The three pillars of a successful financial wellbeing strategy

Speakers:

Alex Harrison Spain - VP of Product at Stream

Guillaume Dupuy - VP of Product at Stream

Lucille Bellec - VP of Wealth at Stream

Five key takeaways

1. A strong financial wellbeing strategy needs three time horizons
   The framework is built around:
2. 1. Short term: day-to-day resilience and cashflow
   2. Medium term: planning and funding life goals
   3. Long term: building wealth and retirement readiness

The central argument: one problem cannot be solved by one product. A joined-up platform approach is what delivers meaningful outcomes.

2. Short-term resilience starts with control, visibility, and income support
   Stream positioned Flexible Pay, Budget, Claim, Rewards, and Recognition as the short-term toolkit.
   The scale of the challenge is significant: income volatility affects a large proportion of the UK workforce [1], and the right tools can make a real difference to immediate financial pressure.
3. Medium-term outcomes improve when savings and borrowing are designed together
   Key evidence shared:
4. 1. Moving savings from opt-in to opt-out drove adoption from 16% to 71% in trials[2]
   2. Savings evolved from a build pot into an FSCS-protected, bank-backed product with no minimum deposit
   3. Workplace Loans were framed as a safer alternative to high-cost credit, with lower typical pricing and payroll-linked repayments[3]
   4. They also highlighted safeguards like affordability checks, vulnerability signals, tenure checks, and direct lender payoff for debt consolidation.
4. Long-term wealth requires making pensions simple and visible
   The session stressed that auto-enrolment works for contributions, but engagement remains low because pensions are fragmented across jobs/providers.
   The Find and Combine proposition addresses this by locating historic pension pots and enabling consolidation into one clearer view, making retirement planning more actionable. 
5. Education is the cross-platform enabler, and employers are the key channel
   Learn + Coach was presented as the layer that turns access into action across all three pillars.
   Early pilot signals were strong (high first-week engagement and return usage).
   Final message: employer partnerships make these tools scalable and affordable, while data sharing with employers stays at aggregate level rather than individual financial detail.
   

Summary

This session set out Stream's financial wellbeing framework across three horizons: short term resilience, medium term planning, and long term wealth building, with education running across all three.

Guillaume framed the short term as control and resilience in the face of volatility. Citing Nest Insight research, he highlighted that more than 25 million people in the UK are affected by income volatility [1]. The response he presented was an integrated set of tools: Pay for earnings timing, Claim for unclaimed benefits, Rewards for disposable income support, and Budget for visibility across spending and recurring costs. The point was that these are interconnected controls, not standalone perks.

Alex focused on medium-term planning through Workplace Savings and Workplace Loans. He described Stream's savings evolution from payroll-linked saving, to an opt-out design that increased engagement from 16% to 71% in early partner trials [2], through to an FSCS-protected, bank-backed product with no minimum deposit. Reported outcomes included 300,000 first-time savers [4] and over £500 million saved across product iterations [5].

On lending, Alex shared that Stream members use personal loans more than the national average, often at significantly higher rates in the open market [3]. The model presented was a lower-cost alternative to high-cost credit, with Representative APR (Variable) 13.9%, salary-linked repayments, affordability and vulnerability checks, tenure-based risk controls, and direct lender payoff for debt consolidation.

Lucille covered long-term wealth and pension engagement. Her argument was that pension disengagement is often a usability problem, not a motivation problem. Stream's Find & Combine approach uses employment history to help colleagues locate old pots without requiring full paperwork. Reported progress: 3,400+ pots located, worth over £12 million [6].

She also positioned Coach as the activation layer across all three pillars, combining structured learning with AI support. Early pilot signals were strong: around one third of participants engaged within a week [7] and 40% of those returned the following day [7].

Recommended next steps

• Build your strategy across all three horizons: today, next milestones, and retirement readiness
• Prioritise short term stability first, since resilience is the base for medium and long term progress
• Use payroll-linked defaults where appropriate to reduce friction and increase adoption
• Treat borrowing as a real existing behaviour and focus on safer, lower-cost alternatives with strong guardrails [3]
• Add pension tracing and consolidation support to close the engagement gap on long term wealth
• Pair product access with ongoing education and coaching to convert access into action

Bottom line

The session's central message was that successful financial wellbeing is embedded within platform design, not a single benefit. Employers that combine resilience tools, goal-based planning, long term wealth support, and continuous education are best placed to deliver meaningful outcomes for their people.