Art by Gizem Vural

Financial wellness tools are now readily accessible—but there is growing agreement among at least some advisers that access is not enough. “Online financial wellness tools have been available for two decades,” notes Chris Jamail, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at TCG, a Hub International company, in Austin, Texas. “The issue is that people don’t understand the information still: Many people aren’t taught good financial habits growing up.” 

The tools must become part of an adviser’s discussion with clients, sources say. “Five years ago, financial wellness was ‘the sprinkles on top of the cake,’ a ‘nice to have,’” says Nate Pratt, vice president of business development at OneDigital in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Now, it’s the cake itself: It’s not a ‘nice to have’ anymore.”  

Different by Design 

Regardless of which financial wellness program or provider is used, it is important to define “financial wellness” with an employer at the outset, because the term is broad and can mean many things, says Michael Paris, president of Paris International Corp., an employee benefits consultancy in Great Neck, New York. “Our mentality has been that we design the program from the bottom up: The participant drives the boat.”

When customizing a program, Paris International provides a survey to the employer client to send to employees. While financial interests and stressors vary by employee demographics, he says, four major topics besides retirement planning crop up periodically when surveying employees: basic budgeting, debt management, planning to pay for a child’s college education and estate planning. 

A program’s design, and in what ways it is customized at the employer and/or employee level, is a key differentiator, Pratt agrees. “The best way to win this business is to ask important questions early on about the ‘pulse’ of the employee base, the cultural climate. We want to understand, what are the engines in our wellness program that will [resonate] most with those employees? So we’ll ask an employer, ‘What matters most to your team?’ That open-ended question is a treasure hunt: From the answer to that question, it’s rare that we don’t have a blueprint for how to meet—and exceed—expectations.” 

When employees start Paris International’s financial wellness program and go onto its site for the first time, a five-minute onboarding survey asks them questions such as their top three reasons for participating in the program. That then allows for customizing the coming financial wellness content to the individual’s needs. The program sets a specific goal for the individual according to her biggest financial focus—e.g., building emergency savings. Then, as the employee achieves that goal, it will suggest a new goal pertaining to another of her priorities. 

It is best to decide upfront on a financial wellness program’s scope and the topics to cover with a particular employee group, rather than offering it a huge menu of topics to choose from, Pratt says. “There are plenty of studies that talk about ‘decision paralysis’: When people have too many choices, it creates decision paralysis and inaction,” he says. OneDigital surveys key stakeholders such as human resource leadership when customizing its Financial Academy program, to zero in on key financial stressors—e.g., student loans—affecting that employee base. “It’s not very potent to go in with a whole array of topics for employees,” he adds. “We make sure that we survey, very granularly, the stakeholders from the get-go.” 

“Our program’s biggest differentiator is that we are a process, not a product,” Jamail says. “Everybody has a financial wellness curriculum, and everybody has the technology tools. We have a technology platform, but we don’t lead with that, because that’s not how you solve the issue. Our differentiator is the coaches who work with people one on one and how we manage that coaching process.”

“The best way to win this business is to ask important questions early on about the ‘pulse’ of the employee base, the cultural climate.”

Different by Deliverables

Hub tailors the participant deliverables in its FinPath program to each individual’s needs, Jamail says. “People can get a summary financial plan, and many of our coaches who meet one on one with folks also provide ‘homework’ to help address the issues that they’re discussing with them.” For example, someone struggling to pay off credit card debt may be asked to “calendar” his budgeting: take a recent bank statement and break down spending over that month. “Then that person can talk with the coach to see where his paycheck is going and to map out a monthly budget,” Jamail says. 

Hub’s program aims to distinguish itself partly by giving people a step-by-step process to deal with their key financial stressors, Jamail says. Program participants are asked initially to do a brief self-assessment that pinpoints their biggest financial priority; then Hub’s system identifies where that person stands, over five levels, from surviving to thriving, on that issue. “Based on your initial assessment, it may tell you, ‘You’re surviving on this issue, and we need to work on these three things,’” he explains. “We give you ideas of specific things to improve as you progress through each level, and our coaches work on them with you.” 

The sponsor deliverables in a financial wellness program center largely on reporting, and OneDigital measures the success of its Financial Academy program at a client primarily through aggregated employee engagement data, Pratt says. “We’re able to tell how many people engaged with the program, what topics they engaged on, and the level of engagement via the different modes of communication,” he says. “We can also benchmark that against a client’s industry peers and sector peers.” 

Paris International uses its financial wellness platform partly as a “wellness CRM,” meaning a contact management system that records each interaction with every program participant, Paris says. “Then, every six months, we’re delivering to the employer [aggregated] information on, ‘Here’s what’s happening, and here is what your people are talking to us about.’ We’re able to quantify for employers exactly what we do for their people.” 

Advisers should also be prepared to discuss with plan sponsor clients and employees what happens with the data inputs. Paris’ firm does not use data to try to sell additional products and services to program participants, he says. “Any one of the off-the-shelf, technology-based solutions might be a good technology, but [the provider offering the program] owns the data on these individuals and everything they do as part of the program. The data we accumulate is strictly used to deliver our wellness program.”