Brillient Corporation

• Type: Federal information-management and business-process contractor.
• Legal entity: Brillient Corporation.
• Founded: 2006, by Sukumar Iyer, its founder, executive chairman and CEO.
• HQ: Reston, Virginia.
• Pandemic-relief role: Loan-processing and disbursement surge staff for SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance, 2020–2021, through an order under an existing SBA staffing agreement.

Three days after SBA raised the ceiling on Brillient Corporation's staffing agreement from $10 million to $150 million, it placed a COVID-19 order under that agreement worth up to $125,877,230.40, paid for by SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance.¹² Brillient announced it as surge support for disaster-loan processing and disbursement: about 500 loan-processing staff, six days a week, for every state and territory.³ SBA raised the order's ceiling to $205.8 million by October 2020, then cut it three times in 2021. By the final modification the order had obligated $85,564,656.97.²⁴

Who it is

Brillient says it began in 2006 in a closet-sized office in the home of its founder, Sukumar Iyer, who had left a global consulting firm.⁵ His company biography lists him as founder, executive chairman and CEO and mentions earlier work at Accenture.⁶ In May 2020 the company described itself as having 1,000-plus staff in 17 states and 22 federal clients; Paul Strasser was then CEO and Iyer executive chairman.³

The SBA agreement

Brillient's SBA work ran through a blanket purchase agreement, 73351018A0010, signed July 16, 2018 for staffing SBA's Office of Capital Access and its Office of Performance and Systems Management. The company announced it as a five-year, $10 million agreement.⁷¹ "Brillient has been a partner to the SBA since 2008," Iyer said in 2020.³

On March 31, 2020 a modification added $140 million to the agreement's ceiling, bringing it to $150 million.¹ The pandemic order, 73351020F0095, was signed April 3, 2020 with an effective date of March 27. The Federal Procurement Data System lists it as "Financial Administrative Support Services" (later "COVID-19 Financial Administrative Support Services"), priced on labor hours, placed under the agreement's fair-opportunity rules and funded by the Office of Disaster Assistance.²

The money moved like this:

Amounts are summed from the order's modifications; the final obligation of $85,564,656.97 is the order's recorded total after a 75-cent close-out adjustment in August 2024.²⁴ The trade press repeated the $125 million headline at the time.⁸ The later ceiling cuts appear only in the procurement record.

The same agreement carried six smaller orders for analysts, staff augmentation and financial-systems project managers.¹

Other federal work

Brillient also holds Internal Revenue Service contracts for scanning paper tax returns into electronic records. The IRS's 2022 privacy assessment of the service describes returns shipped to the contractor, scanned and sent back; Form 709 gift-tax returns were the first production use.⁹¹⁰

Related profiles

• Jovita Carranza: SBA Administrator when the order was placed.
• RER Solutions: prime contractor for COVID-EIDL loan processing in the same months.
• Guidehouse: SBA's other emergency professional-support contractor.

Sources

1. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA blanket purchase agreement 73351018A0010 (Brillient Corporation): award and modifications. Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351018A0010 ↩
2. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351020F0095 (Brillient Corporation, COVID-19 financial administrative support services). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351020F0095 ↩
3. Brillient Corporation, "Brillient Called on by SBA With Contract for Loan Processing Surge," PR Newswire, May 21, 2020. Original: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brillient-called-on-by-sba-with-contract-for-loan-processing-surge-301063938.html ↩
4. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351020F0095 (Brillient Corporation), modifications 11 and 12. Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351020F0095&start=10 ↩
5. Brillient Corporation, "The Brillient Story". Original: https://brillient.net/who-we-are/the-brillient-story/ ↩
6. Brillient Corporation, Sukumar Iyer leadership biography. Original: https://brillient.net/who-we-are/leadership/sukumar-iyer/ ↩
7. Brillient Corporation, "Brillient Awarded $10M Professional and Management Services Contract at the Small Business Administration (SBA)," July 27, 2018. Original: https://www.brillient.net/news/brillient-awarded-10m-professional-and-management-services-contract-at-the-small-business-administration-sba/ ↩
8. ExecutiveBiz, "Brillient Gets $125M SBA Loan Processing Support Order; Paul Strasser, Sukumar Iyer Quoted," May 2020. Original: https://executivebiz.com/2020/05/brillient-gets-125m-sba-loan-processing-support-order-paul-strasser-sukumar-iyer-quoted/ ↩
9. Internal Revenue Service, Privacy Impact Assessment, "Scanning as-a-Service (SCaaS) Front-End Brillient V2," Oct. 21, 2022. Original: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pia/scaas-front-end-brillient-pia.pdf ↩
10. ExecutiveGov, "Brillient to Deliver Digitalization Solutions for IRS EDCMO; Ed Burrows, Richard Jacik Quoted," Aug. 2021. Original: https://executivegov.com/2021/08/brillient-to-deliver-digitalization-solutions-for-irs-edcmo/ ↩