(00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up-and-coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:46) - Hello to all our listeners. In this episode, we are shining a spotlight on Immediate, a platform that helps businesses recruit, engage and retain employees by providing a financial wellness solution that delivers on-demand access to earned wages. It allows employees to smooth out the peaks and valleys of pay cycles by creating more consistent streams of income, breaking cycles of debt and reducing the need for predatory alternative lending sources. Joining me to discuss Immediate, is CEO and founder of the company, Matt Pierce.
(00:01:16) - Matt, thanks for joining me on the show today.
(00:01:19) - Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
(00:01:22) - So let's start off first. Like tell us about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:29) - Well. So it's interesting. This is my first foray into the HR tech space. I've been a healthcare technology guy most of my career, and in 2018 was working on a healthcare startup, scheduling, scheduling and payments for the non-medical home care world, and was doing that kind of nights and weekends for almost a year and came across a big organization who pointed me in the direction of, you know, what? You're building is a nice to have not to have to have. And I said, well, what would be a have to have? And she said, you know, honestly, I've got a real issue with turnover. And I think if you could figure out a way to help my employees get paid more frequently, you'd really be onto something. And it led us down the path of, I think it took us almost a year from that conversation to launching our first customer, but led me down the path of better understanding HR needs and helping organizations with their recruitment and retention strategies.
(00:02:25) - And that's what led me to Immediate. So short answer is I've been in the HR tech world, a little north of five years. And, but gosh, it feels like a lifetime at this point.
(00:02:37) - Right? It always feels like a lifetime in this crazy space., you know, and you're not the first CEO that has founded a company in this space who said I didn't start in this space? I would say about 50% of the guests that come on the show wound up saying that they saw need somewhere, ended up in the air tech space. And before they know it, here they are with a successful company.
(00:03:00) - Well, it's I like I always like hearing that. One of my favorite things that you hear entrepreneurs say is they have an experience and then they the common statement is there's got to be a better way. And that was really kind of the genesis here, right? Of, you know, this in particular, lady told me, I'm, I'm losing people.
(00:03:20) - She had about 65% turnover and she said, I'm losing people who were going somewhere else for $0.25 more an hour., or they're going somewhere else because they don't like the commute to have to drive across town to take care of our elderly population. And, and she said, I really feel like if I could give them the ability to get paid at the end of a shift, that it would give me a competitive differentiator to my competitors, and they're less likely to leave and go work somewhere else for $0.25 for an hour if they could work here and get paid, at the end of the day. And so it was one of those, you know, the she helped spark the light bulb., but it was one of those light bulb moments of. All right, well, there's got to be a better way than what's going on today. And let's see if we can get to the bottom of that.
(00:04:02) - Yeah, I love it. And, you know, it makes me think of a conversation that I had recently with a fellow agency owner where they were worried about moving from paying biweekly to paying twice per month, and how that would impact finances for employees.
(00:04:18) - And I was like, have you guys heard of EWR? Because there are solutions out there that can help with that. And, you know, like living in this space, I feel like it's very commonly known. But then when you go out to these businesses, a lot of them don't even know that this is an option at this point.
(00:04:33) - Right?
(00:04:34) - You're 100% correct. It's funny, we'll go places and, you know, we'll be at a dinner party or go to, you know, I'll go with my wife on one of her work events and I'll tell people something I do, and they'll go, oh, that's a really great idea. And my response is always, it was an idea five years ago. It's a business now, you know.
(00:04:53) - Right, right. But to your.
(00:04:54) - Point, it's people just don't understand that it's there. And it's still I mean, you know, the numbers are all across the board when you, when you start talking to people. But from what we can, from what we can gather, there's still less than 20% of companies that are offering this type of solution, type of benefit to their team members.
(00:05:11) - And and so it is becoming more, more prevalent., but there is still very much, you know, people go, like, you know, to your example that you just shared, you don't really think about the difference between getting paid every other Friday to getting paid the 15th or the 30th. But what that could do is it creates a misalignment with payday and bill due dates, and it could just throw people off. Right? Like when someone now gets hit with rent that's due on the first, and a cell phone bill and an internet bill that's due by the fifth and they're getting paid on the 30th, it may end up being better, right? They could end up budgeting better for that, or it could put them in a situation where they're like, no, I've kind of cracked the code on my 26 pay periods for the year and knew that I need to have this much money, and I need to make sure by the end of the month it helped me budget knowing that it was every two weeks.
(00:06:02) - And so there's just a lot of intricacies that come with pay cycles, and being able to bridge that gap by giving people access to the money they've already earned, I think is a really, is a really interesting way to help your team and your workforce kind of bridge that gap.
(00:06:17) - Yeah. And I imagine if only 20% of companies are doing that now, as more employees experience that and take advantage of it. And, you know, I've seen statistics that are like frontline workers, you know, especially this tends to be a really good benefit. They're going to end up going to other employers not seeing that and raising their hand and being like "Why aren't you offering this benefit? I was able to get it over at the last company I was at," and so I think it's going to continue to grow as employees realize that it's actually an option.
(00:06:50) - You're exactly right. They're starting to be more of a groundswell of people that are telling employers this is something that I expect as a benefit. I'll give you a quick example.
(00:06:59) - From the early days here, when I was the only employee, I had cards made up that had a QR code to our website on the back of it on the front that said, you work today while you wait to get paid, and whenever we would go through drive through, and in the early days of bootstrapping a business and not having a salary, and trying to cut costs, there were a lot of fast food nights and, I've got three girls and they're all young, all in elementary school or younger. And I always kind of like split up nights when they go with me. And so, my two older girls always loved it when we would go through a drive through that I would always ask people when we were checking out like, hey, how often do you get paid? And I would practice my sales pitch, and sometimes I let them jump in and practice as well. And so, and so they always remind me of that. And even today, I've still got those cards in my, in my console and they'll say, can we, can we do the cards? Can we offer one? And so recently, excuse me, recently I did that and I asked the person, hey, how frequently do you get paid? And they said every other Friday.
(00:08:01) - And I said, you don't have anything where you can get paid in between paydays, like on demand. And they go, no. And they said, oh, I go, well, here's, here's a card. And, she walked off and about 10s later, this guy walks up to the thing and he held the car. He goes, did you just give this to her? And I was like, oh, no, I've never gotten in trouble for this before, you know? And I was like, oh, and, you can just give this to her. And I go, I sure did. And, and he says, he goes, man, let me, you got a piece of paper. I want to tell you my boss's name and phone number., and he said, he goes, I work two companies and I'm not going to give a plug to our competitor, but he was like my other the other company I work at, the other fast food restaurant, they use so-and-so.
(00:08:36) - And I said, oh, we're much better than them. And he started laughing and he said, well, here's the number call. You know, call my boss so you can try to get us in there. And so so we're working on it., and so we're trying to get in there too. But to your point, is there someone who's expecting who gets it at one at one place but then comes to work as other places? He goes, I only get paid every, two weeks. And I would love the opportunity to get paid on demand here as well. And so, you're you're spot on when saying this is a benefit that people are really starting to expect. And, and it's really helping organizations and their recruitment efforts.
(00:09:09) - Yeah, that's really cool. So let's talk a bit more about what Immediate does and what makes you different from the other earned wage access solutions that might be out in the market?
(00:09:20) - It's one of my favorite questions, around just differentiation because, you're right.
(00:09:26) - And we talked briefly before we hit record just about how this, this market is, is growing increasingly crowded. And, we were fortunate enough to, to get started., gosh, five and a half years ago. And, and we were able to, find the right and investors, the right banking partners, and we've been able to build this business in a very scalable fashion. And we've had a lot of success over the past few years. And, when it comes to differentiation, we usually boil it down to two things. And that's flexibility and responsibility. And I'll circle back as to why., but what I as I was starting this and as we've continued to grow and build out a team and, and listen to customers and listen to users and listen to partners,. I think in order to help people on their lifelong financial wellness journey, you have to be empathetic. And. And if you take an empathetic view to where people are and I could share countless stories, I'll give one quickly here.
(00:10:32) - But I could share countless stories of support, tickets or phone calls that we've gotten where something unexpected happened., one that comes to mind was on a Saturday morning, and, I think it was probably February or March of 2020. It was right after. I'm sorry. It was right before, the pandemic started here in the States., my CTO called me on a Saturday morning and said, I just got a phone call, support ticket. And at the time, I was the only full-time person we had, like, two part-time people, and our CTO was part-time, and he was just working nights and weekends, and he's like, I just got a support ticket, a phone call in this. This guy said that his son took his car out last night with his friends and brought it back on empty, and he's got a 20 mile commute to work, and he works at a senior living community, and he doesn't have enough gas in his tank to get to work.
(00:11:24) - , but if he doesn't get to work, he may get fired, which means he doesn't get his paycheck right, and he can't wait until next Friday to get the paycheck. He doesn't have enough money to put gas in there. And he said, at the time we only offered ACH transactions, which are moving money directly into a bank account, through the ACH rails, which don't run over the weekend because banks aren't open. And, we've since, of course, added more and more and more. But at the time that was the only way you could get money. And so we couldn't get him money until Monday morning. I think I said, I just need ten bucks so I can get to work. And he said, what should I do? He's I literally have him on hold on the other line. And I said, Venmo him $10. And he said, what? I go Venmo him $10. He goes, how are we going to get repaid? And I said, we're not.
(00:12:09) - Just give him the ten bucks and tell him to tell a couple of friends about us, right. And, and so he does that and then he jumps back over to me. He was he goes, man, he was so happy. He was so thankful., and so, you know, that's creating a good positive user experience. And I said, I'll spend the rest of the weekend figuring out how we never have to do that again. And, and so from there, we went on on Monday, we had a meeting. That Monday we reached out and got a meeting with visa. And we built Visa Direct and then Mastercard Money Send and so we can move money within seconds onto a bank issued debit card. So we would never have to do that again. Right. But all that comes to listening and taking that feedback. And so again, if I go back to why this is important, it's meeting people where they are. And so that flexibility and responsibility, the flexibility is about let's give our users flexible options on where they can receive their earned wages.
(00:13:01) - We're not just we're not going to force them to open an account with a new debit card that we issued, because some people just don't want another debit card in, in their inbox or in their wallet., and in a lot of cases, they need it right then, and they can't wait 5 to 7 days to get a debit card in the mail. And so, they may just want money delivered to their bank account. Some of them may be planning ahead and say, I want it on Monday. Right. I'm okay with waiting until Monday to get it. And we can give them discounted rates for that. Or someone may say, I want it now in my bank account so they can do it through RTP rails. Or they say I want it now on my existing debit card. Or we've even built out the ability for people to move money onto a gift card where they say, you know, I'm, I'm going, shopping for the holidays and I need $100 on a target card, and we give them the ability to do that for free, where we make money from target, paying us on the back end where they can get money onto a gift card that's delivered right into their inbox.
(00:13:50) - And so I think that flexibility is really vital to meeting people where they are on their financial wellness journey. And then the responsibility piece is making sure that this isn't something that they abuse. Right? It's the same way as if they're used to getting paid every other Friday, and then you give them the ability to get paid every single day. And a lot of cases, they're not going to do that wisely. Right. And I'm not saying that in like a parental like, oh, they're not going to be wise with their money. It's just that is to have unbridled access to something that you historically have only gotten paid twice a month. And now you can do it every single day, but you get you have to pay a fee every time you do it. You could you could turn that could turn into a negative abuse of the platform. And so what we do is we align with the employer to set caps and guardrails. So they're not going to go in there and punch the button every single day to get access to their money.
(00:14:40) - So we have some of our companies, some employers that we work with that only offer one transaction in a pay period. It's literally a financial safety net. This is in the event that something unexpected happens. You can access this once a pay period. And then we have others that allow like our our cap is typically for transactions in a pay period. So so that responsibility is really what helps people. What we like to say is find and sustain financial happiness. And the way to do that is to guide them down the path versus just going, hey, it's your money, it is your money. But to be able to access it every day and potentially you get charged a fee if you go in there and do it 20 times a month, you're going to end up running up a lot of money and transaction fees and some. They may just not know better. And we feel like doing the right thing is helping them make these good financial decisions. And that's putting a limit on the number of times they can do it.
(00:15:26) - So to recap that it's the competitive differentiation for us really is about flexibility and responsibility. And it's something that we talk about in every sales meeting that we have. And we ensure that that that we practice what we preach.
(00:15:42) - I think those are really smart things, because the story you told like, wow, you know, that really puts into perspective that there are people out there that truly do live paycheck to paycheck and not having access to that money. I mean, there are definitely people who are like, I can't do that until I get paid next. And that, you know, sometimes things come up emergency, you have to have the money to deal with it in the moment, like that example you gave with the gentleman who needed gas just to get to work to earn the money. Right?, I also think, you know, one of the things with earned wage access, you know, that someone could push back on is I don't want my employees to have free access to money.
(00:16:22) - Like, I have a gambling problem, and he's already living paycheck to paycheck because he doesn't manage his money well. And you know the way that Immediate has thought about it, because you are putting the ability to put those limitations on there. It puts a bit of that safety net so that people really are using it, hopefully in most instances, because they genuinely need to or they're, you know, thinking it through before they do that versus I'm sitting at the casino, I'm down $500. Oh, I just need some more cash to continue, you know, playing blackjack here, right?
(00:16:57) - You're exactly right. And I'll say to take it a step further, we actually the, the employer, the admin on the employer side has admin rights in our system to be able to go in down to the individual. So typically we do it, you know, as a blanket across the top right. Hey everybody can access it three times a pay period, up to 50% of their earned pay, etc., etc., etc..
(00:17:20) - But to your point, there may be instances where they say, well, hey, you know, historically we did pay advances and we know that so-and-so has taken advantage of that in the past. So what we're going to do is we're going to go in and individually only allow them one, one transfer or in some cases they may say, well, maybe it's not singling out an individual. It may be, hey, we don't want people to start using this until they've been here for 60 days. And so we can create rules where until you've been there for 60 days, you don't have access to the Immediate pay platform., there's there's also the ability when we look at this, broadly speaking, there's the ability for us to go in and say from a personnel file in the payroll system. We may find out that, an individual has wage garnishments and it's $200 per pay period. Well, if they started using this before they've hit their wage and there's not enough left for their wage garnishment, then they get in a really bad position and could end up being in breach of whatever law was that they may be breaking or not paying child support or whatever it may be.
(00:18:18) - Right. And so what we've done is we actually get a feed of data from the payroll system that shows any wage garnishments, and we can actually set it up to where that individual cannot start to access their earned income, until they surpass that amount. So we're always kind of looking at all these different scenarios, you know, to be really candid, a healthcare technology guy that jumps into HR tech, we, you know, we kind of knew about some of this stuff early on, but the first few customers were guinea pigs who were, fortunately for us and for all of the customers and users that followed, patient and, and welcoming and open to share a lot of feedback. And we've just continued to refine this product to make sure that we can, as I said earlier, meet people where they are. And that doesn't just mean the end user. It also means the employer right to go in and help, help understand from an employer's perspective, what are some of the tricky situations.
(00:19:08) - And we ask this in some of our some of our sales meetings. Right. What's the what's a tricky situation that you guys have encountered that you feel like is probably going to be a little outside of the box and let us go ahead and start thinking on that either one, we've already solved that problem, or two, it's something that we can start problem solving before we start to roll it out to your team. And I just think that that flexibility and what it what it creates is that flexibility creates partnership. It creates true partnership with the employer. So we're not viewed as a vendor. We're viewed as a partner who's going to go in and align with you to make sure that you can offer this benefit in a way that makes sense and that can meet every individual where they are., and in a situation where someone, you know, for, for whatever reason, let's say they do have a gambling problem problem. And let's just say that, you know, for a fact that because this person's come to you and said, I have a gambling problem, I need you to make sure that you you help hold me accountable.
(00:19:59) - And they may say, well, you know what? We're going to turn off access. We're not going to allow that person have access because they've come to us and told them, told us about an issue that they're struggling with, and we want to be there and hold them accountable and help them out. And so there's just a lot of nuanced things that you run into, and it's really important for us to make sure that we're empowering the employer to make those decisions and do what's best for them. They, you know, they know their team a lot better than we ever will. They're in the trenches with them day in and day out. Right., and so we just want to kind of step step aside. We want to arm them with a platform that's going to help most of their team help anybody who uses it, but also give them the the admin rights and capabilities to make adjustments and tweaks as they deem necessary.
(00:20:41) - Speaking of those employers, what type of company would you say is the ideal fit for Immediate?
(00:20:47) - We, it's this is a fun question for me because, when when we were in the early years, you know, you're really trying to figure it out, and we would take anything that came our way.
(00:21:02) - And I think the first customer we had was the coffee shop that I was working in, when I was getting started, because my wife tells me I'm too, too loud to work from home., and then these people are like, well, you're kind of loud here, too., what are you doing here every morning?
(00:21:14) - You know, and.
(00:21:16) - , it's like you buy one coffee and you stay all day., but. And so I ended up, you know, doing the sales pitch, and I think there are like, 12 employees. And we kind of grew from there. Right?, and today we've got, customers in every industry you can imagine. And what's been really neat is, is we grow and continue to add, employer partners and, and, and users employees to the platform, being able to evaluate the data and understand, geographically where we do really well, what type of organizations, pay bands of where we have the most success.
(00:21:52) - And then obviously looking at data on the back end that we can talk about later, but looking at data on the back end of how it impacts the business. But what we've seen and what our data supports is the best places for us as an organization, the companies where we see the most impact, broadly speaking, are companies with a high volume of people making less than $65,000 a year., that's in its most general sense. And I say that because 83% of our users make less than $65,000 a year., if we drill down a layer further, what that typically means is, is healthcare. And hospitality is where we do really well. And by hospitality, I mean hotels, quick service restaurants, fast food restaurants and the healthcare space. We have a handful of health systems like hospitals., but as you would imagine, with, with, highly paid nurses and doctors and administrators, we don't see as high of enrollment there. And the hospitals, even though they may have a lot, a lot more employees, where we see the highest enrollment and engagement is in senior living communities and home health and home care organizations and senior living organizations.
(00:22:56) - , when you look across like our entire user user base, we have an average of about 25% enrollment. We have a couple of hotel groups that have 60% enrollment, and some of our fast food organizations have between 40 and 50% enrollment., you know, on the flip side, we have a biotechnology company in the northeast that has 6% enrollment. And so, as you can imagine, we're not going after a ton of biotechnology companies. If you're listening to this podcast and you're an HR for biotech, we're still more than happy to help you out., but but but by and large, when we look at it, we, we know that, you know, to, to have the same number of users, you know, from a, you've got to sign five biotech companies to equal one, one fast food chain., and so we've, we've had a lot of success in the, in the healthcare and hospitality space and, and, and so what that boils down to for the organization I mentioned at the beginning is from a recruitment and retention perspective.
(00:23:56) - , we also talk a lot about engagement. I think that engagement is something that's it's harder to put a finger on because it's a little more intangible., but that was a conversation we had with one of, our health system clients where they'd ask us a question. This was kind of coming out of the pandemic where they said, you know. We're a major employer in this town and we don't have a huge turnover issue. I think their turnover was like single digit and this is a turnover is not a real big issue for us. You know, like I'm sure that you're helping us, but we don't really feel like going in and building a case study on that. What we would be more interested in is, is, is this helping with engagement? Because if our team members are more engaged at the point of care, they're going to provide better outcomes, which is better for our community health. And ultimately, if you're looking at it as a for profit health system, their reimbursement rates are going to be better if they have lower, re admittance rates.
(00:24:49) - Right. And so so we went through and we did surveys with their, with the users, the employees that worked for them. And we found that 82% of the people who were enrolled in Immediate pay at this health system, felt more engaged at work, and they felt more engaged because they were less concerned with some of the external finances. Right? You know, they they weren't going well, you know what? Today when I get off of work after working a third shift, I get off at 7 a.m. and, all my coworkers are going to go have to have breakfast, which I guess would be their dinner before they go to sleep for the day. Right. But they're going to go have breakfast and I don't have enough money to go and participate., because I got to wait until payday on Friday. And now they've got the ability to access their money, and so they feel like a little more engaged. That's an intangible piece of it. But when I think about the recruitment and retention aspect, it's it's most clearly defined and articulated.
(00:25:43) - When you look at the retention piece, when we look at an organization's turnover rates, one, we can do a case study with them of the turnover rates six months prior and then six months post. But there's intangibles with that, right. You could have an economy could be doing something different. It could be holidays. They have peaks and summer where you've got, you know, people that are home from college that are working. So what we like to do is just say, let's just real time look at it and let's just track it over a 1 or 2 quarter period after we launch. And we simply look at turnover rates from those who are enrolled in the app and the benefit and those who are unenrolled. And so there's a great case study that we have of a of a fast food chain in southeast that's about 26 locations. They're called Milo's Hamburgers, and they have 44% enrollment there. They're a little shy of a thousand employees. But just for the ease of math, let's just say they're a thousand, right? Because it's going to make my math a little easier.
(00:26:38) - But so when we look at the 440 who are enrolled versus the 560 who are not enrolled, there's 37% less turnover in the 440. Now, the reason and kind of what what we got from these, these user testimonials and conversations was I'm less likely to leave here and go work somewhere else where I only get paid every other Friday when I have the ability to get paid, on demand. I have earned wage access here. Why would I leave? And so 37% less turnover amongst the enrolled group, which is really powerful, especially when you look at an organization like most fast food chains are going to see anywhere from like 75 to 150% turnover every year. And that's a huge impact., not only do the way they operate from a business perspective, but also to their bottom line from not having to replace those employees as they turn over. And so there's a lot of tangential value that comes from the employer from a recruitment, retention and engagement perspective.
(00:27:34) - Yeah, I can see where the investment in adding earned wage access to employees pays off because let's face it, it's expensive to constantly replace employees.
(00:27:46) - You have to go through all the recruiting. You have to retrain those individuals. It impacts the customer service experience like it's just a ripple effect. Right. And if you can reduce that, that's a big win for an organization.
(00:28:01) - Right? You're absolutely correct.
(00:28:04) - So tell me, Matt, what is the future vision for Immediate?
(00:28:10) - Well, it really, you know, when I think about, financial wellness, it's it's a lifelong journey for all of us, right? Myself, you, anybody who's listening, we're all in different places in our financial wellness journey, and. Unless you, won the lottery or, you know, inherited money and, and, you know, or independently wealthy., all of us are facing this right now, and even those people, I'm sure are probably facing it in some, in some regards. But really, what I think about is, is the first key to financial wellness is being employed, right. Having a job., so you've got an income stream and, and then there's this, this really broad, sweeping, like idea of spending less than you make, which has gotten increasingly difficult, more difficult over the past few years.
(00:29:06) - Right. With inflation, it's just been out of control., interest rates that continue to rise, housing and food costs that keep getting more expensive and more expensive. And as a business owner, I know that that's difficult to keep up with. Right., we as a company have grown to almost 60 employees, and it's hard for us to keep ramping up salaries every year to support the our team and make sure that their dollar is going to be spent as far, as it was. And so in order to help people on this lifelong financial wellness journey, I feel like step one is being employed and there's not a whole lot we can do for that today. It's not something that we set out to fix. Right? We're not a we're not an agency. We're not like recruitment, recruitment staffing and things of that nature. We do partner with some of those. But that's not what our core focus is. We're more focused on the second piece. And the second piece on that journey is to make sure that you're not trapped in debt.
(00:30:05) - , you know, I don't want to rattle off. This is where it could. It could take a dark turn if we went down this road. But, I was completely unaware of how predatory title and payday loans could be., when I was, when I was getting this company started, I spent a lot of time researching and watching documentaries, and I would go stand in line at payday loan shops and ask people about them. And I'd say I've never done this before. How's it work? And I don't know. They don't know. They go in there with their pay stubs and they hand it and they get their money, and then they go, we get money and then you got to pay it back. I'm like, well, how does it cost? Like, you know. Each time it's different and it's and it's just really sad., when you look at the national average payday loan, it's 391% Apr., and what that means is if you borrow $100 and it takes you a year to pay it back, you still got to pay back that $100 in principal and $391 in fees.
(00:31:01) - It's outrageous. I met a lady when we were, when we were still working on getting our first version ready. Who?, whose husband had, as we mentioned earlier, kind of coincidentally, her husband had a gambling problem, and he liquidated their bank account, and then, he left and she was left with two middle school children with no money and didn't want to lose their house. And she took out a payday loan, $1,000 payday loan, and it took her six years to pay it back. And she was like it. It was, she said. I was so close, so many times just following bankruptcy to try to get out of it. But I knew if I did that, I would lose my house and I would lose my car. And just listening to this lady talk about this experience was such a sad thing., and it kind of goes back to the very beginning of there's got to be a better way. And, and I really took it upon myself and our early team members and as we've continued to grow something that we still kind of beat the drum on as being a responsible alternative to predatory lending options out there.
(00:32:07) - And so when we think about the long term, it's it's really stepping in kind of arm and arm with employers to provide their team with a voluntary financial wellness benefit that is a responsible alternative to writing bad checks, running up credit card debt, taking out a title loan or taking out a payday loan., because the statistics show that almost I think it's just shy of 7% of Americans have used a payday loan in the last 12 months. So regardless of where you are, whether you've got 100 employees or 100,000 employees, 7% is 7%. And if you can help, those 7% have a responsible alternative to doing that. You're doing right by your employees and you're going to build you're going to create more loyalty, to you and your organization. And so that's the big piece of it for us today. But then as we continue to look out into 2024 and beyond, it's it's starting to add more financial wellness. We just launched in Q3 financial coaching so our users can go inside the app, send in questions from a financial, like, you know, how do I where do I start budgeting and, and, our team of coaches will respond to them and provide them with materials.
(00:33:19) - We're partnered with Visa, a solution called Practical Money Skills, where they have access to about 30 to 40, financial education articles that revolve each quarter inside our, our platform., there's, there's calculators. We have, we have prescription savings. The average American spends $1,200 a year on prescriptions. And we have a prescription savings, module that allows you inside the app to plug in a prescription in your zip code, and it shows you the best price at all the pharmacies that I used it, three weeks ago on my daughter's over the holidays, got an ear infection. And my typical, my typical pharmacy, it was going to be $37 for this, this prescription and, at CVS and then, Publix, which is a grocery store right up the street from us, it's closer. It was $11. And so I saved 26 bucks by using our app. Right. And it doesn't cost anything. It's just a we partner with an organization behind the scenes that helps deliver the best prices.
(00:34:17) - And so to to me it really to in order to help people on this lifelong financial wellness journey, you've got to keep them from you've got to give them a responsible alternative so they don't fall into debt, but then you've got to give them a path to stay on. And that's really what we've been focusing on doing and providing more financial education and literacy, documentation and tools and enabling them with things like that. And, and there's, there's some savings components that are on the horizon and strategic partnerships that we have with, with some large financial institutions that will continue to add to our financial suite of services in 2024 and beyond. And so I'm really excited about the opportunity that we have to continue to serve, companies and their employees on this journey and, doing our part to help them get ahead and stay ahead.
(00:35:04) - I love that. So what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with, Matt?
(00:35:11) - Final thoughts would just be kind of a, reiteration of some of the things we've talked about.
(00:35:16) - I, I, I'm, as anyone in our organization and you've probably picked up here. I'm an optimist., you've got to be a little, a little off your rocker to start a company, from scratch, especially in an industry that you had never been in before., but, but and you've also got to you got to have, you've got to lean towards optimism. And so I always look to the brighter side of things., I think that if we're less than 20% penetration today and 2024, I believe that by 2030, every company in the US is going to be offering some shape, form or fashion of earned wage access. It may be a a once a pay period financial safety net, or it may be some of the companies who are okay with letting their team go in and get paid every single day. But I really believe that as we talked about a little bit, the workforce is going to expect and quite frankly, in a few years, I think demand that this is a benefit that have as an option.
(00:36:14) - It's volunteer. You don't have to use it if you don't want to use it. But I think that you're going to see more and more companies that adopt this. And so I would just encourage as, you know, people that are in the HR profession to keep their eyes and ears open to this, to recognize that there are, a variety of companies out there. There's a lot of different types of earned wage access on demand pay this offer. But, I'd encourage you, obviously, one selfishly to look at Immediate because I think we're the best., I think we've got data to support that and happy customers and reference ability. But but one way or the other, I think this is something that you really need to be looking at to offer as a benefit to your team. I think the big thing that's going to happen in the next couple of years is that once you get over the bell curve to a mature product, you know, the people that are in the front of the ones who are really going to get the most value out of a recruitment and retention perspective.
(00:37:05) - When you're a laggard, you're going to be it's going to be table stakes. You're just playing catch up and you're not going to get as much value. And so I think in the next 2 or 3 years, the companies that make this decision and pull the trigger and roll this benefit out are going to be the ones that reap the most reward from a business perspective, and then obviously from a loyalty and engagement perspective with their workforce. So I'd highly encourage you to continue to research earned wage access and find the right company for you, to roll this out to your team, because it's going to be a real impactful benefit that they're going to really lean on and utilize. And, and, well, when you a lot of goodwill but also help them on that financial wellness journey that we talked about.
(00:37:43) - So for those listeners who are going to take your advice and look into earned wage access, where can they go to learn more about Immediate.
(00:37:54) - Our website is joinImmediate.com - if you do joinme.com/employers, there's a lot of materials that are will be a little more zeroed in on what you're looking for., there's just a quick form you can fill out there and, and that will get you to the right person at Immediate. You can also connect with me., I share a pretty good bit of contact., sorry, a pretty, pretty good bit of content on LinkedIn. So if you look me up, Matt Pierce on LinkedIn of, I try to do a good job of sharing some of the good things that we've got going on at Immediate. And so feel free to follow me there as well.
(00:38:30) - Awesome. I will drop the links in the show notes. For those who want to check out Immediate and connect with Matt on LinkedIn. Matt, I appreciate you coming on The HR Tech Spotlight today. Thanks so much for joining me.
(00:38:42) - Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.
(00:38:50) - Thanks for listening to this episode of The HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up-and-coming HR technology options in the market.
(00:39:00) - If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via GrowthModeMarketing.com or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review. This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.