– UK, London – Salary Finance, the FinTech financial wellbeing platform for employees, today announced a $20M Series B investment led by founding investor Blenheim Chalcot and multinational financial services company Legal & General. The investment will be used to launch and scale Salary Finance in the U.S., as well as to continue to support its rapid growth in the UK.
Today, 17 million working Brits – around 40% of the workforce – have less than £100 in savings, with debt increasing by 26% since 2013. At the same time, employers are recognising the link between an employee’s confidence in their personal finances and their engagement, productivity and wellbeing in the workplace, making financial wellbeing an increasing priority for employers in the United Kingdom and beyond.
Salary Finance partners with employers to offer a benefit that helps employees move from debt to savings. All savings deposits and loan repayments are taken by salary deduction, which creates a simple way for employees to manage their personal finances, and Salary Finance’s SaaS-based platform works with existing payroll technology and processes without the need for complicated integration. To date, Salary Finance has helped employees save on average £600 in interest and pay off debts 6-12 months sooner, as well as to build their credit scores and savings.
Founded in the UK in 2015, the Salary Finance platform is fast becoming a mainstream employee benefit, reaching almost a million employees across the UK. Recent employers to join the platform include BT, CapGemini, Virgin Active, Mitie and many NHS trusts and Councils.
On BT’s launch of Salary Finance, BT Chief Executive Gavin Patterson said: “Salary Finance has been one of the most impactful employee benefits I have seen launched in recent years.”
Financial wellbeing is a global concern, and as part of today’s news, Salary Finance is also announcing its launch in the United States.
Salary Finance has partnered with United Way, a non-profit focused on health, education and financial stability, to help it reach rapid scale in the United States. United Way is introducing Salary Finance to its corporate partners as an added employee benefit. Salary Finance is currently in the process of rolling out to its first 250,000 employees in the U.S., including the employees of United Way and L&G America. In total, United Way reaches 60,000 corporate partners, including half of the Fortune 500.
Commenting on the U.S. expansion, Asesh Sarkar, Chief Executive of Salary Finance, said: “We are delighted to build on our success in the UK with our U.S. launch. We see the same societal challenges in the U.S., with 40% of American employees lacking any real savings, and carrying personal debt, particularly high-interest debt like credit cards and payday loans. This becomes a never-ending way of life for many, impacting their engagement and productivity at work;”
Commenting on the funding, Nick Frankland, Managing Director for FinTech at L&G, said: “We have been really pleased to continue to support the stellar growth of Salary Finance. It’s a terrific example of a big business and a growing business coming together in an economically and socially useful way. The business will grow in size by over ten times this year and being awarded Prince Charles’s BITC Responsible Business of the Year 2018 was a real honour. At L&G we work really hard in support of businesses we invest in and believe that our job is to put patient capital in touch with impatient technology, especially when it creates fantastic benefit for consumers. The success of Salary Finance is a terrific endorsement of that strategy.”
Dan Cobley, Chair of Salary Finance and FinTech Partner at Blenheim Chalcot, added: “Since we founded Salary Finance with Asesh Sarkar and Daniel Shakhani in 2015, we’ve seen a strong appetite for the platform from a range of companies that want to help their employees better manage their finances. Founded on strong and authentic social principles and solving real problems for employees, it’s inspiring to see the rapid employer adoption and the difference we are making.”
About Salary Finance
Salary Finance partners with employers to offer a benefit that helps employees improve their lives, by improving their finances. We do this by helping people save each month, offering loans they can actually afford to pay back and a programme of financial education. All savings deposits and loan repayments are taken by salary deduction, which creates a simple and great value way for employees to manage their personal finances. Find out more at salaryfinance.com
About Blenheim Chalcot
Blenheim Chalcot is the UK’s leading digital venture builder, specialising in building digital businesses that transform industries. Founded in 1998, it has portfolio sales of over £300m, more than 3,000 employees, and a successful track record of over 40 companies across sectors such as IT services and outsourcing, education, software, financial services, sport and media.
For its ventures, Blenheim Chalcot brings more than just investment; it supports businesses from inception to exit through venture building services, such as shared offices, IT, finance, legal and marketing. It also connects ventures with its global networks. The partners at Blenheim Chalcot have held senior roles at Google, Monitor and Capital One and engage with portfolio companies on a daily basis.
Blenheim Chalcot’s mission is to turn ventures into impactful and profitable companies with sustainable business models – “building gazelles, not chasing unicorns”.
About Legal & General
The Legal & General Group, established in 1836, is one of the UK’s leading financial services companies. As at 31 December 2017, the total value of assets across the group was £983.3 billion, including derivative assets. We also had over 9.5 million customers in the UK for our life assurance, pensions, investments and general insurance plans.
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