Financial wellness: The No. 1 requested employee benefit

“Financial wellness is clearly a hot topic,” said Chad Schneider, Head of Broker Partnerships at Origin, who presented the “How to Leverage Financial Wellness to Maximize Your Bottom Line” session at Broker Expo in Atlanta. “It went from a nice to have to a need to have for employers.”

“It’s now a global economy and everything is so volatile that people are getting stressed now,” he said, and “it now becomes ‘How do I put something in place?’ instead of a check-the-box solution.”

“Financial illiteracy of our country” is widespread, said Schneider. “There are so many people that are stressed out, not prepared for anything major to happen. They make decisions in a vacuum, don’t know what to do for financial advice.” So there is a strong need for employers to bridge the gap for employees by providing financial help, said Schneider.