Name: Impact Initiative 2024: From Debt to Dollars - How Innovation Can Secure Gen Z's Financial Future
Uploaded: 2024-10-09
Duration: 14 min 55 s
Description: Francine Chew, VP and Head of Corporate Impact, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Ellen Patterson, President and General Manager, EVERFI from Blackbaud Moderator: Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune

Francine Chew, VP and Head of Corporate Impact, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Ellen Patterson, President and General Manager, EVERFI from Blackbaud Moderator: Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune 

Impact Initiative 2024: From Debt to Dollars - How Innovation Can Secure Gen Z's Financial Future

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

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Francine Chew, VP and Head of Corporate Impact, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Ellen Patterson, President and General Manager, EVERFI from Blackbaud, Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune 

Good afternoon. Good to see everyone. Uh The topic of Gen Z and uh their financial future is a really hot topic these days, particularly myself as the very oldest of the Gen Z. Uh cohort. Uh Francine and Ellen are wonderful people to have this conversation with, given their uh close involvement with corporate impact and social impact. Uh I'd like to start with Francine. Um based on your financial wellness research at Guardian. Tell us about the connection between financial stability and mental health, right? Thank you. Uh Guardian does this survey called Mind Body and Wallet. We've been doing it for quite a few years now and they are clear trends actually with Gen Z. Um they are the cohort and the generational cohort with the lowest mental health um, self reported mental health um data. They uh feel financially stressed and um that really bleeds into all facets of their lives, particularly causing anxiety, stress, et cetera. Ellen. You're a former educator. What kind of impact is financial literacy and education about financial literacy tangibly have on younger generations. Thank you for that question and thank you for having us up here. Um I was a second grade teacher and a school counselor. Uh, so these topic areas of mental wellness and learning and the ability to learn are really, really important. And at ever five, we're trying to tackle three main things for a better society, financial wellness, mental wellness and civic engagement and financial literacy. As, uh, we'll hear a little bit more from Francine, definitely lays the pathway for future success for students and we really see this as fundamental. Um You see about 26 states now mandating financial education, uh it to in order to graduate, these are unfunded mandates. And so we are really trying to build the platform and that education and get that out to a network of almost 30,000 schools across America. Um We have relationships we've built over the past 16 years with 750,000 teachers. Um and on a co curricular basis, we're getting financial education into that really important network of schools. Definitely. And uh the two of you both working at fi, which is a social impact firm and Guardian, which is life insurance firm. Um Francine and Ellen, you know, Fi and Guardian have had a partnership uh for the past two years seeking to materially improve the financial outlook for young people, particularly those from under resource backgrounds. Uh Francine, I'll turn to you first. Can you talk a bit about how that partnership is seeking to help? Sure. So about three years ago, I joined Guardian Um And part of my mandate was to really look at the kinds of investments that we make in community and to ensure that they were aligned appropriately with who we are as an organization. Guardian's purpose is to inspire well being. We do that through mind, body and wallet similar to the name of the survey. Um And that translates really to mental wellness, physical wellness, financial wellness was looking for partners that could really operate um across more than one of those pillars uh ever find in particular, could help us create a bespoke curriculum that helps to address mental wellness and also financial stability for young people. The two are so inextricably linked. And what's interesting is that as we've launched other partnerships um through our corporate impact team that really uh focus on different aspects of uh societal need. The mental wellness piece is so critical to really all the interventions. So whether it's physical wellness and mental wellness, then it feels differentiated and we, we aren't pushing for these initiatives to actually gain traction in our partnership with ever PFI. We found that the sponsored usage of the course ie the incidents when uh ever five staff talk to schools and share with them about the curriculum and then the teachers then adopt it. That's coming in at something like 40,000 students who have been using it in the first full year that it's been rolled out. The organic usage is more than double that um just teachers saying we don't really have a solution that really addresses the combination of these two things and we're not selling it, we're not um encouraging them. We're, we're, we're just offering it on the platform and there's such a need for the intersectionality between those two things that um teachers are just using it um on unprompted Ellen. I would love to speak about our partnership. I mean, um the beauty again of this is that we go into schools again. There are these unfunded mandates that are out there. So teachers need to have something, they need to have a curriculum that they can um offer to their students. And so we can use technology to get into the far corners of North America. So from the Mississippi Delta to rural Montana to large urban areas, these are all um pathways that we can get this mental wellness and, and financial education together in school and just to build on that a bit. Um It really was a bit of an education for me too as I looked at the landscape of financial education mandates across the US. Um not just school, not just states that have financial education mandates, but states that are in the process of legislating and um and requiring it, there are these laws that are requiring schools to teach financial education as a requirement for graduation, but there aren't the dollars or the courses or the resources that are put behind that and a partnership like ours can step in um into that gap and provide a course that then allows teachers to say, ah thank goodness, I didn't know how it was going to make this happen. And now here's this resource and it's good, which helps. Certainly we'll have a few conference workers going around with microphones. So shortly if anyone has questions, I'll be going around to take them. So start thinking. Um But in the meantime, can you each talk about the role that student debt in particular plays on financial wellness and on Gen Z's ability to get ahead. Would you like to start? Um But the corporate impact professional say young people are um they're, they're two, I think main drivers of financial instability um outside of inflation, one is uh student debt. Um um and companies are really working to address that in really innovative ways uh in prep in preparing for this panel, Ella and I wanted to make sure that we weren't just focusing on necessarily some of the challenges but the ways in which there is an increasing ecosystem of partners that are working to address that. But student debt, for instance, are preventing young people from saving for retirement. Um and not having even emergency savings, just money set aside to just manage anything that pops up is also a detriment to um financial stability. Um And there too, everyone from government, you know, secure 2.0 was a law that passed that allows even employers to offer emergency savings accounts and then match some of those um contributions. You have student debt. There's a similar process that's underway where um that's increasingly become an employer benefit. And there are mechanisms for lots of fintech also to step into the space. Um If you have young people who are working gig jobs because that too is an increasing trend among gen Z I think addressing uh student debt, we had a um and Francine was able to be at a conference that we were uh hosting a couple of uh weeks ago. And Doctor Corey C Miller spoke about Gen Z and um a little bit about their resiliency and how they're um looking to uh there. She, well, let me go back to her most formative piece of information that was from ages 14 to 24 have a profound effect on any child's life. And so if you think about uh in the intro, we heard the ages of, of Gen Z, they're right in that sweet spot. So we have an opportunity here to affect change to teach them more about debt and saving. And um what the other thing was that um Gen Z is very dependent on their parents for these conversations as well. So you think about the ecosystem of education and reaching that through technology into hard, hard to reach places today, we're in about 42% LM I communities So you get equal access to the education and then creating this ecosystem of career connected learning of mentorship of the ability to how to even open an account. These things are really important so that students can start to talk about and practice all of these good financial habits. You make a good point about the need for um particularly technologically savvy uh ways of reaching young people. Um How can tech implementations like the kind you're talking about make that education process easier, especially among the very tech savvy youth that we're talking about here. So, in the curriculum that um we co-signed with fi um the delivery mechanism is interesting. It's um it's, it's not flat content. There are lots of videos and interactive engagements and it's really based on uh uh a lot that we know about behavioral psychology. Um There's also a component of it that allows for conversation in the classroom. So there's, there are topics that we address um around how to spot financial abuse even, right? How to um have conversations that feel awkward, even with your parents about money. Um So going even beyond the fundamentals of um of budgeting and how to open accounts to the emotions that we have about money. Uh and how to recognize when those emotions can be a deterrent or can help us have positive behavioral change. Um Those are the kinds of uh that's the kind of content that you can deliver through technology by having videos and snippets and quizzes and, and um as much as we learn about what resonates and drives greater usage, we're integrating into the ways in which we teach and how students learn. We also recognize that sometimes the analog version also helps to reinforce the technology itself. And so there's a component that allows people to be able to speak to each other. And it's been clear to us that if one student is well off and another student is struggling financially or from families that are um they can be faced with this very same set of facts and make two very different decisions, both logical. So how can you get to a point where students understand that there are different actions that you can take that makes sense for who you are. Um strip away the shame. Um and um acknowledge that um um these are circumstances that they may face throughout the course of their lives. Um But technology is a tool to be able to showcase scenarios and then to actually talk through what those scenarios may mean for you? Fantastic. Are there any questions from the audience for our panelists? All right. Well, I'll close this out because we're coming up to the end of our time. I'm really curious in both of your perspectives. What is it about talking about financial well being and setting oneself up for success that remains such a hot button topic and just such a taboo topic for many, uh, parents. Uh, and for many need teenagers for everyone. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not that taboo anymore. I think where the taboo comes in is when people feel insecure in their own knowledge. And it's why education for parents is equally as important as it is for the students themselves. So if you think about bringing, you know, learning into the schools where meeting people where they are and then the community surrounding students and facilitating conversation need to make sure that the people who are in there with the students, um, also have, have knowledge to share. Certainly. Um, I found that as we've gone on this journey with ever find the curriculum that, uh, everyone has a money story and it's people who you wouldn't expect, um, often times and I, I don't think I've ever introduced the topic of what we do with this curriculum and it hasn't become somewhat of a confessional. Right. I've learned a lot of things about a lot of people because the topic of money opens up windows into people's experiences in their lives. That's always fascinating to me. Um, I agree that it's becoming less taboo. Um, but strangers find it easier to open up than people who are familiar. Right. Um, it's probably that phenomenon where you, you tell people the truth on if you sit with them on the plane and you don't think you'll ever see them again. Um, but, um, Yeah, money. It's, it's, it's central and core to how we feel, um, about ourselves, how healthy our outlook is. Um, and I'm glad that it's getting more attention. I'm glad as well. Thank you both so much to our wonderful panelists. Thank you.