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MetLife has formed a strategic alliance with Ernst & Young LLP (EY) that will drive the creation and delivery of a workplace financial wellness solution.
Launching in spring 2018, PlanSmart Financial Wellness will focus on behavioral change, giving employees the tools, guidance and support they need to improve their financial wellbeing.
The offering builds on MetLife’s PlanSmart workplace financial education program, which has offered workshops and one-on-one consultations for more than 20 years to over 2,000 group customers. PlanSmart Financial Wellness will bring together MetLife’s decades of experience in delivering workplace benefit solutions and financial education with EY’s high-tech approach to offering financial education and counseling. The result will be a customized, goal-oriented approach to financial wellness that will meet employees where they are, offering the tools via channels they prefer. This will include online and phone support, both offered by EY.
“We’ve designed a hybrid digital/human financial wellness service that supports users as they manage the twists and turns of their financial life journeys,” says Lynn Pettus, national director of employee financial services, Ernst & Young LLP. “PlanSmart Financial Wellness will be an exciting new change in our ability to service and engage employees with varying levels of comfort with financial concepts and new digital technologies.”
“Employees are stressed about their finances—MetLife research has found just over a third (38%) feel in control of their finances, compared to 44% in 2015—and they are looking to their employer for help,” says James Reid, executive vice president, MetLife. “The combination of MetLife’s understanding of employee needs and EY’s leading employee financial wellness services uniquely positions us to give employers the robust program they need to help empower employees to take action.”