As a business leader in this economy, you know that the best way to retain top talent is not to lose it in the first place. Anything you can do to reduce employee turnover and preserve institutional knowledge counts as a win these days.
You also know or are slowly finding out, that retaining talented employees requires an “all of the above” approach. Increasing base salaries, boosting seasonal or annual bonuses, and offering more generous healthcare or retirement benefits are all critically important. But let’s be honest: They’re not enough.
So, what else can you do to retain top talent in a tight labor market, especially when your industry experiences cutthroat talent competition at a baseline?
Among other strategies, you can turn to these fintech innovators, which makes it easier to offer exceptional value to your employees with minimal effort and cost. They come in five packages: equity liquidation options, financial wellness platforms, student loan repayment solutions, earned wage access platforms, and healthcare financing platforms.
Early Access to Liquidity
If you offer your employees restricted stock units (RSUs) or other forms of pre-IPO equity, you’re probably used to questions like: “So…how long do I have to wait to get my money?”
With these equity liquidation options, you finally have a satisfying answer—one that helps your employees access funds for significant life events like buying or renovating a home, throwing a dream wedding, or taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation—or fiscally prudent moves like paying down debt or building a rainy-day fund.
Most importantly, from your perspective, these equity liquidation options offer your employees invaluable financial security and an irreplaceable sense of ownership, driving recruiting and retention in competitive industries.
Multiply
Explicitly designed with employees of pre-IPO tech startups in mind, Multiply empowers employers to, in Multiply’s own words, “offer liquidity as an employee benefit.”
For starters, Multiply offers a solution that allows employees to open a credit line with no obligation or fees, draw on it whenever they want, and pay back draws when the loan matures or a liquidity event (such as an IPO) occurs. Multiply charges no equity fees, low draw fees, and competitive interest rates. And, importantly for employees, it requires no collateral other than the equity itself.
Their mortgage solution also caters directly to pre-IPO employees. Unlike traditional mortgage lenders, who may overlook a company’s potential due to its private status, Multiply considers pre-IPO equity in the underwriting process. This translates to highly competitive mortgage rates for the employee without the limitations of conventional “relationship banking.”
Multiply doesn’t stop there. Legacy providers largely underserve pre-IPO tech employees. In response to this need, Multiply aims to support these employees through a suite of resources such as tax prep and optimization, diversification, investments, trust and estate planning, and more. The bottom line is that they are helping financially empower those who devote their lives to building a better future for all of us.
Secfi
Secfi is a more targeted liquidity solution that helps startup employees and executives maximize the value of their equity while minimizing taxes.
For employees, its offerings include secondary sales, which allow employees to offload their equity on the secondary market before a traditional liquidity event occurs, and non-recourse products that “retain ownership and future upside.”
Like Multiply, they offer various services, including financial planning, wealth management, and equity planning. They also provide tools to help employees track the value of their stock options and make informed financial decisions.
Financial Wellness Resources
You already know that competitive compensation helps with employee retention. Why not go the extra mile and ensure your employees have the tools and knowledge to keep more of their hard-earned money?
With these financial wellness platforms, you can. Use them to give employees access — for free or at a meager cost — to financial education resources, personalized financial planning services, budgeting tools, and more. The more financially literate your employees are, the less time they’ll spend worrying about money and the more attention they’ll be able to devote to their work.
Finicity
Finicity is a Mastercard-owned company that calls itself “a trusted innovation partner to industry leaders across the financial services and fintech spectrum.” It works with some of the hottest fintechs in the space, including Brex and Dwolla, and established financial companies like Experian (a credit rating agency) and GuaranteedRate (a mortgage and home equity lender).
Finicity offers a range of financial solutions for employers, including non-fintechs. Its customizable Connect solution enables rapid customer permissioning for seamless, secure financial institution connections, powering a full lineup of employer benefits. These capabilities, in turn, empower financial literacy across your entire workforce.
Truist Long Game
Long Game was an independent fintech app until 2022 when Truist purchased it. Now, it’s part of a suite of Truist features that empower employees to take control of their money — supporting an industry-leading gamification platform that makes fiscal responsibility fun.
If your company banks with the Charlotte-based financial giant, it should be an easy lift to get your team on board. Even if it doesn’t, employees with Truist accounts might appreciate a heads-up that Truist Long Game exists.
Student Loan Repayment Solutions
According to the New York Times, the average undergrad student finishes school with $25,000 in student loans. Millions of Americans continue to pay off these debts years or even decades after graduation.
That number most likely includes some of your employees, maybe most.
If they’re sick of the burden, they can, of course, take matters into their own hands. Unfortunately, some of the most reliable ways to manage student loan debt, like getting a second job or even delaying retirement to earn more, are not exactly ideal. And some debt management solutions could cost significantly more than the original debt amount.
Fortunately, gentler solutions are available, starting with these two legitimate student loan repayment providers.
Gradifi
Gradifi could just as easily fall into the “financial wellness” bucket. It’s that versatile.
However, Gradifi stands out as a student loan management platform. Its secret is a “curated marketplace of student loan refinancing lenders” that “can potentially lower their interest rates and monthly payments,” its website says.
In other words, Gradifi cuts through the complexity and confusion of student loan repayment — there are so many options and confusing terms — to help employees find better, lower-cost solutions to student debt solutions.
And Gradifi’s other financial wellness benefits? Among other things, they include:
- College saving and planning
- Financial tools and calculators for all sorts of money-related matters
- Financial wellness education modules
Many of your employees will likely appreciate Gradifi’s student loan solutions first and foremost. But as they move past that phase of life and start working toward the next big goals on the horizon, they’ll appreciate all the rest.
SoFi at Work
SoFi at Work, the business solutions vertical of SoFi, also offers student loan repayment solutions for employees (and leaders).
As noted by SoFi, its platform allows employers to offer up to “$5,250 in double tax-exempt student loan contributions every year through 2025,” which means neither the employer nor the employee pays tax on those payments. Employees participate through a “turnkey” portal that’s easy to set up and involves virtually no hands-on management — that’s SoFi’s job.
Like Gradifi, SoFi at Work offers other employee benefits, including student loan verification, college savings, and an entire library of useful financial guides and articles. SoFi’s consumer vertical is even more comprehensive, with solutions including but not limited to undergraduate and professional student loans, parent loans, personal loans, mortgage loans, auto loan refinance, investing — the list goes on and on.
Earned Wage Access Platforms
You’ll find people living paycheck to paycheck at every income level, at least until you get close to the top. Many small business owners—maybe including yourself—are in the same boat.
Earned wage access platforms, or EWAs, offer a temporary reprieve. Unlike predatory payday lenders, which employ creative accounting tricks to get around state maximum interest rates, EWAs offer fairly priced short-term cash advances or short-term loans that employees can quickly repay from their next paycheck.
DailyPay
DailyPay allows employees to access their pay as often as once per day. That’s a dramatic and badly needed upgrade to traditional biweekly or twice-monthly pay runs.
And the improvement in the status quo wage liquidity solution, payday loans, is immeasurable. DailyPay says 95% of users stopped or reduced payday loan use, saving an estimated $624 to $930 annually.
PayActiv
PayActiv’s employer-facing Livelihood platform offers benefits similar to DailyPay, such as delivering earned wages via external bank transfer, payment card, or cash pickup at Walmart. PayActive claims its solution boosts employee productivity by 16 hours per month per employee and drives a 36% increase in retention.
Healthcare Financing Platforms
In case you haven’t noticed, healthcare costs are increasing, especially for people with high-deductible health insurance plans or “catastrophic” plans that only kick in when you get sick or injured.
Even with more generous health insurance plans, healthcare expenses can quickly add up. After all, insurance just doesn’t cover some treatments and procedures.
That’s where this nontraditional healthcare financing platform kicks in. Offer it to your employees to send a powerful signal that you care about their complete well-being: physical, emotional, and financial.
Nibble Health
Nibble Health is “setting the standard for healthcare financing as an employee benefit” with a no-fee “Nibble Card” that allows employees to make healthcare payments over time, regardless of provider or insurance plan. In Nibble’s words, the idea is to “eliminate financial barriers to healthcare for employees and reduce costs for employers across the board.”
And remember, you can still offer traditional health insurance, health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, and other medical-adjacent fringe benefits. Nibble Health is just the icing on the cake.
Final Thoughts
Employee-friendly fintech innovation comes in many forms. We’ve explored five of these in this guide:
- Early access to liquidity
- Financial wellness resources
- Student loan repayment options
- Earned wage access tools
- Healthcare financing providers
From your perspective as an employer, these solutions pick up where your compensation and benefits packages leave off. After all, you can offer above-market compensation alongside the most generous employee benefits imaginable. But, it still does not cover everything your employees need to be financially healthy.
How should you decide which to offer first? The best approach is most likely to ask your employees what they want. Create a safe, anonymous space for them to provide candid feedback about their financial concerns and expectations. They’ll give you everything you need to set up an industry-leading, fintech-powered fringe benefit suite.
