, in 2025 we announced plans to launch TriNet Assistant, which we expect to be a suite of human-centered, AI-powered capabilities designed to deliver intelligent and responsive HR support with privacy and security controls for our clients, which we expect to launch in 2026.
Our Service Models
We deliver a comprehensive suite of services that help our clients administer and manage various HR-related needs and functions, such as compensation, benefits, payroll processing, tax credit support, employee data, health insurance, workers' compensation, EPLI and other employment risk mitigation programs, employee performance management and training, on-boarding and off-boarding, and other transactional HR needs using our PEO technology platform and benefits and compliance expertise.
We deliver our services primarily through our PEO services that we provide via our co-employment model and through our ASO services, which provide payroll processing, HR administration and compliance management solutions.
PEO Services
TriNet has historically focused almost exclusively on the PEO business, and PEO services remain our core business. Our PEO services offer our clients our most complete HCM solution within the co-employment model and generally include all of the services described below.
ASO Services
Our ASO services, which includes our “HR Plus” product, consist of a SaaS solution with a significant service
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component. ASO services include payroll processing, benefits management, HR administration and compliance management to provide HCM solutions that our clients can tailor dynamically over time based on their specific needs. Unlike our PEO services, ASO services do not include co-employment or access to our TriNet sponsored health benefit plans. However, our ASO clients have access to our benefits administration platform that can administer third-party benefits and integrates with 401(k) retirement plans.
The transition from our prior HRIS offering to our ASO offering in 2025 resulted in increased attrition from our prior HRIS population, as our ASO offering provided a significant increase in the level of services offered alongside a price increase. These losses were partially offset by an increase in clients for our ASO services. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 39,700 ASO Users and approximately 18,600 legacy HRIS Users.
Our Services
Our comprehensive HR solutions include the following capabilities:
HR CONSULTING EXPERTISEBENEFIT
OPTIONSPAYROLL SERVICESRISK MITIGATION TECHNOLOGY
PLATFORMCONTRACTOR AND GLOBAL WORKFORCE SUPPORT
HR Consulting Expertise
We use the collective knowledge and experience of our teams of HR, benefits, payroll, risk management and compliance professionals to help our clients navigate many of the administrative, regulatory and practical requirements associated with being employers. We do this by incorporating our knowledge and experience into our services and our technology platforms and by making our professionals available to consult with clients on a variety of HR needs, including talent management, retention and terminations, benefits enrollment, immigration and visas, payroll tax credits, employment compliance and regulatory developments and many other industry-specific and general HR topics. Depending on their needs, our clients have access to varying levels of service and support from our professionals, ranging from call center support to pooled HR resources. Our professionals also provide additional specialized HR consulting services upon request.
Benefit Options
In our PEO business, we utilize our scale to provide our WSEs access to a broad range of TriNet-sponsored employee benefit and insurance programs with features and at costs that we believe many of our clients would be unable to obtain on their own. We believe that our TriNet-sponsored programs help our PEO clients compete for talent against larger businesses. Our benefit and insurance programs are designed to comply with federal, state and local regulations, and our benefit and insurance service offerings include plan selection and administration, enrollment management, leave management, plan document distribution and WSE and client communications.
Under these benefit and insurance programs, we pay third-party insurance carriers for WSE insurance benefits and reimburse insurance carriers or third-party administrators for claims payments within our insurance deductible layer, where applicable.
We sponsor and administer several employee benefit plans for our WSEs through a broad range of carriers, including group health, dental, vision, short- and long-term disability, and life insurance as an employer plan sponsor under Section 3(5) of ERISA. We also sponsor or otherwise provide WSEs access to other benefit programs, including flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, retirement benefits, COBRA benefits, supplemental insurance, and commuter benefits. We also facilitate payroll deductions for WSEs to voluntarily purchase home insurance, critical illness insurance, accident insurance, hospital indemnity, pet insurance, and auto insurance.
We also offer PEO clients the option to obtain their own client-sponsored benefits through our OMS product family. Our OMS clients receive PEO services such as HR, payroll, payroll tax, and risk management from us while sponsoring their own health benefits obtained through a broker.
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Payroll Services
We help our PEO and ASO clients manage their employee compensation by providing multi-state payroll processing, tax administration and tax credit services and other payroll-related services, such as time and attendance management, time off and overtime tracking, and expense management solutions. Our clients and WSEs can access payroll and tax information using our various online and mobile tools. Our payroll tax administration and tax credit services include calculating, withholding, remitting and reporting certain federal, state and local payroll and unemployment taxes on behalf of clients and WSEs.
Risk Mitigation
We monitor employment-related legal and regulatory developments at the federal, state, and local levels to help our PEO and ASO clients comply with employment laws and mitigate many of the risks associated with being an employer. We provide HR guidance on employment laws and regulations, such as those relating to minimum wage, unemployment insurance, family and medical leave and anti-discrimination. For our PEO clients, our TriNet-sponsored benefit plans are designed to comply with applicable laws and regulations, such as the ACA, reducing this compliance burden for our clients.
Our PEO services provide fully-insured workers' compensation insurance coverage for our clients and WSEs through insurance policies that we negotiate with third-party insurance carriers. We manage the deductible risk that we assume in connection with these policies by being selective in the types of businesses that we take on as new clients, and by monitoring claims data and performance of our carriers and third-party claims management service providers. In addition, we advise clients on workers’ compensation best practices, including by performing workplace assessment consultations and assisting with client efforts to identify conditions or practices that might lead to employee injuries.
We also provide EPLI coverage for our PEO clients through an insurance policy that we obtain from a third-party EPLI carrier. This policy provides coverage for certain claims that arise in the course of the employment relationship, such as discrimination, harassment, and certain other employee claims, with a per-claim retention amount. The retention amount under this policy, which functions like a deductible, is allocated on a pre-determined basis between the client and TriNet. Our professionals assist our clients in implementing HR best practices to help avoid and reduce the cost of employment-related liabilities. Our preferred outside employment law firms defend covered EPLI claims.
Technology Platform
Our technology platform includes online and mobile tools that allow our clients and WSEs to store, view, and manage HR information and administer a variety of HR transactions, such as payroll processing, tax administration, tax credits, employee onboarding and termination, employee performance, time and attendance, compensation reporting, expense management, and benefits enrollment and administration. Our online tools also incorporate workforce analytics, allowing PEO and ASO clients to generate HR, payroll, total compensation and other custom reports.
Contractor and Global Workforce Support
TriNet provides clients with a simplified solution for handling independent contractors with our contractor payments application, featuring a software solution that allows clients to onboard, manage and pay independent contractors. In addition, for clients with employees outside the U.S., we provide payroll and HR support through international employer of record partners.
Our PEO Co-Employment Model
Our PEO services operate on the basis of a co-employment model, under which employment-related responsibilities are allocated by contract between us and our PEO clients. The co-employment model allows WSEs to receive the full scope of our services, including providing WSEs with access to TriNet-sponsored employee benefit plan offerings. Each of our PEO clients enters into a client service agreement with us that defines the suite of services and benefits to be provided by us, the fees payable to us, and the division of responsibilities between us and our clients as co-employers. WSEs also separately acknowledge the co-employment relationship and the allocation of employment-related responsibilities between TriNet and the client co-employer. The division of responsibilities under our client service agreements is typically as follows:
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TriNet Responsibilities
We generally assume responsibility for, and manage certain risks associated with:
•payments of salaries, wages and certain other compensation to WSEs from our own bank accounts (based on client reports and payments), including the processing of garnishment and wage deduction orders,
•reporting of wages, withholding and deposit of associated payroll taxes as the employer of record,
•provision and maintenance of workers' compensation insurance and workers' compensation claims processing,
•access to, and administration of, group health, welfare, and retirement benefits to WSEs under TriNet-sponsored benefit plans,
•compliance with applicable law for certain TriNet-sponsored employee benefits offered to WSEs,
•administration of unemployment claims and post-employment COBRA benefits, and
•provision of various HR policies and agreements, including employee handbooks and worksite employee agreements describing the co-employment relationship.
Client Responsibilities
Our clients are responsible for employment-related responsibilities that we do not specifically assume, generally including:
•day-to-day management of their worksites and WSEs,
•compliance with laws associated with the classification of employees as exempt or non-exempt, such as overtime pay and minimum wage law compliance,
•accurate and timely reporting to TriNet of compensation and deduction information, including information relating to hours worked, rates of pay, salaries, wages and other compensation, and work locations,
•accurate and timely reporting to TriNet of information relating to workplace injuries, employee hires and termination, and certain other information relevant to TriNet’s services,
•provision and administration of any employee benefits not provided by TriNet, such as equity incentive plans or nonqualified deferred compensation plans,
•compliance with all laws and regulations applicable to the clients' workplace and business, including work eligibility laws, laws relating to workplace safety or the environment, laws relating to family and medical leave, laws pertaining to employee organizing efforts and collective bargaining and employee termination notice requirements,
•payment of TriNet invoices, which include reimbursement for salary, wages and other relevant compensation to WSEs and applicable employment taxes and service fees, and
•all other matters for which TriNet does not assume responsibility under the client service agreement, such as intellectual property ownership and protection and liability for products produced and services provided by the client company to its own clients.
As a result of co-employment relationships for PEO services, we are liable for payment of salary, wages and certain other compensation to the WSEs as reported and paid to us by our client, and we are responsible for providing specified employee benefits to such persons to the extent provided in each client service agreement and under federal and state law. In most instances, clients are required to remit payment prior to the applicable payroll date by wire transfer or ACH.
For our PEO services, we also assume responsibility for payment and liability for the withholding and remittance of federal and state income and employment taxes with respect to salaries, wages and certain other compensation paid to WSEs, although we reserve the right to seek recourse against our clients for any liabilities arising out of their conduct. We perform these functions as the statutory employer for federal employment tax purposes since our clients transfer legal control over these payroll functions to us. The laws that govern the payment of salaries, wages and related payroll taxes for our WSEs are complex and the various federal, state and local laws that govern such payments can vary significantly. Based on applicable law in any jurisdiction, we or our client may be held ultimately liable for those obligations if we fail to remit taxes.
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Our ASO Model
For clients that seek a less comprehensive set of services not involving co-employment, we offer ASO services that reduce the responsibility and liability that we assume when providing such services. For example, while we may facilitate payroll processing for ASO clients, TriNet is not the employer of record. ASO clients generally remain responsible for, among other things, workers’ compensation insurance, obtaining and sponsoring group health, welfare and retirement benefits, administering unemployment claims, and in some cases payroll tax reporting. The additional responsibilities that PEOs assume, and the risks that PEOs manage, for our PEO clients are key differences between our PEO and ASO services. We believe that ASO services represent a substantial share of the market for outsourced HR services.
Our Technology and Service Development Efforts
We continued to make significant investments in our technology platform. These investments are intended to provide our clients (both PEO and ASO clients) and WSEs with enhanced functionality, ease of use, HR management options, security and an optimized user experience. We intend to continue making these and other similar investments in 2026 and beyond, aiming to drive operating efficiencies and improve client retention and satisfaction over the long term.
In 2025, we continued to develop our next-generation cloud-based platform. This new platform, which combines elements of our original PEO and ASO platforms, is intended to further modernize our customers’ experience through more self-service capabilities and other important functions to, in turn, enable us to service SMBs throughout a larger portion of their lifecycle. Moreover, we have also begun to explore integrating new technologies, including expanding our AI/ML capabilities to include services such as TriNet Assistant, which we expect to launch in 2026, into the customer experience to allow us to create efficiencies in the way we serve our customers and the way we operate internally.
Our Clients and Their Geographies
Our clients are distributed across a variety of industries. Our PEO clients generally execute annual service contracts with us that automatically renew. In most cases, our PEO clients may cancel these contracts with 30 days' notice to us and we may cancel these contracts with 30 days' notice to our clients. Our ASO clients execute contracts with monthly or annual terms and clients can typically cancel these contracts with 30 days’ notice to us. Clients on annual contracts may incur fees associated with early termination if notice of such terminations occur inside of the 30 day notice period prior to their contract’s anniversary date.
Our top five PEO markets are California, New York, Florida, Texas and Massachusetts, which account for approximately 64% of our total WSE paid wages for the year ended December 31, 2025. Nearly all of our revenues are generated within the United States and its territories and substantially all our long-lived assets are located in the United States.
Our Sales and Marketing Organizations
We market and sell our HCM solutions through a combination of direct sales and strategic partnerships. Our sales organization is structured by industry vertical, which allows us to focus on the distinct needs of SMBs within targeted sectors and to drive more efficient customer acquisition.
In addition to our direct sales force, we generate new business through relationships with brokers and other channel partners, which continue to be a meaningful source of referrals. Our marketing activities support these channels by building brand awareness, generating leads, and providing tools and content that facilitate the customer evaluation and onboarding process.
We utilize a mix of digital and traditional marketing methods to reach prospective clients, including online advertising, website engagement, and participation in industry and small‑business‑focused events. Our brand and communications functions also support customer engagement and retention through regular updates, educational resources, and other client‑facing communications.
With SMB behavior evolving rapidly, we have adopted digital tools such as telepresence, chat, and interactive assessments to enable us to engage SMBs in innovative ways. In 2025, we enhanced our digital engagement with tools such as conversational marketing on our website and interactive self-assessments.
Together, these coordinated sales and marketing efforts support our strategy to expand our presence in key industries, strengthen broker and partner relationships, and reinforce our positioning as a trusted HR solutions provider for SMBs.
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Our Competitors
We face competition from:
•PEOs that compete directly with us,
•payroll processing agents and other HCM services providers that do not use a PEO model,
•HR and personnel of companies that administer employee benefits, payroll and HR for their companies in-house,
•providers of certain endpoint HR services, including payroll, employee benefits, business process outsourcers with high-volume transaction and administrative capabilities, and other third-party administrators, and
•insurance brokers who allow third-party HR systems to integrate with their technology platform.
PEO services remain our core business and other PEOs continue to represent our most significant competition. Our PEO service competitors include large PEOs such as the TotalSource unit of Automatic Data Processing, Inc., the PEO operations of Paychex, Inc. and Insperity, Inc., as well as numerous specialized and smaller PEOs and similar HR service providers with PEO operations.
We believe that a key reason why our PEO services are attractive to SMBs is because of our ability to provide access to a broad range of workers' compensation, health insurance and other benefits programs on a cost-effective basis. Our customers may obtain their own insurance through brokers and other providers of insurance and benefits coverage, and our PEO offerings must be priced competitively with those provided by these competitors for us to attract and retain our clients.
Our PEO clients are typically looking for high-touch HR compliance and services support, TriNet sponsored employee benefits, TriNet responsibility for processing payroll and payroll taxes, and access to EPLI claims support and other substantial HR services. By contrast, many of our ASO clients are looking for more self-directed, focused and less expensive ASO services. We do not co-employ the employees of our ASO clients and do not provide them with TriNet sponsored health benefits. As a result, our ASO services compete with services provided by a wider array of HCM companies outside of the PEO industry.
For additional information about our competition, please refer to Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors, of this Form 10-K, under the heading – "We must continue to work to improve our services to meet the expectations of our clients and regulators, or we may lose our clients and materially harm our business".
Market Trends and Developments Affecting Our Business
The U.S. economy grew modestly during 2025 with unemployment remaining steady while inflation stabilized during the year. We observed the following industry trends in 2025:
•SMB Economic Performance. Over any year, SMBs generally experience staffing changes, either resulting in a net increase or decrease in staffing. The extent of net staffing changes can differ based on industry and geographic region. In 2025, our clients experienced modest staffing reductions across all of our verticals. Overall in 2025, net hiring was low relative to our historical experience.
•Continued Insurance Cost Variability and Volatility. We continued to experience higher than anticipated health benefits utilization and inflation in healthcare costs, which are affected by factors such as market-wide pharmaceutical price increases, as well as the impact of rising wages and other costs within the healthcare industry which led to increased costs associated with contract renewals between health insurers and health care providers.
•Tax Credit Backlogs. Many of the key economic assistance programs that SMBs relied on during the COVID-19 pandemic have now expired, including the ERTC. Although these programs have expired, processing backlogs and a temporary halt in September 2023 in processing new ERTC claims at the IRS have resulted in many SMBs, including some of our clients, continuing to wait to receive their tax credits. In many cases, SMBs still participated in these programs retroactively via payroll tax filing amendments. While the IRS processed a substantial number of claims in 2025, many SMBs continue to wait for their credits to be processed.
•Interest Rates. Short-term interest rates continued to fall from highs seen in 2024. While prior periods of higher interest rates may have resulted in lower overall hiring among our SMB clients, we have not yet seen hiring rates rise as a result of the recent decrease in short-term rates. Further, the lower short-term interest rates resulted in reduced interest income on our cash deposits, a driver of our financial results, but will also result in lower interest expense on any future outstanding borrowings under our 2021 Revolver.
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•Privacy Laws and Regulations. We continue to see increased focus at every level of government inside and outside of the United States on regulating the collection, storage, use, retention, security, disclosure, transfer and other processing of confidential, sensitive and personal information, as well as the growing use of AI. As the patchwork of laws becomes increasingly complex, we expect the effort and cost of complying with all of the requirements to also increase and the likelihood of compliance failures to rise.
•PEO Benefit Plan Legislation. Various state governments from time to time seek to regulate PEO health plans. State regulations on PEO health plans can limit our options for providing TriNet sponsored benefits to our PEO clients or eliminate those benefits entirely. We devote substantial time and resources to monitor and respond to these developments. We expect to continue to see these legislative and regulatory efforts across the country.
For more information regarding the developments above, refer to Part II, Item 7. MD&A and Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors in this Form 10-K.
The Laws and Regulations that Affect Our Business
Our business operates in a complex legal and regulatory environment due to myriad federal, state and local laws and regulations that impact our business. Below is a summary of what we believe are the most important legal and regulatory issues specific to our business. For additional information on the impact of these and other laws and regulations on our business and results of operations, refer to Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors, of this Form 10-K, under the heading - "Legal and Compliance Risks".
Employer Status under ERISA and State Laws
As part of our PEO services, we sponsor employee benefit plans for the benefit of our WSEs. We believe we manage our employee benefit plans in accordance with ERISA and the Code requirements and that we are the employer of our WSEs with respect to the plans for purposes of the Code, ERISA and applicable state laws, but this status could be subject to challenge by various regulators. We believe that our benefit plans are exempt from many state regulations under ERISA, but our position could be challenged by state regulators or as a result of new laws, regulations, agency guidance, audits or case law at the federal and state levels.
Health Insurance and Health Care Reform
Our sponsored employee health and welfare offerings are an important component of the services that we provide. The future of health care reform continues to evolve in the U.S. Significant changes to health care statutes, regulations and policy at the federal, state and local levels could occur in the future, and we may need to adapt the manner in which we conduct our business as a result of any such changes.
Data Privacy and Security Regulations
We collect, store, use, retain, disclose, transfer and otherwise process a significant amount of confidential, sensitive and personal information from and about our actual and potential clients, WSEs, employees of ASO clients, and colleagues, and we are subject to a variety of federal, state and international laws, rules, and regulations in connection with such activities. As a sponsor of employee benefit plans, we also have access to certain protected health information (PHI) of our WSEs and colleagues. Management of PHI is subject to several regulations at the federal level, including HIPAA and the HITECH Act. HIPAA contains restrictions and health data privacy, security and breach notification requirements with respect to the use and disclosure of PHI. Further, there are penalties and fines for HIPAA violations. Because TriNet sponsored health plans are covered entities under HIPAA, our sponsored health plans are required to comply with HIPAA's portability, privacy, and security requirements. We are also subject, among other applicable federal laws, rules and regulations, to the rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of the Federal Trade Commission. In recent years, the federal government has increased its focus on and regulation of data privacy and security, and we expect this to evolve in the coming years.
At the state and local level, there is ongoing focus on regulating the collection, storage, use, retention, security, disclosure, transfer and other processing of confidential, sensitive and personal information. In recent years, many states have proposed or enacted new laws or amended existing laws and we expect them to continue to do so in the future. As state privacy laws become increasingly complex, we expect the cost and effort of complying with all of the requirements to increase and the likelihood of compliance failures to rise. Moreover, without the enactment of a comprehensive federal privacy law, we are required to comply with a patchwork of state laws that lacks uniformity which creates significant legal complexities for companies like TriNet that operate nationwide. Similarly, as we continue to expand our operations and services, we may be required to comply with similarly complex privacy security laws in the countries or regions in which we operate or provide services. Complying with existing and new privacy and security regulations could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business.
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Licensing Laws
Nearly all states have adopted laws and regulations for licensing, registration, certification or recognition of PEOs and the IRS has implemented a voluntary federal certification program for PEOs. We expect states without such laws and regulations to adopt them in the future. While these laws and regulations can vary widely, most regulators monitor the financial health and other relevant business information of PEOs on an annual or quarterly basis. In some cases, these laws and regulations codify and clarify the co-employment relationship for certain payroll, unemployment, workers' compensation and other employment-related purposes or require specific client contractual terms and/or WSE disclosures. We believe we comply in all material respects with the applicable PEO laws and regulations in each state and jurisdiction in which we provide PEO services.
Every state regulates insurance practices conducted within their jurisdiction. While we do not broker insurance currently, certain of our PEO and ASO services involve assisting our clients in obtaining and managing employee benefits. We partner with brokers to provide these services and have elected to obtain state insurance licenses as a result. As each state’s licensing requirements differ, maintaining current licenses is complex and we are subject to insurance audits, investigations and fines if we fail to comply with insurance license requirements.
Other state regulatory authorities impose licensing requirements on companies involved in the transmission of cash, such as banks, and other money transmitters. We do not believe that our current activities require any such licenses, but we and others in our industry have received inquiries from regulatory authorities in the past and could receive them in the future.
Payroll Taxes, Unemployment Taxes and Payroll Tax Credits
We must also comply with the federal and state payroll tax and unemployment tax requirements that apply where our clients are located. Tax reform efforts, and other payroll tax changes, at the federal, state and local level can impact our payroll tax reporting obligations for our clients and the services we can provide. State unemployment tax rates vary by state based in part on prior years’ total wages, unemployment taxes paid and unemployment claims experience and may also vary based on the overall claims experience of a PEO in states in which we are required to report and pay unemployment taxes using one of our accounts and rates. As a result, depending on where client WSEs perform services for our clients, the fees we charge PEO clients for unemployment taxes can be higher or lower than a client could obtain without use of a PEO. In some cases, taxing authorities can retroactively increase the unemployment taxes we pay to cover deficiencies in the unemployment tax funds. We also rely on our clients to accurately inform us of the work and residence locations for their WSEs and ASO client employees, and inaccurate information, whether due to remote work policies or otherwise, can impact our payroll tax obligations and the obligations of our clients, WSEs and ASO client employees.
We have seen a growing trend, particularly at the federal level, of using payroll tax credits, deferrals and other related payroll tax programs as a mechanism for incentivizing SMB development and economic recovery. These programs are popular because they allow SMBs, which often have business income tax losses, to realize benefits via payroll tax reductions, rather than business income tax reductions. As a result, many of our SMB clients require that we support these programs. An example of these programs is the federal 2015 PATH Act. The PATH Act allows SMBs to use R&D tax credits submitted on the SMB’s business income tax return to reduce certain payroll taxes.
We act as the employer of record for federal payroll tax reporting for our PEO clients. This means that we file client tax credit claims and pass the associated tax credit refunds to our clients based on information supplied by our clients, which we do not control. These programs have generally not been designed with the PEO industry in mind and these programs are subject to broad agency interpretations given their complexity. While our clients are contractually responsible to us for their errors in tax credit submissions and for repaying us for all rejected tax credits under our service contracts, taxing authorities may still look to TriNet for repayment and we may not be able to effectively enforce or collect on these obligations.
Other Employment Regulations
We must also comply with labor and employment laws, which change frequently at the federal, state and local level. In particular for our PEO services, regulatory focus on the classification of employers, employees and independent contractors has the potential to significantly change how we and other PEOs operate and the services that we and other PEOs can provide to our clients and WSEs. States continue to consider, or have adopted, changing regulations or guidance around the definition of employers, employees and independent contractors and any change in these definitions may impact our ability to provide certain PEO and ASO services to certain employers or employees.
We must also comply with state and federal rules and guidelines around both independent contractor and joint employer status. Standards for determining independent contractor and joint employer status vary from law to law
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and state to state, and changes to and new interpretations of these standards can limit the client workers to which we can provide services and increase the likelihood of claims that we are a joint employer of client WSEs or an employer of ASO client employees. We do not believe that we are a joint employer under any law or rule, or that past or proposed rule changes impact our status as a co-employer. However, laws regarding independent contractor and joint employer status can impact the types of SMB workers we can service and the potential liability that we have for the actions of our SMB clients and their employees.
Our Human Capital Resources
As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 3,400 colleagues globally supporting approximately 323,200 WSEs and 39,700 ASO Users.
Our human capital strategy focuses on attracting, developing, and retaining the colleagues necessary to support our clients and execute our business objectives. As of December 31, 2025, none of our colleagues were covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
Talent Attraction and Retention
We seek to attract and retain qualified colleagues through competitive compensation and benefits, including comprehensive health coverage and a 401(k) plan with an immediately vested employer match. Our pay‑for‑performance program includes cash and equity‑based incentives tied to company and individual performance. We also offer an employee stock purchase plan that allows colleagues to acquire our stock at a discount.
Training and Development
We invest in colleague development through training programs, continuing education and tuition reimbursement, and leadership and functional skill‑building opportunities. We also offer specialized development programs designed to support career advancement in key roles.
Engagement and Culture
We regularly conduct colleague surveys to assess engagement, career development opportunities, and satisfaction with compensation and benefits. Senior leadership reviews the results and prioritizes actions in response to identified trends.
We also support colleague‑led resource groups that are open to all, and corporate social responsibility initiatives, including volunteer and philanthropic activities in the U.S. and India to support creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can excel.
Workplace Flexibility and Locations
We provide flexible work arrangements, including remote, hybrid, and on‑site roles. Our primary on‑site centers are located in Hyderabad, India; Atlanta, Georgia; and Dublin, California, along with smaller in‑market offices that support proximity to prospects and customers.
For more information about how we help our PEO and ASO clients manage their own human capital resources and satisfy their own HR-related needs, see the section above titled “Our Services”.
Our Approach to Acquisitions
Historically, we have pursued acquisitions to expand our service capabilities, technology offerings, and supplement our growth. Our acquisition targets have included PEOs as well as HCM technology and services companies to supplement or enhance our HCM services. We intend to continue to pursue acquisitions, where appropriate, that will enable us to add new clients or WSEs, expand our presence in certain geographies or industry verticals, or expand our technology capabilities or services.
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2025 FORM 10-K
BUSINESS
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The Impact of Seasonality on Our Business
Our business is affected by seasonality in client business activity, hiring and benefit selections, health claims costs and payroll taxes:
•PEO clients generally change their payroll service providers at the beginning of the payroll tax and benefits enrollment year; as a result, we have historically experienced our highest volumes of new clients joining and terminating clients in the month of January. Our ASO clients are generally less affected by these considerations.
•WSEs select our TriNet-sponsored benefit plans during their respective open enrollment periods, which occur throughout the year. We generally experience the largest proportion of WSE benefit changes in the first and second quarters.
•Health claims costs tend to increase throughout the year as the utilization of medical services above each WSE's deductible causes our insurance costs to increase. In addition, the overall use of medical services by WSEs, including elective procedures, tends to increase later in the calendar year.
•Certain payroll tax related billings are based on annual taxable wage bases up to a set cap. Our clients frequently meet these wage base caps in the first two quarters of the year, depending on the compensation level of the relevant employees, resulting in lower related billing contributions to PSR in the latter half of the year.
Our Owned and Licensed Intellectual Property
We own or license from third parties various software and other intellectual property rights used in our business. We protect our intellectual property rights through the use of confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with our colleagues and third-party partners and vendors as well as policies incorporated and enforceable by contract. We own registered trademarks in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union covering our company name and other key trademarks that we believe are materially important to our operations. We protect our marks through federal registrations when appropriate, or otherwise through commercial use. Trademark registrations must generally be renewed every five to ten years and we renew the registration of trademarks that we deem to have continuing value to our business.
Corporate and Other Available Information
We were incorporated in 1988 as TriNet Employer Group, Inc., a California corporation. We reincorporated as TriNet Merger Corporation, a Delaware corporation, in 2000 and during that year changed our name to TriNet Group, Inc. Our principal executive office is located at One Park Place, Suite 600, Dublin, CA 94568 and our telephone number is (510) 352-5000. Our website address is www.trinet.com. Information contained in or accessible through our website is not a part of this report.
Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports are available free of charge at investor.trinet.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Alternatively, the public may access these reports at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. The contents of these websites are not incorporated into this report and are not part of this report.
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2025 FORM 10-K
RISK FACTORS
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