City of Cleveland Now Offering Enrich Financial Wellness Platform to Employees

SAN DIEGO—The City of Cleveland and San Diego-based financial education company iGrad have partnered to offer the award-winning Enrich™ financial wellness platform to nearly 7,000 city employees and their families. 

The platform, which City of Cleveland employees can access at https://www.wellnessworkscle.com/enrich.html, features the Your Money Personality™  financial behavior assessment that analyzes each user’s financial “personality.” The interactive, mobile-friendly platform also provides: 

• Financial education courses with personalized action plans on topics including budgeting, mortgages, healthcare, college savings, student loan repayment, banking, credit, financial planning and more 
• An investment allocation analyzer
• A student loan tracker
• Personal finance calculators and a real-time budget tool 

Enrich is part of the city’s Wealth Works Financial Wellbeing Program, a component of the Wellness Works Program. The wellness initiative seeks to improve work performance, increase accountability, reduce absenteeism and decrease healthcare costs.  
 

“As a 24/7 workforce with over 7,000 employees, we needed a digital solution that employees can access on-demand and offers tailored financial tools, educational financial well-being services and programming that is applicable to all five generations represented in our workforce,” said WellnessWorks! Manager Kelley Smith. “A proven, comprehensive financial platform like Enrich will give our employees the education needed to design their own path to financial wellness while decreasing their stress, reducing health care costs and improving workplace productivity.”
 

Enrich is used by more than 20,000 employers and more than 300 financial institutions nationwide, with artificial intelligence technology that engages each user with the most relevant content based on financial situation and stage of life. The Enrich platform includes dynamic tools and courses, delivering a highly personalized learning experience on financial topics including student debt, mortgages, budgeting, investing, retirement and long-term care. 

A report by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence released in April 2020 found that only 29 percent of state and local government employers offer financial literacy programs to their workforce, while 68 percent of public employees would participate in these programs if they were offered. The report found that even before the pandemic, 88 percent of respondents worried about their personal finances and financial decisions, and 66 percent said they worried while at work. 

Morgan Stanley at Work’s State of the Workplace Financial Benefits Study¹ released in November 2021 found that 91 percent of employees surveyed faced personal financial issues, with the top three being difficulty with household budgeting (47 percent), debt reduction (42 percent) and emergency and short-term savings (30 percent).

More than half (59 percent) of employees said they needed to reduce contributions to savings, debt or loan payments, the report states. Sixty-four percent of employees reported that financial stress is negatively affecting their work and personal life and 82 percent of employers said they are worried that personal financial issues affect employee work productivity.

The Enrich platform prompts users to update their stress score regularly to gauge the correlation between improved financial wellness and stress levels. As Enrich participants improved financial understanding, their stress levels dropped, recent data shows. Other positive behavior changes included:

• 27 percent increase in users with emergency savings funds covering three to six months of expenses
• 28 percent increase in users who pay their credit cards in full every month
• 32 percent increase in users getting on track with their financial goals
• 15 percent increase in users contributing to their retirement plan

“Enrich can help people of all income levels and in all stages of life,” said iGrad Executive Vice President Kris Alban. “The City of Cleveland is demonstrating the importance of financial wellness by offering Enrich to its employees, who are part of a group that wants to engage with behavior-changing financial education.”

About iGrad

iGrad is a San Diego-based financial technology company that offers artificial intelligence-powered financial wellness solutions to more than 600 colleges and universities, more than 20,000 employers and more than 300 financial institutions.  iGrad’s Your Money Personality™ was recently recognized by the Institute for Financial Literacy with the 2020 Excellence in Financial Literacy Education (EIFLE) Adults’ Education Program of the Year award. iGrad is one of three 2020 honorees in the inaugural Barron's Celebrates: Financial Empowerment, after being selected by a team of judges for its contributions to improving the financial health and security of  

Americans. iGrad also received the 2019 Eddy Award for Financial Wellness by Pensions & Investments for its Enrich platform. For more information about the iGrad platform, visit https://www.igradfinancialwellness.com. For more information about the Enrich platform for employers and financial institutions, visit https://www.enrich.org.  

1 - https://discover.shareworks.com/i/1430774-morgan-stanley-at-work-state-of-the-workplace-financial-benefits-report/0?