What’s that old saying...”Misery loves company”?  SPENDiD and other early stage fintech companies know very well that a world in the midst of a pandemic is a real kick in the teeth for a startup founder. The recent Forbes article linked here emphasizes this point very well. The key to surviving and even thriving in such a world is agility, and not only having the ability but the willingness to pivot toward delivering best in class solutions to problems that are “fluid”, shall we say.

The unmet needs among millions of US households are clearer now more than ever: financial anxiety, budget illiteracy, and a growing intolerance for complex, confusing "solutions" which often just make things worse. Compounding this is the shrinking (or is it evolving?) attention span of humans today. Some studies have concluded that the average person today has an attention span just under that of a goldfish. Not surprisingly, the "firehose" of content being hurled at everyone today via multiple technologies and channels leaves us all longing for one elusive thing...SIMPLICITY.  

The fundamental problem for millions of American households today more than ever is "making ends meet". Any discussion of saving for retirement, or a down payment on a home, or the kids’ college, must be preceded by a clear, simple perspective on their current cash-flow situation. The data is out there, and the technology to deliver tremendously valuable information is in place - the problem until now has been no one has curated the demographic spending data properly, and created the seamless algorithms to deliver clear perspective and answers that low and middle income households desperately need. Further, these user's limited spending resources need to be marketed to in the most efficient way possible. "Shotgun" marketing is terribly inefficient and a waste of everyone's time. 

Perhaps most troubling is the devastating cycle of payday lending and exponential credit card debt that millions find themselves trapped in. Often this is due to prior negative credit problems that can follow a person for years. The resulting low traditional FICO and other credit scores don't allow someone to get a fairly priced loan. They may even have a good steady job now, paying their bills on time, and without much doubt, compared to most of their peers are a very solid credit risk – if not for what may be ancient history defining them by a borderline credit score. Without a dynamic, current, relevant secondary lending metric that tells a lender that this person can indeed be a really good loan candidate as compared to their demographic peers, they will remain locked out of a win/win opportunity for them and for the lender. 
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At SPENDID we plan to pursue these solutions now more than ever before – because the need is greater than ever before. Early stage startup or not, pandemic or not, SPENDiD intends to succeed and help millions of households also succeed as a result.

As is true of virtually every growing industry, the world of financial services is being transformed by its ability to capture actionable data.

​Banking institutions, although historically slow to adopt new practices, have the ability to capture tremendous amounts of valuable consumer data. The problem has been that this data, while impressive in its volume and potential, often has the organization and usefulness of a “data swamp”.

Institutions are more proactively exploring how such data can be used for good. Recognizing this opportunity was the inspiration behind the genesis of SPENDiD. It is important to remember that SPENDiD began as a consumer app. Its central reason for existence was to address a disturbing trend in our country: the startling lack of basic financial literacy and simple awareness of how to structure one’s month-to-month financial life in order to “make ends meet”. As time went on SPENDiD’s founders realized there existed a much wiser market approach to putting their newly developed demographic perspective to spending behavior in the hands of those needing it. That path was to offer an elegantly documented, highly scalable API to PFM apps and financial wellness platforms already “in the room” with customers and employees longing for a simple, sensible approach to understanding and improving their monthly cash flow health. By thoughtfully curating unbiased empirical datasets and indexes of already proven consumer behavior, SPENDiD might not have yet fully drained the data swamp, but has at least “filtered” it by retrieving and applying its truly valuable components.
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Further enhancements to SPENDiD’s capabilities are planned or already in development, and all will abide by the premise of “Simple but not Easy”. There exists a critical difference between these two common words. Simple means “easily or quickly understood”, or the opposite of complicated. But what simple does not mean is “easy to create or develop”. In fact, the simpler something is to understand, often the more difficult it is to create. The difficult creation task has already been conquered by the team at SPENDiD, enabling our client partners to help their thousands or even millions of struggling employees or customers with the simple to understand results.
 
SPENDiD will remain “maniacally focused on the radically simple”. We believe the winners in fintech will be those who deliver simple to understand solutions, readily adopted by the masses. Here’s to draining the swamp!

It’s A New Priority Following The Pandemic

It has become clearer than ever, in the wake of COVID-19, that American workers are not prepared to handle a financial emergency.

As many millennials have only a couple months in emergency savings (if any), the pandemic has uncovered an issue that they’re realizing is serious - they don’t have a back-up plan when disaster strikes. Going forward, American workers will know the importance of budgeting and spending wisely (from experience!) and millennials are going to place an emphasis on core workplace benefits.

Financial wellness has been growing in awareness in recent years, but this pandemic is naturally bringing it to the forefront of many employees’ (and employers’) thoughts.
Google Trends illustrates this explosion of new queries like: ‘covid financial assistance,’ ‘coronavirus financial assistance,’ ‘covid 19 financial assistance,’ ‘financial assistance for coronavirus,’ ‘financial assistance for covid 19.’
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Even the broad term ‘financial assistance’ hit a massive spike in March 2020 in the United States.

The influx of pandemic emergency loans and grants being offered is astronomical. It is hard to say exactly how the international pandemic will hurt education, business, and more, but one thing is sure. Many Americans are facing hardships they were not prepared for.

As this article, Financial Wellness Will Be the New Priority Following the Pandemic, outlines, “Retirement industry professionals might soon see a significant shift toward emergency savings accounts as millions of workers struggle to make ends meet after the financial hits brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Thus, financial wellness and benefits will become a competitive survival factor for many firms. Millenials will take this seriously, and will be comparing these financial wellness benefits when they decide whether or not to work at a company. Don’t wait to get an education on financial wellness. As an employer, you need to be prepared for this new priority, so that you can provide direction and prepare your employees for a life of financial wellness. Learn more about SPENDiD’s demographically-guided, simple-to-use approach. . And don’t waste valuable time and resources “reinventing the wheel,” but instead, start a conversation with us today! Let us show you how easy it can be to make a crucial, positive difference in the lives of your employees and their families.

So, employees have demonstrated that they want to feel secure about their current and future financial health - and over half say they want reassurance about financial decisions. This is where SPENDiD comes in. We created SPENDiD​ out of a desire to help reverse the alarming trend of financial illiteracy, including the resulting stress caused by uncertainty and a lack of demographic perspective on spending behavior. Based on carefully structured peer data, our API technology is thoughtfully designed to help improve the general spending habits of the end user by making budgeting and financial decision making radically simple - even addictive. Suddenly, making ends meet now actually makes sense.

Not only does a simple to use financial wellness program like SPENDiD improve your workforce’s satisfaction with their overall benefits package, but with this sound financial health comes increased focus and productivity at work and lower stress related health costs.
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Do you have a financial wellness program? Bolster your employees’ financial health by offering them access to SPENDiD. Our predictive, crowd-validated consumer spending intelligence helps the user understand their monthly budget health in ways never-before possible.  Reach out to us through the Contact Us page at www.spendid.io and let us show you how easy it can be to make a crucial, positive difference in the lives of your employees and their families.
 

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In recent years, more employers have been adopting programs centered around “financial wellness,” and for good reason - it encourages their employees’ awareness of money and a healthy relationship with finances.

But a key aspect has been missing, until now. “Employees who rate their financial wellness positively are more likely to feel that they can effectively manage their day-to-day finances, pay bills while saving for future goals, and that their retirement savings are on track.” found
​a Bank of America report.