Recently, BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative, in which Commonwealth played a lead role, announced its first Impact & Learnings Report, highlighting more than $2 billion in new savings and 10 million American workers reached in four years. Key to the success of the Initiative is Commonwealth’s inclusive product design framework. Recently, FinTech Sandbox invited experts from Commonwealth to share the real-world learnings from partnerships utilizing the framework as part of the Initiative in a live virtual event.
In a panel moderated by FinTech Sandbox Co-Founder Sarah Biller, Charvi Gandotra and Gosia Tomaszewska of Commonwealth joined Sid Pailla of Sunny Day Fund to share their experience with inclusive product design in emergency savings, how to prioritize the needs of people earning low and moderate incomes, and how to build and scale products that can have a profound impact and produce real-world results.
Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:
Inclusive Product Design is Framed Around Systemic Change & Understanding the End User
Systemic change through product design is about understanding the needs of end users. Inclusive product design means making products work for the users—not making them work for it. The first and most important principle of inclusive product design is intentionally designing for system change and not just behavioral change. Inclusive product design does not ask the end user to change (though the product may make them act in different ways). Instead, it requires product designers to think about the design on a systematic level, rather than whether an individual needs to change.
Users are intrinsically motivated to reach financial security and build wealth. By tapping into understanding their aspirations and values—which goes back to understanding your end user—those can be strong motivations to get people on the path to financial security.”
Gosia Tomaszewska, Commonwealth
Building Emergency Savings Solutions with Inclusive Product Design is Impactful for Employers and Employees Alike
Charvi shared the results of a partnership between Commonwealth, BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative, and ADP that generated $1.3 billion in new savings. This project included four research-backed product features to enhance the savings experience on the Wisely paycard and myWisely app, as well as new marketing materials using inclusive design principles—all developed after extensive research, surveys, and interviews with both engaged app users and those who were not engaging with the app.
The partnership demonstrated not only new savings and “build, use, rebuild” behavior, but a 3.5 times increase in average monthly new savers and a 23% increase in savings from marketing—a powerful business case for the employer and for ADP. But, Charvi pointed out, for an employer partner that sent out their own marketing messaging on top of what ADP sent out, that increase rose to 35%.
That points to the tie into the community piece… Workplace matters. When people see someone around them talking about something, there is an additional trust that comes into the system.”
Charvi Gandotra, Commonwealth
Emergency Savings Has Risen to the Top of Employees’ Priorities
Sid shared Sunny Day Fund’s strategy around making emergency savings a key benefit for employers. Where retirement savings and health savings are need-specific buckets, employers, benefits providers, and workers increasingly understand that emergency savings is foundational to building longer-term financial security.
In the past year, emergency savings has increasingly risen to the top of employers lists as not only a priority for their employees but also an area where they can take action. Specifically, the passage of SECURE 2.0’s emergency savings provision has helped enable employers to think about emergency savings as a key benefit for employees and provided them with potential new tools for implementation.
We’re doing something that’s even more foundational than [a retirement savings or health savings account]… Emergency savings hits us no matter what the use case is. That’s why financial planners and others specify that the key to success, the key to wealth building, is having emergency savings.”
Sid Pailla, Sunny Day Fund
For more information on Commonwealth’s inclusive design framework, visit our Inclusive Product Design Toolkit. For information on how to partner with Commonwealth, visit our Partner page.