Shubh Sidhu – How Earned Wage Access Affects Employees

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

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Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• ZayZoon
• Compensation Data
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 16
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 14

HR Data Labs podcast neon sign

• “Effectively, the concept of early wage access (or earned wage access) is trying to bridge that gap. How do we get employees access to their pay as they work without having to necessarily wait for that two week cycle, while at the same time not compromising the employer cash flow?”
• “Financial stress is (outside of a couple of other things) right at the top of everybody's list in terms of what impacts them and causes them the most stress. . . . Close to 90% [of employees] will say, “My stress level is lower knowing I have access to on demand pay.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find you the most fascinating people inside and outside the world of HR to bring you up to speed on what's happening in HR, data analytics and HR Technology. Today we have with us our best friend and co host Dwight Brown. Hey, Dwight, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 1:05

Hey, David, I'm good. How you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 1:07

I'm outstanding. And we have with us from ZayZoon, Shubh Sidhu, who is the VP of growth. Hey, how you doing, Shubh?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 1:13

Hi, David, I thought you were gonna introduce me as your best friend. I got super excited there.

 

David Turetsky: 1:21

Dude after the podcast, you will definitely be my best friend. So, Shubh, why don't you give us a little bit of background about ZayZoon and yourself and how you got here today. Talk to us.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 1:33

Sure, yeah. So ZayZoon is what's called an early wage earner wage access provider. So we have a product called wages on demand, which allows employees to get access to part of their pay in advance of payday. So we'll talk I think a bit more about what that actually means here. Myself, like you mentioned, I look after growth here. ZayZoon's a rapidly scaling company. So I'm fortunate to work with a pretty awesome team of folks across sales, marketing, revenue operations, service. I've had a bunch of different jobs in the technology industry, again, been very, very lucky to be part of some companies that have grown and be around a bunch of great people. So this is, it's been kind of a wild ride over the last few years with everything we've gone through.

 

David Turetsky: 2:16

Yes it has.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 2:17

And you know, outside of work I've got, I'm in what my professional podcasting studio, which is the corner of my basement office, in my house I share with my wife and my three girls.

 

David Turetsky: 2:29

There you go.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 2:29

I like sports. I like to read books, but not about business. And I am like to say I'm a practicing optimist. So but a realist, is that possible? Can you be an optimist and a realist at the same time?

 

David Turetsky: 2:40

I think a lot of us take on both sides of our brain a lot of times, so I think you can be.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 2:46

alright, well, yeah, there. There it is. That's the that's my background.

 

David Turetsky: 2:50

Awesome. One fun thing that no one knows about you Shubh?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 2:55

Ah, a couple. I mean, I know you said no one knows. Most people professionally, I would say don't know this, like certainly, some folks in my personal network at ZayZoon do. I made a viral YouTube video back before viral meant the same thing it does now. So a few 100,000 views for a music slash sports related videos back in 2009. So yeah, I like to do some fun. I don't get to do as much of that kind of thing. But the few creative projects here and there.

 

David Turetsky: 3:27

Well, you have a podcast studio. So you could!

 

Shubh Sidhu: 3:30

Yeah, that's right. Well, I never got I was just about to say, never got to the point where my creative endeavors got me a neon sign like yours in the background. That's my new, my next. That's my next goal.

 

David Turetsky: 3:40

For those people who realize this is a podcast and you can't see what Shubh's talking about... above my head, there's a neon sign that says HR Data Labs podcast, because I'm a geek, and I'm fully bought into the fact that I'm the host of the podcast.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 3:57

I think they can hear it. That energy comes through for sure.

 

David Turetsky: 4:04

So we're gonna have to post a picture of that now as well. So we'll do that as part of the podcast. So as Shubh said, today, we're gonna be talking about earned wage access and how it affects employees and how really cool it is a benefit. You know, just to talk about the topic before we actually get into the questions. You know, we're we're living in uncertain times, and there are more people than ever who are living paycheck to paycheck. And you don't have to be an hourly worker to live paycheck to paycheck. A lot of us in the salaried world do as well. And so we're going to talk about what earned wage access is and how it affects employees. But it's it's a been a huge benefit to a lot of people who used to have to get payday loans at ridiculous interest rates. So hopefully, I didn't steal too much thunder from you Shubh.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 4:47

No, that's good. You can do the pitch from now on.

 

David Turetsky: 4:50

Well, we don't do pitches here on the HR Data Labs podcast, we're not selling anything, it's all thought leadership. So we're all good! So that brings us to our first question, which is kind of obvious, what actually is earned wage access?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 5:15

Yeah, you know, I, I highlighted it a little bit, but maybe I'll start before I talk about it just like by expanding on what you just said there. So the idea that folks, you know, you get paid, you have money, and then you have money for your necessities and your things like that's, like, kind of ingrained into us, for a lot of us. The reality is, there's a massive chunk of people that those intervening periods between when that paycheck hits their bank account, they don't have money. And I don't mean, they don't have money to go on vacation, or they don't have money to buy clothes, like buy fancy clothes, or whatever I what I mean, is, like, they're staring down the barrel of okay, how do I afford to eat today? Or how do I pay for stuff for my kids school? And so, historically, what are the outlets folks have had to solve that problem? Well, in a perfect world, everybody would get paid every day, and they would get paid, you know, for free, and the employer and the business would have enough cash flow in order to do that, right? Well, the business doesn't have the cash flow to pay people every day, right? And as a result, employees end up effectively subsidizing that cash flow, right? You get paid every two weeks because that's the way it's always been. And that helps the employer put that money in

 

David Turetsky: 6:26

Yeah, but I mean, that's an agreement that the bank. employees kind of make with employers to say, I'm going to get paid in the rears. I'm going to do all the work, and then, you know, I get paid for it after I do all the work. And, you know, you're, you're kind of riding on my on my pay, you know, you're getting kind of a little bit of a float until you make that paycheck happen.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 6:47

Totally, you exactly, exactly describe it correctly. And you described it as is it in the in the right way, which is, it's an agreement and a commitment that I've made as an employee to say, You know what, I've got you for these next couple of weeks, and then and then you'll make me whole, but the reality is, personally, your cash flow situation is the same as the business cash flow situation, you have things that are not timed or aligned necessarily with pay. So effectively, the concept of early wage access or earned wage access is trying to bridge that gap. So how do we get employees access to their pay as they work right, without having to necessarily wait for that two weeks cycle, while at the same time not compromising the employer cashflow shortfall. You know, if you're a restaurant that might have 17 days of cash flow on hand, right, you know, just typically, on average, you don't I mean, you can't pay people necessarily every day, right? So what earned wage acts is designed to give the employee that sort of that you mentioned the word agreement, which I love. So the balance of power has typically been like, Okay, I'm going to take this job, I'm going to float you for a couple of weeks. So now we're sort of shifting that balance a little bit in that, okay, I'm going to be in control of my finances over these next couple of weeks. Because what I have to pay for and buy and own does not, you know, align with a two week cycle, right, I don't eat every two weeks. So you know, this allows me via an app via something that's integrated into my employer's payroll system to get access to a part of my pay in advance, in advance of payday. And, you know, that doesn't say what you implied to David, the earlier the the other options that have historically existed are things like payday loans, overdrafting bank accounts, going late credit cards, you know, this basically, is not perfect. It's not perfect solution, right? The perfect solution, like I mentioned, everybody could get just paid every day for free, right all the time. But it's a lot better than what's historically been out there for employees to kind of bridge that gap. That was a pretty long winded answer.

 

David Turetsky: 8:47

I know. Exactly. That's exactly the answer you'd expect, because this is definitely an issue in cashflow. You know, there are people who are really great at being able to manage their money. And then there are people who suck at it. And then there's a lot of people in between, and you don't have to suck or be great to need that kind of an issue to need access to your wages in an intervening period, there are some issues that come up, like whether it's my kid gets sick, or I can't cover the doctor's bill, and they asked for the money up front or you know, you mentioned, you know, paying paying my mortgage, well, sometimes mortgage, you know, the timings don't work out exactly the way your your paycheck does, even though you should be able to engineer that with your mortgage company. Or the rent is due, you know, you've got to be able to make those payments. And if you've done the, if you've done the work, you no one would argue if you've done the work, you should be able to get access to it. But as you mentioned that that float is really important for the business and for its survival. And so this is kind of a nice happy medium, right? It provides employers with some benefits and provides employees with some benefits. I guess, you know, weighing all the the differences we're gonna get into company perspective versus employee perspective. I guess the one thing I'd ask is, why isn't this kind of a rule? I know there are certain states like California who have rules about people getting access to pay, you know, when it occurs, but those are only in certain situations, right?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 10:15

Yeah. So I think what we're probably talking a bit about is like, you know, last check is sort of entitlement. Right. You know, if you're on the way, you know, if you've been, if it's your last day at the company, right, you you have, you know, the basically the requirement to get, you know, effectively cash in hand or check in hand that day right? Now. So, I guess this is sort of the, the follow up point, right to your question is like, Okay, well, why why aren't there rules mandating say, like folks have to get paid, you know, when they work? Now, they're actually there kind of is in some cases. So when we think about the hospitality industry, for example, and tips, right, like you're effectively, you know, minimum wage requirement is a combination of both base pay and tips. And then you have some entitlement to deliver tips in a timely manner, right, but not necessarily on a daily basis, all kinds of I mean, we go I think, state by state and probably come up with 40, or 50 different iterations of the rule. So yeah, the reality is, I think this is not a thing that you get paid for the day that you work back to kind of going back to what we talked about at the outset. Like, if there are many businesses, where that's just honestly not a reality for the business too from a cash flow perspective, right. So we may sit here and go, Well, you know, the, the employer should pay everybody every day. And that's probably true. But again, their receivables might be tied to something else, right, the way they process cash, their expenses. So you know, I would suspect probably the biggest reason that this type of thing isn't mandated that employers out to deliver pay on a daily basis is for two probably big reasons. One is they would put a lot of companies out of business. And then the second would is a lot of the technology doesn't support it as fast as you know, scale has improved from a cloud computing perspective is as much better as these platforms are running payroll is still intensive, both labor intensive and, and technology intensive. And so the ability for a company to do that on a daily basis is probably not tenable.

 

David Turetsky: 12:13

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, gross to net calculations have to rely on being able to have all the right time and, and being, being able to go through some audits before you actually make the payment. So yeah, payroll, immediate payroll is a nice thing to think about for the future. And maybe we'll even talk about that later. But the other question I wanted to ask is the rise of the gig worker, and your workers, you know, they get they should be getting paid after the work they do, because they're not expecting another paycheck from the company. Right?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 12:42

Totally. So and actually, that speaks to a lot of why we've seen, I think, some sort of accelerated growth and in the adoption of early wage access programs over the last couple of years here. So you know, in particular, in our case, we've been doing this since, you know, 2017, right. And so the first few years, it was a lot of evangelizing right, you're just evangelizing bit of what we what we did at the beginning of this call, which is, hey, here's the scope of the problem. Here's a novel way to potentially address that problem. So it was very much like, this is what this is, I'm going to explain to you what it is. What we've seen over the last couple years with the tightening of the labor market, and also with the rise of sort of the gig economy is that, you know, two things are happening. One is it's harder to attract labor. Right. The second is that the folks who are taking those jobs have the option of, like have like optionality, I suppose in their work. So back to that, again, balance of power, that whole employee empowerment is would I take a job at that hotel on Friday, knowing that I won't get paid till next Friday, or will I go, you know, do Lyft shift, because I know, I'll get paid that night. Right? And if I need that money in hand, I, you know, we I think we probably can, can guess what's going to happen there. So so that the the increase in the amount of gig work and the gig work opportunities, has also begun to I think establish a framework that says I can get paid right away for that type of work. If you can't do that, then I'm going to go do that instead, right?

 

David Turetsky: 14:16

Absolutely.

 

Announcer: 14:18

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David Turetsky: 14:30

Let's transition to the next question, which is what should companies expect when they start implementing something like an earned wage access program?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 14:39

Sure, and, you know, I'll preface this a little bit by you know, there's probably some criteria around the type of company that we're talking about whether it's a very large company with expansive HRIS and payroll teams or, you know, all the way down to a much smaller company. And so, you know, we can talk about, like some of the different things that that folks will be looking for. I think, first and foremost, I know I've talked about this, several times on this call already, but it's the it's cash flow, right? So like, how does a solution that a client or company is looking at offering? How do they offer it without necessarily impacting their cash flow? I E if they have to pre supply a float for an early wage access program? Well, then what have they ultimately, you know, how have they helped right themselves? Right, in addition to their employees? So that's one thing, I think then depending on, you know, the scope scale size of the company, we're talking about, you know, how much time and energy can they spend to support a program like this, right. So, again, very large companies that, you know, very large total rewards teams or benefit teams or compensation teams might have the higher capacity to say, you know, do some more integration work or do some more work that's a require more overhead from those teams down to like the SMB type is going to really look for something that's like, turnkey, turnkey, right? Can I turn this on in 20 minutes? And can it just be available? Because ultimately, this isn't a service, the employer wants to have to actively manage or, you know, ultimate, really even participate in, right, they're just trying to provide a conduit by way of like technology so that employees can kind of have a better solution than what they have access to do to today, I would say those two things. And then not like anything, right, as a company, what do you want to do, you never want to offer a benefit that's like, a pain for your employees to use, that's going to require a bunch of support from your side of things, like a lot of those, you know, are the same things? And ultimately, is the company that they might be working with at an early wage access standpoint, fundamentally, is that mission to the company to do you know, better for these employees? Or, or not? Right. And so, you know, I think those are probably some of the major things that they look for.

 

David Turetsky: 16:44

I think one of the things that I want to make sure of though, when I'm, when I'm an employer, and I'm going to adopt something like this is, you know, payroll is complicated enough. And yeah, keeping time and keeping payroll records, and all that other stuff. So this definitely needs to be seamless, but it also needs to be communicated to everybody about the rules of the road, how do you access it? Who can access it? When can you access it? What is it going to affect? What's the back end of it? Meaning after you get this upfront payment, you know, what's the costs associated with it? And then, what does it mean about when you get your next check? Are you going to get the full check? Are you going to get a partial piece of it? You know, what are the mechanics of that exactly? Because, you know, when people go and they get payday loans, they know what they're expecting, right? They're going to bring, you know, some form of like the last three pay stubs, they're going to, you know, bring identification, they're going to have to sign an agreement, saying that, they're gonna have to pay an interest rate on it. So they kind of understand what they're getting, and they go into it eyes open, knowing that they're going to lose something, we have to really do some significant communications work on this to make sure, because it's an HR process, it needs to go smooth, and it needs to be communicated fully. So how do all those things get wrapped up? Because that can be quite complex?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 18:04

Yeah, yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 18:05

Sorry for long winded question.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 18:08

No, no, no, no, not at all. Like, so it's simplicity, first and foremost. So like, how does like like, how do you keep it as simple as possible in terms of both what the solution does and the product does? And the messaging because one of the things we found as we've gone through this journey is that, you know, we we found that people don't even really understand things that I would have thought they fully understood, like, what all the line items on their pay stub mean, you know, whether they even get to the portal, like, I mean, it's, you know, it's like, it's been an education process for us. So we have people who come into our app, because it simplifies the information that's on there, you know, it makes a lot more clear to them. Right? And so how I mean, I don't have a perfect silver bullet answer there's been a lot of iteration at least in our case on how you how you present this in a way that is like very, very easy to understand you're as upfront and transparent as humanly possible, right? So like when it comes to like fee structure to your point, David, like okay, this is what's going to happen this is when those fees will come back. That has to be like very apparent, right? And then finally, like, this is people's money and pay right and like rule one of HR as you know, you don't something with people's pay, right?

 

David Turetsky: 19:21

You don't mess with people's pay. You're absolutely right.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 19:23

Yeah, right. So I mean, you have to get it right and you have to like like you have to over support a service like this right? Like both from our standpoint, like listen, there's brand value for a company like ours to like have positive customer experiences customer success, but the biggest thing is when we have and are servicing someone who's who needs that money for a necessity because this is not a service that is a want based or like it's not for wants, right, it's for needs. So the service aspects so much of our explanation is great a job as we all think we might do on the you know, communicating things and communication plans and rollout outs and products and HR communication, it's like, in the moment when they need to understand something they have to be, like heavily supported, right. Like this is ultimately, like a solution that should be well supported, well communicated by, you know, by the partner that you're working with.

 

Dwight Brown: 20:15

So, I would imagine there has to be some operational challenges. I mean, in terms of, you mentioned, the pay stub, how do you take out insurance premiums? For example? How do you do taxation? How do you how to calculate taxes in a, in a system like that?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 20:34

Yeah. So again, like the concept of using an early wage access solution or providers, you're effectively it's like a split deposit or, you know, wage deduction. So you end up kind of designing a way that you don't impact the way a lot of those things, you're talking about a any of those, you know, those primary deductions come out ahead, like, you know, your core deductions. So A you make sure that that's part of the solution. B, you know, from, from a gross versus net perspective that addresses a lot of like, you know, the additional taxation, you know, potential challenges, right, you have to sort of operationalize this so there is no impact on the payroll folks and on the payroll system, and right, from that standpoint, otherwise, all you've done is introduced, you know, a bunch of a bunch of administrative overhead.

 

David Turetsky: 21:29

So Shubh, let's get to the practical examples of benefits that employees get not there's the obvious one, right, which is, the person feels desperate, they're, you know, they don't know how they're going to feed their kid tonight, for dinner yet they can't make rent payments and the rents overdue and they're just scrambling, their brain is on fire. And that's obvious benefit. Right. But, you know, the what are other benefits that that an employee gets from being able to have access to earned wage access? Or did I just cover it?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 22:04

Yeah, well, it's funny, you say that's an obvious benefit, David, and I don't know that it's obvious to everybody. So I think that, yeah, so I think a lot of times when we talk about this, people look at the benefit is like, like, they really think of just the mechanical part, okay, they can get access, like, to their pay when they need for things that they need. I don't think most people do really actually think about, you know, use the term, the your, the brain is on fire, because they're, they're running around, like, you know, financial stress is, is outside of like a couple of other things like right at the top of everybody's list, right in terms of what impacts you and causes you the most stress. And listen, we're not talking about folks who are dealing with the financial stress of, am I saving enough for my, you know, college fund or 401k? That's not we're talking about right. And so, this is like, you know, I think the psychology of the, the financial stress we're talking about is like, you're waiting on a doctor to call you about test results, right? That's the same stress level and same impact on your brain. So, you know, we've heard from a poll like, like, close to 90% will say, Listen, my stress level is lower knowing I have access to, like, on demand pay, and then we'll dig in, and like, not even all those folks have used it recently. It's really that safety valve aspect, I would say is actually the biggest benefit. And you're right, that does kind of cover a lot of things. But you know, it's that that safety.

 

David Turetsky: 23:31

It's an insurance policy.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 23:32

Yeah, it's kind of like, yeah, it's like that release valve, just knowing you've got that in your back pocket, if you need it, that takes an enormous amount of stress off, then I think you start to look, there are other benefits, like, like, from a lot of early pay programs, where you know, there are a lot of them will include, you know, financial literacy and financial wellness, like components that are part of it. So the, you know, there's obviously some self learning required there, but you know, that can be that can be provided. So, you know, how do you this is we're really solving a reactive problem, is there anything we can do to help with the proactive problem collectively, then, of course, there's other things in terms of, you know, the real ticket or goal for a lot of us financial wellness providers beyond just on demand pay, you know, how can we then subsequently increase the buying power of these folks, right, like, I mean, we can't give them, you know, we can't have them earn more, make more, but how do we, how do we make their money go further, if we can, and so that that's where I think you'll start to see some of what's hopefully going to evolve here, you know, as we go through things, you know, on this on this, you know, for this particular employee benefit.

 

David Turetsky: 24:35

One of the things I was contemplating as you were talking is that it's getting the employee to a place where they're, they can make that payment, make that rent check, or whatever, whatever it is that emergency, and you're right financial literacy, first of all, is just terrible these days in the United States, globally, of course, but But definitely terrible in the United States. And I'm wondering whether there's examples that we could talk about from a benefits perspective, where the employee then has a better or has a way of discussing this with their family to, to be able to show their kids. And obviously, sometimes you don't want to show this to your kids, but to be able to show that, you know, we made it, we're okay. And here's how we're going to change for next time, or here's how we're going to do something different for next time. So that might be part of financial literacy. Right? Or is that obviously on a case by case basis, we, we have to deal with this ourselves. And it's very personal and sometimes very depressing issue. But I guess that's part of financial literacy, isn't it being able to deal with this the next time and next time? Because we don't want this to be an ongoing thing? We use this every pay period? Right?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 25:49

Yeah, I mean, the the goal is like, I mean, I think there's like, you know, kind of your point about how do you make it so that it's, you know, it's helping in the long term versus not just helping in the moment. And I think there's one very clear spot where, you know, because this isn't a credit product, like some of the other things, it doesn't start to roll over and increase the amounts that you start to owe, right? Which is what happens, like with a lot of the alternatives, which puts you further and further behind, so like, from a, from an actual, like, real material, you know, like financial cash flow benefit, like that's probably the primary positive long term benefit, I think. Improving the wellness or literacy aspect, I think, you know, honestly, this is something we're all still working our way through. And I think that one of the things that I've really found, and one of the reasons where we're, you know, a lot of us are doing this is like, most like employee financial wellness programs, like what we qualify as wellness programs are designed for people who have money, right? Not for people who, who don't have money, right? Like, they're really around, like I said earlier, like saving for a better retirement. So I think that what we all have to kind of unlock to your point is like, how else this is this going to benefit folks? So like, we know, from the data that we, you know, talk to our folks about, like, how do you build credit when you have no money? How do you build credit? And and in America, like the your credit score is everything right? And, and this isn't a matter of folks not understanding that, like all of our customers know, their credit score, right? They know it, like, and so they're well aware of their financial position, but like, what are the tools and stuff in place that that we can start to provide to help pull them out of it? So to your point, David, like, the conversations they're having with family and friends, or their kids is like, Okay, here's how we can build towards like, a more positive, like financial position, right?

 

David Turetsky: 27:44

And but that's, and Shubh, that's exactly where I was going with it, which is that you have a picture of their financial health, from the employer perspective, you know, how much they get paid, you know, how much their deductions are. And with a little bit of input from the employee, you can find out what's the rent payment, what are some of their big bills, like electric and gas, and, you know, insurance and all this other stuff. And then you can help them see that in the short term, we're going to close the gap this way. But in the longer term, here are the things we see, typically, by using data and the analytics we have, across the hundreds of people who utilize our service. This is how you might be able to, you know, add a little bit to your savings every day, or be able to take a piece of your paycheck a little piece, put it aside, and then be able to grow something so you don't have to use us again. No offense. Yeah. Again, this isn't a commercial for ZayZoon. But, you know, we want people not to have to use these wage access programs as much as they can. Right.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 28:46

Totally, like we always talked about, like, if we ultimately in the long term deliver on our mission, people are going to need us less and less. Right. Like that's, that's that's kind of

 

David Turetsky: 28:54

Very altruistic thing. Probably never gonna happen. But altruistic.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 28:57

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, you know, we're trying to build the company, but like, none of us, at least, I mean, I can't speak for everyone obviously, but you know, I can speak to in our case, like, it's the primary motivator, right? Is that like that employee flexibility, employee Financial Wellness Benefit, everything we think about is through that lens, right, like, and so like, the longer term, the longer term improvement is, like, that's the part I think that's the next evolution of this thing to your point, right? It's like, okay, you know, we got a saying, here, I live up in Alberta, Canada, which firstly, get the cow out of the ditch and then you then you figure out, you know, how you keep it out the next time, right. And so, you know, we're still very much in the getting the cow out of the ditch part. I don't actually understand what it means I grew up with that saying, but the point is, you know, I think that we're absolutely in entering this There's a lot of work to do there. I'm not being facetious phase of like, how do we get these folks empowered so they they can A, you know, not need on demand pay all the time, right for sure. B, How do we start to like layer in other opportunities for them to, you know, like I said to build credit, I think is a big one. How do we, you know, when I talked about increasing their buying power? That's a big one, right? Like, you know, how do we get them more money at places, right. But also, you talked about things like, you know, like, here's the bills that come out here, the other things that come out, well, if we can then work with these folks that help, there just is like in some of those third party providers to go, Hey, No, there is. And, you know, I just I'm like, again, I'm a listen, like, there's a higher chance of you getting a good customer, right? Because of because of this, this person, like improving their financial position. Now, instead of like, here's your, you know, here's your cell phone group plan, who's or whatever, right, like, how do we save? How do we save the money on those necessities? So I think that's definitely the next evolution is this is we want to grow this into like a, like a, like a longer term improvement in folks' financial position, right? tech, I come from a technology background. And, you know, I think I think it's always like, I think it's a bit naive for any myself included to go, Hey, here's the information on how you build a better budget, go read this, and you're automatically going to know how to build a better budget. Right. And so that's, that's definitely part of it. But it's got to be actionable, right? So like, like the tactical element that's actionable, that I can do a thing. And, like, see the result and see the impact. And so that's where I think we see the opportunities, like, nobody learns how to play a musical instrument by just watching somebody play musical instrument and be like, okay, next time, I'll be able to play it right. Like, you know, you gotta you got to build that skill set all up, right.

 

David Turetsky: 31:46

And that's why I was talking about using analytics to show people what good scenarios are that other people employ, based on the data that you guys have, in order to be able to get their timing right on paying bills the right way, or being able to choose the right bill to pay at what time? And you could actually create another complete podcast on being able to do financial wellness analytics. Unfortunately, I don't have time today. But that's a good one to maybe pick up another time.

 

Shubh Sidhu: 32:12

Yeah, no, I mean, you're 100% Spot on. It's like, we're starting to get information around like, Oh, here's, you know, I think one of the most jarring things for me even still, after doing this was, you know, the general I think, like, 13% of people use payday loans, for example, right. You know, our customer base said before this 40%, right. Like, I mean, like, just that number alone is staggering, right?

 

David Turetsky: 32:33

Well wait until we get into a recession too and you know, people start really

 

Shubh Sidhu: 32:37

With inflation and everything else happening, you know, 40 plus percent are paying more than $50 in just like straight up interest fees, like late fees, like not even like outside of the payday loan space, just like late fees, credit card fees, like, you know, the right, we've been, we've trained folks to say, pay your minimum payment on your credit card, right, because it's beneficial, you know, loosely for certain companies. But that's not like that's not good practices, and a good wellness or these, like, there's tactical things we can do to help but then there's like, like you said, it's, it's a big thing. But there's these like, these institutional and framework items that like, how do we help? How do we help in the long term? And, you know, that's, I think that's where we absolutely have to figure this out and go next.

 

David Turetsky: 33:18

And again, we can have a complete podcast just on that subject of using analytics to solve financial wellness. Well, Shubh, thank you very much. It's been fascinating talking about earned wage access. We really appreciate you being here. I think we've learned about what it is, you know why there are some things that companies need to be careful of and to kind of budget for. And I think we've seen what the benefits are clearly for employees to be able to get have access to this. So thank you so much. Anything else you want to add from that summary?

 

Shubh Sidhu: 33:56

No, guys, I just want to say David, Dwight, thanks very much for having me on. Yeah. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, happy to come back anytime.

 

Dwight Brown: 34:03

Cool. Thanks for being with us.

 

David Turetsky: 34:05

Thank you, Shubh. Thank you, Dwight.

 

Dwight Brown: 34:07

Thank you, David.

 

David Turetsky: 34:08

And thank you guys for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

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