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
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00:00Good afternoon, good to see everyone.
00:02The topic of Gen Z and their financial future
00:06is a really hot topic these days, particularly myself
00:09as the very oldest of the Gen Z cohort.
00:12Francine and Ellen are wonderful people
00:14to have this conversation with,
00:15given their close involvement with corporate impact
00:17and social impact.
00:18I'd like to start with Francine.
00:21Based on your financial wellness research at Guardian,
00:24tell us about the connection between financial stability
00:27and mental health.
00:30Guardian does this survey called Mind, Body, and Wallet.
00:33We've been doing it for quite a few years now.
00:36And there are clear trends, actually, with Gen Z.
00:40They are the cohort and the generational cohort
00:43with the lowest self-reported mental health data.
00:50They feel financially stressed.
00:53And that really bleeds into all facets of their lives,
00:57particularly causing anxiety, stress, et cetera.
01:02Ellen, you're a former educator.
01:04What kind of impact does financial literacy
01:07and education about financial literacy
01:09tangibly have on younger generations?
01:12Thank you for that question, and thank you
01:14for having us up here.
01:17I was a second grade teacher and a school counselor.
01:21So these topic areas of mental wellness and learning
01:26and the ability to learn are really, really important.
01:29And at EverFi, we're trying to tackle three main things
01:33for a better society, financial wellness, mental wellness,
01:38and civic engagement.
01:39And financial literacy, as we'll hear a little bit more
01:44from Francine, definitely lays the pathway
01:48for future success for students.
01:51And we really see this as fundamental.
01:55You see about 26 states now mandating financial education
02:02in order to graduate.
02:03These are unfunded mandates.
02:05And so we are really trying to build
02:07the platform and that education and get that out
02:10to a network of almost 30,000 schools across America.
02:15We have relationships we've built over the past 16 years
02:20with 750,000 teachers on a co-curricular basis
02:25for getting financial education into that really
02:29important network of schools.
02:32Definitely.
02:32And the two of you both working at EverFi,
02:35which is a social impact firm, and Guardian, which
02:38is a life insurance firm, Francine and Ellen,
02:40EverFi and Guardian have had a partnership
02:43for the past two years seeking to materially improve
02:46the financial outlook for young people,
02:48particularly those from under-resourced backgrounds.
02:51Francine, I'll turn to you first.
02:52Can you talk a bit about how that partnership
02:54is seeking to help?
02:56Sure.
02:56So about three years ago, I joined Guardian.
03:01And part of my mandate was to really look
03:03at the kinds of investments that we make in community
03:07and to ensure that they were aligned appropriately
03:09with who we are as an organization.
03:11Guardian's purpose is to inspire well-being.
03:14We do that through mind, body, and wallet,
03:17similar to the name of the survey.
03:19And that translates really to mental wellness,
03:23physical wellness, financial wellness.
03:25Was looking for partners that could really
03:27operate across more than one of those pillars.
03:33EverFi in particular could help us
03:34create a bespoke curriculum that helped
03:37to address mental wellness and also financial stability
03:41for young people.
03:42The two are so inextricably linked.
03:44What's interesting is that as we've
03:47launched other partnerships through our corporate impact
03:50team that really focus on different aspects
03:53of societal need, the mental wellness piece
03:57is so critical to really all the interventions.
04:00So whether it's physical wellness and mental wellness,
04:04then it feels differentiated.
04:06And we are pushing for these initiatives
04:09to actually gain traction.
04:11In our partnership with EverFi, we
04:13found that the sponsored usage of the course, i.e.
04:17the incidents when EverFi staff talk to schools
04:21and share with them about the curriculum,
04:23and then the teachers then adopt it,
04:25that's coming in at something like 40,000 students who
04:28have been using it in the first full year
04:30that it's been rolled out.
04:32The organic usage is more than double that.
04:36Just teachers saying, we don't really
04:38have a solution that really addresses
04:40a combination of these two things.
04:42And we're not selling it.
04:44We're not encouraging them.
04:46We're just offering it on the platform.
04:49And there's such a need for the intersectionality
04:52between those two things that teachers are just
04:56using it on unprompted.
05:01Ellen?
05:02I would love to speak about our partnership.
05:05I mean, the beauty, again, of this
05:08is that we go into schools, again,
05:11there are these unfunded mandates that are out there.
05:13So teachers need to have something.
05:17They need to have a curriculum that they
05:20can offer to their students.
05:23And so we can use technology to get into the far corners
05:28of North America.
05:30So from the Mississippi Delta to rural Montana
05:37to large urban areas, these are all pathways
05:43that we can get this mental wellness
05:45and financial education together in schools.
05:48And just to build on that a bit, it really
05:52was a bit of an education for me, too,
05:54as I looked at the landscape of financial education
05:58mandates across the US.
06:00Not just states that have financial education mandates,
06:04but states that are in the process of legislating
06:07and requiring it.
06:10There are these laws that are requiring schools
06:13to teach financial education as a requirement for graduation.
06:18But there aren't the dollars or the courses or the resources
06:22that are put behind that.
06:23And a partnership like ours can step in into that gap
06:28and provide a course that then allows teachers to say,
06:33thank goodness, I didn't know how
06:34I was going to make this happen, and now here's this resource.
06:37And it's good, which helps.
06:41Certainly.
06:41We'll have a few conference workers going around
06:44with microphones.
06:45So shortly, if anyone has questions,
06:47I'll be going around to take them, so start thinking.
06:50But in the meantime, can you each
06:51talk about the role that student debt in particular
06:54plays on financial wellness and on Gen Z's ability
06:57to get ahead?
06:58Would you like to start?
07:00As a corporate impact professional,
07:02I'll say young people are two, I think,
07:07main drivers of financial instability
07:10outside of inflation.
07:11One is student debt.
07:16And companies are really working to address that
07:20in really innovative ways.
07:23In preparing for this panel, Ellen and I
07:25wanted to make sure that we weren't just
07:28focusing on necessarily some of the challenges,
07:30but the ways in which there is an increasing ecosystem
07:36of partners that are working to address that.
07:38But student debt, for instance, are preventing young people
07:40from saving for retirement.
07:43And not having even emergency savings, just money set aside
07:49to just manage anything that pops up,
07:52is also a detriment to financial stability.
07:55And there too, everyone from government,
07:58Secure 2.0 was a law that passed
08:00that allows employers to offer emergency savings accounts.
08:04And they match some of those contributions.
08:07You have student debt.
08:08There's a similar process that's underway there,
08:11where that's increasingly become an employer benefit.
08:15And there are mechanisms for lots of fintechs
08:17also to step into the space, if you
08:20have young people who are working gig jobs.
08:23Because that too is an increasing trend among Gen Z.
08:27I think addressing student debt, we had a,
08:32and Francine was able to be at a conference
08:34that we were hosting a couple of weeks ago.
08:38And Dr. Corey C. Miller spoke about Gen Z
08:42and a little bit about their resiliency
08:45and how they're looking to, well,
08:51let me go back to her most formative piece of information.
08:54That was, from ages 14 to 24, have a profound effect
09:00on any child's life.
09:03And so if you think about, in the intro,
09:05we heard the ages of Gen Z, they're
09:08right in that sweet spot.
09:09So we have an opportunity here to affect change,
09:13to teach them more about debt and saving.
09:17And the other thing was that Gen Z
09:22is very dependent on their parents
09:24for these conversations as well.
09:26So you think about the ecosystem of education
09:31and reaching that through technology
09:33into hard-to-reach places.
09:35Today, we're in about 42% LMI communities.
09:39So you get equal access to the education.
09:42And then creating this ecosystem of career-connected learning,
09:49of mentorship, of the ability to how to even open an account,
09:54these things are really important
09:56so that students can start to talk about and practice
10:00all of these good financial habits.
10:04You make a good point about the need for particularly
10:07technologically-savvy ways of reaching young people.
10:11How can tech implementations like the kind
10:13you're talking about make that education process easier,
10:16especially among the very tech-savvy youth
10:18that we're talking about here?
10:20So in the curriculum that we co-designed with EverFi,
10:25the delivery mechanism is interesting.
10:27It's not flat content.
10:30There are lots of videos and interactive engagements.
10:33And it's really based on a lot that we
10:36know about behavioral psychology.
10:39There's also a component of it that
10:41allows for conversation in the classroom.
10:44So there are topics that we address
10:48around how to spot financial abuse even,
10:51how to have conversations that feel awkward even
10:55with your parents about money.
10:58So going even beyond the fundamentals of budgeting
11:03and how to open account to the emotions
11:06that we have about money and how to recognize
11:10when those emotions can be a deterrent
11:12or can help us have positive behavioral change.
11:17Those are the kinds of content that you
11:21can deliver through technology by having
11:23videos and snippets and quizzes.
11:25And as much as we learn about what resonates and drives
11:30greater usage, we're integrating into the ways in which we
11:33teach and how students learn.
11:35We also recognize that sometimes the analog version also
11:39helps to reinforce the technology itself.
11:41And so there's a component that allows people to be
11:44able to speak to each other.
11:46And it's been clear to us that if one student is well-off
11:50and another student is struggling financially
11:52or from families that are, they can
11:55be faced with this very same set of facts
11:57and make two very different decisions, both logical.
12:01So how can you get to a point where students understand
12:04that there are different actions that you can take that
12:07make sense for who you are, strip away the shame,
12:11and acknowledge that?
12:16These are circumstances that they
12:17may face throughout the course of their lives.
12:20But technology is a tool to be able to showcase scenarios
12:24and then to actually talk through what those scenarios
12:27may mean for you.
12:29Fantastic.
12:30Are there any questions from the audience for our panelists?
12:34All right, well, I'll close us out
12:36because we're coming up to the end of our time.
12:38I'm really curious, in both of your perspectives,
12:40what is it about talking about financial well-being
12:43and setting oneself up for success
12:45that remains such a hot-button topic and just
12:47such a taboo topic for many parents
12:51and for many, indeed, teenagers?
12:54For everyone?
12:56Yeah, I mean, I would say it's not that taboo anymore.
13:01I think where the taboo comes in is
13:03when people feel insecure in their own knowledge.
13:06And it's why education for parents
13:10is equally as important as it is for the students themselves.
13:14So if you think about bringing learning into the schools
13:18where meeting people where they are,
13:21and then the community surrounding students
13:24and facilitating conversation, you
13:26need to make sure that the people who
13:28are in there with the students also have knowledge to share.
13:33Certainly.
13:36I found that as we've gone on this journey with EverFi
13:40and the curriculum, that everyone has a money story.
13:45And it's people who you wouldn't expect, oftentimes.
13:50And I don't think I've ever introduced
13:52the topic of what we do with this curriculum,
13:55and it hasn't become somewhat of a confessional.
13:58I've learned a lot of things about a lot of people
14:02because the topic of money opens up windows
14:06into people's experiences in their lives.
14:09That's always fascinating to me.
14:12I agree that it's becoming less taboo,
14:15but strangers find it easier to open up
14:17than people who are familiar, right?
14:20It's probably that phenomenon where
14:22you tell people the truth if you sit with them on the plane
14:24and you don't think you'll ever see them again.
14:26But yeah, money, it's central and core
14:34to how we feel about ourselves, how healthy our outlook is.
14:41And I'm glad that it's getting more attention.
14:43I'm glad as well.
14:44Thank you both so much to our wonderful panelists.