Education Or Advertising? —A checklist for picking an unbiased financial wellness program

TLDR: Most employee financial wellness programs today are run by distributors of financial products. This inherently creates a conflict of interest. Such programs neither educate their participants about commission-free products, nor about other, better, financial services. The program’s goal isn’t to provide quality, unbiased education, but to act as a customer acquisition channel.

Products in the personal finance investment space — whether they’re insurance, mutual funds or loans are bullet riddled with commissions. The more commissions the product maker provides, the more is a salesman’s incentive to sell that product.

This swiftly results in mis-sellig. What’s worse is that one way or the other, these commissions are paid out of investor’s wealth.

The problem is rampant. And that’s putting it mildly.

The erosion of wealth due to leakages in commissions is staggering. Worst yet, such leaks are easy to avoid.

But here’s where the lure of commissions gets far worse

Just about every employee financial wellness program provider in India today is a financial distributor.

They either:

All these channels above provide bring them income in the form of commissions. And since financial literacy in India remains rather low, L&D and HR departments of several organisations fall for the pitch rather easily. This leads employers to drive their entire organisation’s workforce towards a distributor’s sales funnel. So while the goal was to sign up for employee education, they instead end up signing everyone up, for advertising.

Here’s a 4-point checklist to ensure you onboard an unbiased financial wellness program

The knowledge of essential finances can do wonders to an organisation, and its workforce. Sticking to this checklist will ensure organisations keep their employees out of the propaganda trap.

Happy Moneyplanting.

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Author of ‘Smart Money Moves’ & Founder of ‘The Moneyplanting Program on Employee Financial Wellness’ | desaivinod.com

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Vinod Desai — Author

Author of ‘Smart Money Moves’ & Founder of ‘The Moneyplanting Program on Employee Financial Wellness’ | desaivinod.com