The Rise of the Workplace Bank

With the advent of the first industrial revolution in the late 18^th century, millions of agricultural workers began a structural shift from agriculture to factories, setting in motion one of the most important events in human history since the domestication of animals and plants. While the overall impact on economic growth and productivity is undebatable, there is more controversy around what the impact was on the living standards of the workers that populated the factory floors, in some cases literally working day and night in very harsh conditions.

Some economic historians such as Robert E. Lucas argue that with the industrial revolution the living standards of the masses began to undergo sustained growth for the first time in history, while other historians argue that yes the growth of the economy’s overall productivity was unprecedented but living standards for the majority of the population did not grow meaningfully until the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. Some argue even further that living standards for the workers decreased initially, citing the fact that the average height of the population declined during the first industrial revolution as evidence that the nutritional status of workers was actually decreasing.

It is actually quite easy to see the parallels to today’s debate about the digital revolution, also referred to as the “third industrial revolution” (the second industrial revolution being the advancements in manufacturing technology that took place in the late 19^th century, also referred to as the “technological revolution”).

Just like back then, there is today a very important debate going on about income inequality, living standards, and worker’s rights. And for good reason, too. Widely available statistics tell the story of how more than half of all workers in developed countries are today effectively living what could be best described as “paycheck to paycheck”, without a buffer to meet an unexpected expense as low as GBP 300.   

This is clearly a big societal problem and causes great stress and suffering on the working people that toil so hard to make sure our modern economy functions. These are in many cases the nurses, teachers, factory workers, delivery drivers, and countless others that are the glue of the modern economy, yet to an increasing extent they are facing great economic hardships and financial distress.

Finding a solution to this problem will ultimately rest with the politicians that we collectively elect, and one can only hope that our leaders will implement inclusive and progressive solutions as opposed to some of the darker paths that have been trodden tragically in the past. There is however also much that can be done at the level of the companies that employ these workers, and I believe many of the fintech companies of today will have a role to play in helping employers solve this problem.

I refer to this phenomenon as “the emergence of the workplace bank”, and to best illustrate what this means there is a very useful case study from one of the big west coast tech companies. This company contracts with millions of gig economy workers globally and used to pay them on a monthly or fortnightly basis as they completed their work.

Several years ago, it became apparent that these workers wanted to get paid real time as they completed their work (driven by the financial stress referred to above), and the tech company arranged with a fintech start up to help achieve this in what we today refer to as income streaming. It turned out that this was such a critical and strategic area for the tech company that they decided to actually bring all income streaming functionality inhouse. Given that they had the tech and developer resources, this was in fact relatively easy for them, and before long they were paying their contractors on a real time basis.

However transferring money each time the worker completed a task (or in some cases at the end of the shift) had a cost associated with it, and the company realized they could save money if they issued their contractors their own cards. This was welcomed by the workforce, and this new card had great (and quick!) adoption. With the advent of embedded payments and advancement in fintech infrastructure, it was also increasingly easy for the company to do this.

Then something very interesting happened. The contractors increasingly started to close their accounts with their former bank, reverting to live their financial lives fully within this newly issued “employer card”. Once that happened, the next logical steps started falling in place like dominoes. The workers wanted to pay their bills from that card, send money from that card, and pay for their groceries with that card.

And it did not stop there. As we know, these workers were very much living paycheck to paycheck, and they started asking their employer for advances or overdraft facilities on this card as urgent financial needs related to their work or personal lives started cropping up. The employer had now become their bank!

The morale of this case study is manifold, but some things are especially worth pointing out. Firstly, while it is ultimately the government’s responsibility to make sure workers are treated fairly and get to live lives without financial stress, the employers will not be able to avoid having to help their workers deal with the new financial challenges of the 21^st century for long. I imagine a big vacuum or gravitational pull that will irresistibly pull employers into being part of the solution, making sure their workers can have access to the new financial tools to help them.

Secondly, as increasingly more and more employers will find themselves in this situation, they may also realize that they do not have the resources of this big west coast technology company to develop and create all these solutions inhouse. Hence, they will look to the rapidly emerging fintech companies of today that are active in the HR-tech space to provide those solutions. Some of these companies such as Wagestream have come at this problem from an income streaming perspective, while others such as Ben have come at it from a benefits perspective, and yet others have come at it from a debt consolidation or credit perspective. In the end, the ultimate driver and impetus here will be the crucial day to day financial needs of the workers, so it is reasonable to expect a big convergence as the workplace bank emerges.