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By Ana Mahony, CEO of Addition Wealth:
Despite the proliferation of calculators, apps, and dashboards promising to help individuals manage their money and plan for the future, significant financial wellness gaps persist. Only about a third of Americans feel that their retirement savings are on track.
While gamified apps may work for learning a language or monitoring an exercise plan, there are material challenges and limitations when it comes to financial wellness. Aside from the inaccuracy of self-reported data, many users simply don’t have the time or motivation to input – and then update – their personal data. Those with weaker financial literacy may lack the confidence to act on an app’s recommendations, even though they need it most. Or, they encounter so much noise that they don’t even see the relevant information.
To close real gaps in financial wellness, consumers need context-aware guidance, delivered when and where decisions happen, as technology enables humans to scalably support more individuals.
This is where the workplace comes into play.
The Workplace: The Epicenter of Financial Wellness
For most people, the workplace is a fundamental point of financial control. It’s where they generate a significant portion of their wealth. It’s the starting point for retirement savings, benefits enrollment, and equity decisions. Because income originates at work, it’s also a logical setting for guiding how that money is allocated between short-term needs and long-term goals.
Employers extend financial access to many individuals who might otherwise lack it, providing not only benefits and retirement plans but also accurate data and relevant personal context that can better guide those financial choices. Also, employees often view benefits-related resources as more credible than those encountered through ads, making the advice more impactful and trustworthy.
Retirement plans, insurance providers, and human capital management companies already serve the workplace. By embedding or integrating smarter guidance, these institutions not only increase product adoption and loyalty, but also generate stronger relationships with more individuals who they can engage through additional products.
Financial Wellness in the Workplace: A Strategic Opportunity for Financial Institutions
Thanks to advancements in technology, financial institutions can now support more workplaces and employees than ever before and deliver personalized value at scale, to the masses, while strengthening long-term relationships. By embedding financial wellness into the workplace, institutions can move beyond one-time transactions and become trusted partners in employees’ evolving financial lives.
This model is mutually beneficial: employees gain access to timely, relevant guidance that helps them navigate decisions around benefits, compensation, taxes, and long-term planning. Financial institutions, in turn, have the opportunity to build deeper connections—grounded in trust, context, and consistency.
Ultimately, the relationship is the value. Technology enables scale, but it’s the combination of personalized guidance, contextual insights, and human empathy that builds the kind of enduring relationships that serve both employees and institutions over time.
Powering financial wellness with workplace data
Best-in-class workplace financial wellness programs eliminate the friction and gaps that arise when workers must input their own financial data. Instead, these programs utilize the rich data that employers already possess. This might include:
The data is more current, reliable, and structured than user-generated data, providing a comprehensive view of individuals’ financial lives. When taken together, it also means users are getting hyperpersonalized advice that cuts through the noise and gives them accurate and relevant information.
Additional data sources, such as credit reports or marketing variables, can create even more detailed profiles and surface even greater insight that AI can process to deliver more customized and timely advice. Technology can then qualify and target individuals within a pool to provide personalized messaging and advice. Specific nudges enable employees to feel supported in making more informed decisions about their finances.
For example, an employee who isn’t getting the full match on their 401(k) contributions might get a nudge letting them know that they’re leaving money on the table, or a worker who received a raise might get guidance on how to adjust their withholdings based on their new tax bracket.
Context creates a differentiated experience—delivered by humans
Financial institutions that lean into this data-powered delivery model will outpace those who simply “check the box” by relying on generic consumer tools. They will position themselves as forward-thinking employer partners rather than simply service providers, delivering real value to employers and their employees for financial wellness.
The other thing that these platforms enable is on the backend. This technology isn’t replacing humans – and financial wellness is most impactful when it takes the best of technology with human experts.
There are a few ways:
All of this enables advisors to scale and support more workplaces and employees.
Instead of eliminating the role of human advisers, tech and AI-driven insights can reduce the burden on financial professionals, empowering them to connect with more workers in a more personalized manner. Human empathy can elevate a conversation about personalized retirement plan projections or tax-efficient equity strategies, for example, beyond simple number crunching, allowing the employee to feel heard and understood.
Looking ahead to next-gen financial wellness
Today’s employees face complex financial challenges that many existing tools can not holistically address. Hyperpersonalized and automated, next-generation financial wellness, when combined with human experts, will enhance financial outcomes for employees by providing access to clear, actionable professional advice. Effective, next-generation financial wellness creates experiences that go beyond education to empower individuals to take action.
True financial wellness requires more than tools; it requires context, trust, and data. The workplace provides an opportunity for financial services firms to flexibly provide all three at scale. And financial institutions who take advantage of this opportunity become invaluable partners to employers looking to invest in a more resilient and loyal workforce, and employees who are looking for a trusted solution or lack access to one today.
