Sunny Day Fund - 3x3x3 Challenge with Rachel Fox
Emergency Savings Accounts as an employee benefit. Payroll deducted, employer matched, accumulating liquid, accessible savings.
Transcription:
What is Sunny Day Fund?
Sunny Day Fund is an out-of-plan emergency savings account program, sometimes called an ESA. Workers are struggling to save money on their own, you know the scary statistics, so it makes sense for them to look to their employer for help since that's their source of income. We enable emergency savings as an employee benefit through the paycheck. It's payroll deducted and employer rewarded, just like the 401k, and we open a liquid cash management account for each participant. They're contributing post-tax dollars here, so that serves as a first line of defense for financial emergencies. Workers can access these funds at any time for any reason. And as our name indicates, we don't think that the motivation to save should be purely fear-driven as a rainy day fund. Workers can set up different savings goals in our platform, and each of these savings buckets is meaningful to employees and draws them in and gets them excited about saving. Through our behavioral approach, we make saving easy, accessible, and rewarding for workers of all incomes.
How is Sunny Day Fund different?
So our employer match structure is not a contribution match like the 401k. Instead, on our platform, employers reward workers based on their balances maintained. So the employer is paying out their reward as a percentage rate of their choice on the average daily balance in the account. So a common employer reward might be 10% per quarter. That's like a 46% APY. Nobody is getting that at their bank through a split direct deposit. The employer also chooses an annual cap for budget certainty, maybe two to $300 annually per employee. And we use that employer reward as a carrot to appeal to the workers' greed and create new saving incentives. Our platform is built on the mindset of the more money I keep in the account, the more money I get from my employer. And for the employer, that means you're only kicking in this money when employees are actually accumulating the wealth that they can fall back on, not just putting it in and yanking it out with each paycheck. Remember, at their local bank, they're probably getting less than a half a percentage point APY on their savings account, but their cashback rewards on their credit card are paying 5%. So it's no wonder which has the higher balance. Society has been incentivizing the wrong things for them, so our platform turns that on its head by giving workers an undeniable incentive to save through payroll.
Who is a good fit for Sunny Day Fund?
So if you see employees treating the 401k as if it's an emergency savings account, that's just the most expensive way to do it, and we've built a better way. So addressing financial stress in the workforce improves retention and productivity while reducing retirement leakage and safety incidents. Sunny Day Fund operationalizes financial wellness in a tactical way, instead of merely providing guidance on what employees should do on their own.
If you haven't subscribed to our weekly email newsletter yet, now is the perfect time! It's free and packed with the latest 3x3x3 Challenges. Plus, make sure to share this link with your team members so they can benefit too!
Finally, if you're an industry partner with a company or product that benefit professionals should know about, we’d love for you to participate! Just fill out the short form at this link to schedule a time to record the 3x3x3 Challenge.
Transcription:
What is Sunny Day Fund?
Sunny Day Fund is an out-of-plan emergency savings account program, sometimes called an ESA. Workers are struggling to save money on their own, you know the scary statistics, so it makes sense for them to look to their employer for help since that's their source of income. We enable emergency savings as an employee benefit through the paycheck. It's payroll deducted and employer rewarded, just like the 401k, and we open a liquid cash management account for each participant. They're contributing post-tax dollars here, so that serves as a first line of defense for financial emergencies. Workers can access these funds at any time for any reason. And as our name indicates, we don't think that the motivation to save should be purely fear-driven as a rainy day fund. Workers can set up different savings goals in our platform, and each of these savings buckets is meaningful to employees and draws them in and gets them excited about saving. Through our behavioral approach, we make saving easy, accessible, and rewarding for workers of all incomes.
How is Sunny Day Fund different?
So our employer match structure is not a contribution match like the 401k. Instead, on our platform, employers reward workers based on their balances maintained. So the employer is paying out their reward as a percentage rate of their choice on the average daily balance in the account. So a common employer reward might be 10% per quarter. That's like a 46% APY. Nobody is getting that at their bank through a split direct deposit. The employer also chooses an annual cap for budget certainty, maybe two to $300 annually per employee. And we use that employer reward as a carrot to appeal to the workers' greed and create new saving incentives. Our platform is built on the mindset of the more money I keep in the account, the more money I get from my employer. And for the employer, that means you're only kicking in this money when employees are actually accumulating the wealth that they can fall back on, not just putting it in and yanking it out with each paycheck. Remember, at their local bank, they're probably getting less than a half a percentage point APY on their savings account, but their cashback rewards on their credit card are paying 5%. So it's no wonder which has the higher balance. Society has been incentivizing the wrong things for them, so our platform turns that on its head by giving workers an undeniable incentive to save through payroll.
Who is a good fit for Sunny Day Fund?
So if you see employees treating the 401k as if it's an emergency savings account, that's just the most expensive way to do it, and we've built a better way. So addressing financial stress in the workforce improves retention and productivity while reducing retirement leakage and safety incidents. Sunny Day Fund operationalizes financial wellness in a tactical way, instead of merely providing guidance on what employees should do on their own.
If you haven't subscribed to our weekly email newsletter yet, now is the perfect time! It's free and packed with the latest 3x3x3 Challenges. Plus, make sure to share this link with your team members so they can benefit too!
Finally, if you're an industry partner with a company or product that benefit professionals should know about, we’d love for you to participate! Just fill out the short form at this link to schedule a time to record the 3x3x3 Challenge.