The roadmap: building credit and building financial futures
The Product team reflect on the evolving best practice of employee financial benefits, and the role of...
Learn about how Co-op launched the UK's #1 financial wellbeing strategy with Wagestream - and helped more than 70% of colleagues save for a rainy day.
"If you're thinking about offering Wagestream, just do it"
- Wellbeing Manager, Co-op
Retail, Wholesale, Professional Services
70,000
Savings
Budgeting
Education
Flexible Pay
Through colleague feedback, it became clear that being able to regularly save money was really important for colleagues’ financial wellbeing – yet, well over a third (40%) of frontline food store colleagues and 30% of Funeralcare and logistics colleagues had less than £100 in savings. And only 30% of colleagues reported being able to save.
As part of a broad range of financial services and support, Co-op launched a pilot with Wagestream that automatically opted colleagues into saving straight from their pay each month.
Research shows traditional payroll savings schemes are ineffective - often with less than 1% participation. But this initiative saw savings participation jump to 71% for Co-op team members.
Across 2023, Co-op colleagues set aside £3 million in rainy day funds.
Through the trial, Co-op helped 1,000 more employees become ‘savers’ - with a third saving for the first time in their lives. All with no impact on other savings behaviours, like pensions contributions.
Co-op's pioneering financial wellbeing approach, powered by Wagestream, was named the UK's #1 financial wellbeing strategy at the 2024 Employee Benefits Awards. And it scooped the Grand Prix prize, named the 'best of the best' of all employee benefits initiatives in the past year.
Emma Stockdale, at Nest Insight - the UK Government's body for pensions and savings - said of the programme: 'The results are extroardinary. People are building meaningful savings buffers…knowing they’re saving also gives people greater peace of mind and confidence, supporting financial wellbeing to improve over time.'
There is a fixed fee of £1.75 each time a transfer is made. This is paid by the employee unless you decide to subsidise it.
Please contact us via the Pricing page for a bespoke discussion.
Our technology has been designed to have a minimal impact on company payroll processes – we’d be happy to provide you with more details.
Wagestream has a revolving credit facility with an FCA authorised banking institution. From this facility we can provision funds to the employer to enable its employees to access a proportion of their earned wages via the Wagestream app.
Yes. They can’t access more than 50% of their earned wages – you can set this lower if you wish. There is also a monthly withdrawal limit of £1000.