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We been following the progress of Capita’s scale-up development unit Capita Scaling Partner (CSP) for the last couple of years (see here and work back) - Indeed, Capita and current scaling partner Dragonfly AI were brought together via our TechMarketView Innovation Partner Programme. With that in mind I caught up recently to discuss CSP's latest venture with team members Matt Bunn and Jess Bonner, as well as Stephen Holliday the CEO and founder of new CSP partner - Level.
Capita’s renewed sense of purpose
One of the most consistent themes of Capita CEO Jon Lewis’s tenure, has been a greater focus on employee wellbeing, providing the firm with a renewed sense of purpose that it is there “to do good” as well as make money. At the most tangible level this has manifested itself in two employees being placed on the PLC Board as Employee Non-Executive Directors. The company also took the decision to pay all of its UK employees, at least the independently verified real living wage – something that saw over 6,000 staff receive an immediate pay rise.
As regular readers will know, Capita’s Scaling Partner programme is an approach to identifying and nurturing digital disrupter businesses to ensure that Capita works successfully with disrupters that can add value to its existing client base. CSP’s latest partner is a financial wellbeing Fintech called Level. Established in 2018, Level is a B2B service that is designed to help organisations support their employees move from a debt to a savings culture.
Level has an interesting proposition serving a noble cause and I wanted to understand more about the service and how CSP would help the Fintech scale.
Why employee financial wellbeing is important
Financial wellbeing has become a serious issue in the UK with (according to the Money & Pensions Service) some 20 million of us struggling to manage our money properly on a day to day basis and with 11.5 million people possessing less than £100 in savings. Indeed, there are 9 million people in the UK who have had to borrow to buy food or pay their bills and with some 5.3m having needed debt advice. These are truly shocking numbers and reveal how we have become a society addicted to debt to fund everything from the basics to the latest consumer “must haves”. With so many with so little savings, it’s not hard to see how life’s financial emergencies – be it a broken boiler or unplanned car repairs, can cause many to resort to payday loans or similar high interest borrowing. Once in debt it can be very hard to escape.
Level is applying advances in financial technology, mobile and recent changes to regulation, notably Open Banking, to create a proposition designed to improve the UK’s financial wellbeing. Specifically, there are three key actions that they are looking to help everyone achieve: fixing historic problems of debt, developing good financial habits today and building savings for tomorrow. Read more here.......
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Posted by Marc Hardwick at '13:46' - Tagged: Capita scaleup wellbeing
