The Hire thru Retire Podcast

How Technology is Connecting Health & Wealth With SAVVI’s Gina Mourtzinou

• Voya Financial • Episode 16

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We’ve been talking a lot about Open Enrollment recently and there’s a good reason for it – not only is it an important time of year, but now more than ever there is a heightened focus on the concept of “health and wealth” as a dual strategy when it comes to workplace benefits. In this episode, we welcome Gina Mourtzinou, Co-Founder and CEO at SAVVI Financial, an organization focused on leveraging analytics and modeling to develop high quality, affordable financial advice solutions. Gina joins Bill and Heather to provide a deeper understanding of how employers can support their workforce in these areas, particularly during Open Enrollment.

Data referenced in this episode is noted from a Voya Financial survey conducted through Ipsos on the Ipsos eNation omnibus online platform among approx. 1,005 adults aged 18+ in the U.S. Research was conducted throughout 2020: March 25-26, April 22-23, May 29-June 1, June 29-30, July 30-31, Sept. 24-25, Oct. 22-23, Nov. 19-20, Dec. 17-18 and March 12-15, 2021.

 

Bill Harmon is a registered representative of Voya Financial Partners, LLC (member SIPC).

SAVVI Financial is not a member of the Voya® family of companies. 

 

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Speaker 1:

You're listening to hire through retire, a health and wealth podcast with, for your leaders, bill Harmon, and Heather LaVale tackling the old things from 401ks to HSS and everything in between. We're talking to the best and brightest in the industry to bring you the latest in health, wealth, and investment trends in the workplace. Come along with us on our journey to help all Americans become well-planned well invested. And well-protected

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to hire three retire, a health and wealth podcast. We've been talking a lot about open enrollment on our pod, but there's a good reason for it because not only is it an important time of year, but now more than ever, we're seeing an important focus on the concept of health and wealth as a dual strategy when it comes to workplace benefits. So before we dive into that more I'm here again today with my friend colleague and cohost Heather Lavelli. Hi, Heather.

Speaker 3:

Thanks bill. Happy to be back with you and all of our listeners today, you know, Phil, as you mentioned, the movement, or as many have called it recently, the convergence of health and wealth this year, more than ever. We're seeing this become an increasingly prominent perspective for individuals when they look to their employer. And it's clear that the workplace will only increase and it's important in helping Americans address their health and wealth needs. Some of our recent data has found that 60% of working individuals have grown a new appreciation for their employer, given the, our experiences with COVID-19 on top of that seven and 10 employees, and they are interested in supporting guidance tools that help them understand how to allocate their next dollar when it comes to retirement, emergency savings and healthcare expenses. So today we are excited to dive in and get a deeper understanding of how employers can support their workforce. Particularly during this season of open enrollment, joining us today is none other than Gina, new co-founder and CEO of savvy financial and an organization focused on leveraging analytics and modeling to develop high quality affordable financial advice solutions. Do you know, we are so honored to have you here today and to bring your expertise for our audience today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, Bianca, that I'm super excited to actually share with your listeners.

Speaker 3:

We're just so excited to have you, and I want to jump in and start because savvy has a really unique approach to financial advice. And I want to talk a little bit about how that came about. So your leadership team is made up of MIT, trained PhD, mathematicians, engineers, and data scientists, which is super impressive. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this puts you in a rarefied air as a financial services company. So can you give us some perspective on how has that helped shape the way savvy operates and the advice you provide

Speaker 4:

So much, Heather, both for the compliment and for the question. And I often discuss how the mission of savvy lately, helping people improve their financial outcomes through financial planning and advice has been shaped by our decade classic experience in the financial services industry and in particular in the investment management area, both before, during and after the financial crisis of 2008. And it is then that we actually experienced the pain that our clients were suffering. And so how Americans are really in need of sound advice to both get and stay financial fate, but also the problem was saved by our practical experience or approach has been saved by our timing. And I think it's the engineering training that is keeping us relevant, that is actually focusing us in finding outcomes that are actionable and can really bring change to that client's lives. You know, how engineers, they find the problem they're on their sleeves, and then you solve the problem and then to present a solution. So we keep the preference, our analytics, not only because I personally feel that mathematical questions are beautiful, but because we know math can create systems of that agnostic, right, that transparent, and they are scalable and efficient. And if you step back and say, you have a really great financial advisor, how many clients can, since they're over the year, right? 200, 300, but then if you use a system which based on analytics and computer science, you can actually bring these advice to 2 million of Americans. And because we are using optimization of which is the analytics techniques, then we can solve a problem and optimization problem for every household. So our advice is actually personalized and actionable, and we are using prescriptive analytics, which means, again, that we give an action plan, but also interpret analytics, which means that we explain what to do behind the books for people to understand and take or directions,

Speaker 2:

I guess, to sum that up, Gina, what you've been able to do is take incredible amounts of data and data down to the personalized level and really fill a need for this audience that is overwhelmed by the amount of decisions they have to make. But then really with that data, make some personalized recommendations. And really if we frame it up through the lens of health and wealth, you know, uh, Heather cited some data that shows that the concept of co-mingling the ideas of health and wealth, it's, it's a trend. And in a sense, maybe it was kind of in the past, people made independent decisions when they were going through the open enrollment, when really there is an element of interdependence and there's opportunities to harmonize all their decisions across all the benefits. So I'm curious to know Gina, in your opinion, why do you think this is so important for employers of broaden their benefits and support these needs?

Speaker 4:

I think if there is actually a silver lining on these COVID 19 pandemic, is that it really opened people's eyes in their need to protect both the health and the financial wellbeing of their families. And it was sort of obvious it wasn't a pandemic. So everybody would look at their health care plans and potential to supplemental insurance products in sick. Okay, what is covered or not what it was not obvious, at least to me, it was not obviously that people will take a second look at how much they are saving. Right. I think COVID-19 reinforced saving behaviors, both to the emergency funds, but also to them, to the retirement accounts as well. So I think of it brought health and wealth together. And I think, especially for employees, if you look at the benefits and what are the benefits, decisions, and immigration estimate, what helps plan to big medical vision, everything in place that flexible savings account or an aid to say how much they contribute and how much to put in their retirement and all of those decisions, financial decisions. One of my colleagues keep jotting. He says, you know, which health plan to pick is a financial decision. It won't make you buy the most expensive care plan. Won't make you Celsius. It will just help you with your medical costs. So all of those decisions have financing decisions, all the funds, the money come out from the same paycheck. So they are really interdependent, right? If you make them in isolation, you have the potential of making their own decisions. So I think for an employee, it makes perfect sense. Carson wealth is here to stay. I also think from an employer's perspective, you know, I'm the CEO of a small company. So, you know, we try to offer benefits to our employees right then, and since Cannes has been so expensive and it's something that employers can fully subsidize attempt yet. So I have a benefit then what are we trying to do to put some money towards, you know, helping employees with their health plans. If they have a flexible savings account, contribute something. If they have an agency, they contributed something and then match their retirement. But as an employer, we have a limited budget and we need to split with going again, this health and wellness decisions for our employees. So I think it's not only employees, but employers, everybody, once they have this open enrollment or benefits decisions, either because they're picking a benefit or because they are offering a benefit, I think it is helping once those ideas have to be coming in,

Speaker 2:

Utilizing your tool, that personalizes everything the employees have now personalized guidance on every one of these interdependent decisions that suddenly gives them some thoughts that they hadn't thought of on their own, because they were making independent decisions. And in the end, they had a much better appreciation for the benefits plan being offered to them because it was personal, it was optimized. It was harmonized, all of that.

Speaker 4:

And the idea is that the employees come, you know, open it on Monday. They seek out all of those things come together and they actually have a better budget. And then after open enrollment, they are actually invited to do a financial one. So I think the ideal for me is you start at open equity speak or harmonized or interdependent any way you want to call it. Right? And then during the year, as you have more goals, right, you have the household, or you will decide that, you know, you have to hire that and we want to fight down. Then, then if you go to finance and wellness experience, and then you stay engaged and financing the wellness part of the additional thing here, and to make all your decisions like that,

Speaker 3:

I'm going to pick up on your, your point a bit, because you talked a little bit about how COVID has changed the way people approach their benefits and spending decisions. I also like the comment that you made about buying the most expensive healthcare does not necessarily make you healthy and that that's interesting financial decisions. So as you think through that, and, and you also, you know, kind of give us the perspective of not only as the owner of savvy, but also a small business owner, thinking about the lens of what you're doing for your own employees. So can you just give us a sense of what are some of the things that savvy is thinking about that are new solutions to help address some of these needs that are coming out that, that, you know, maybe as a result of the pandemic and, or accelerated by the pandemic,

Speaker 4:

We had a small company, as you said, and, and we have, um, both employees as clients and some retail clients. So COVID was really interesting because it made our clients much more engaged, right? We heard much more from our clients, both from the employers who would not know what to do. And the employees who did not know how to basically cut their budgets and potentially find other places to, to pull emergency funds. And then there was the care act like the government trying to file. So the first thing that we did, as soon as we were back home, because of COVID this week, we tried to change our financial wellness solution. Our financial wellness solution tries to basically take the long-term view. So we have all those retirement goals inform, purchase goals and educational goals. We didn't set a hardship goal, right. Um, and, and this is what we did. We actually create a hardship call within our financial wellness platform. And we, we create know both education, but also the mathematics behind it to help people decide where to take funds from. Because, you know, there is a state of you don't want to take everything out of your 401k and risk your time. So it wasn't mathematical, I think, decision as well. So we created a corporate planning and since then, which we offer to some employers, partners like[inaudible], and then we also offer praying retail. So we try to help people take those decisions. And then I think our focus on benefits, which we always thought about benefits, but I think we changed like the focus of savings from financial wellness overall as an engagement with the open enrollment, because we thought this is an opportunity to actually get employees when they are engaged, when they are ready to make their decisions and need. We said that I'm frame of mind, like we were saying, if we'd convinced them that all their decisions are interdependent, if we start them on that, but just on a couple of goals, like a health care goal and emergency fund, and then, you know, we get educated and then they will be writing for attention during the year to actually get more engaged with financial wellness overall and move to their bladder groups as well.

Speaker 2:

You know, Jeanette like how you said, when you're going through, um, your enrollment decisions, these are all financial decisions because they're all payroll deductions, they come out of your paycheck. And then you think I saw a stat that 80% of the claims typically come from 20% of the employees, which also means that 80% of the employees only generate 20% of the claims and are probably over-insured. So they could be in kind of the higher cost plan, but there could be an opportunity to move into a lower premium plan or a high deductible health plan. And then that can create some of these savings. And so if that's the case where you have a big group that's over-insured, but we also know we've been talking about this, that many Americans are under saved. Maybe we can help create this balance, but that that's really a personalized discussion. So let's talk about personalization for a minute. That savvy is something you really focus on when it comes to the technologies that you built for your clients. So can you share when it comes to personalization, what successes you've seen when it comes to providing this personalized recommendation down to individuals and their health, and then their financial needs based on their unique situation.

Speaker 4:

That absolutely that personalization is I think, a core value added email or in all of our tools for the financing wireless and the benefit selection tool. I don't want to feel very strongly about it. You know, we are all different, right? We have different goals, we have different names and we, we live different lives. So there is no need why we should have exactly the same benefits. It doesn't make sense, actually. So we are lucky, um, because we are using mathematics and we can solve a problem, which is different for every house book. And I think this makes all the difference in how people trust our advice or our guidance and how people implement our advice and our guidance. Because if you, um, you know, if you got open enrollment and we'll have a tool that says, maximize your agency, maximize your 401k, put 10,000 in your emergency fund, you may not have this budget, right? Because you also need tweaks. And there's other things that you need to do. So this generic guidance, right? It's not helpful to you. And then at the end, you're just going to be confused. If we look at their situation and we looked at the data, it was really astonishing. We, we did this graph, the distribution of the claims that are all employees. It is really out, you know, I don't know. I didn't expect it to see how many people have pay solid. And if you're actually paying, say five continents and you are not matching any deductible, then it doesn't matter if your plan is a low deductible or high deductible and high deductible health plans. I don't know if we came up with this negative or benign, but, but no matter what, you don't read that. So you don't need to spend the extra amount of money every month. We actually have a more expensive healthcare plan, the funds for many things, you can use them to help you. Every time you can build them, you can use an emergency, but many of them, and I have a, again, many people like in the early thirties, they have student loans. I mean, there are so many places where you can use the extra money and for every person it's something different. And there are people who actually need the way expensive will be all planned and they should get them right. And this is how they should spend their budget, but not everybody's the same. So I think it is very, very important to have decision support tools that are personalized, that look at every house. And this is another important thing. I think you have to look at the house book together, right? It's not, we have a set of kids is five of us. It's all of our healthcare needs.

Speaker 3:

Do you know? I love the, um, the importance of personalization. I know I was, you know, as a mom of two college age boys and getting ready for our own open enrollment, I, I did something I really hadn't done all year. And I actually started to look at who was using the healthcare because my kids are in college, but I'm not seeing when they go to the doctor and what expenses they're incurring. And, and so it's, you know, really, really interesting to sort of see, as in planning for 2022, what, what does that look like? You made a really strong argument for personalization and why it is so important for the family and the household. Can you talk to us about how to companies benefit from having financially fit employees? Why is that so important? Yes.

Speaker 4:

So I think it's important for, for many, many reasons. One thing is I actually believe that employers have a responsibility. So as the employees to keep them, uh, financial, well, when I started in Ameriprise, it was managing the mutual fund and it was a mutual fund. That was part of the retirement plan of America with American express at the time. And we had this long discussion about, you know, how the, the saved from defined benefits to defined contributions was actually really onerous for the employees, right? I mean, those were hard decisions for the employers. That's why they stopped the defined benefit system. And now the employees are, are called, makes them, and they don't, they don't know how to do it. And there is the sense of maybe moral responsibility to help the employees make better decisions. And I think the sense of responsibility nowadays, going back to the health and wealth, it's actually also important for sales decisions, because again, giving them all those care plans, they don't know what it means. They don't know how to put money in like a flexible savings versus what's the limited purpose, flexible savings. I think there is a sense of responsibility. And I think employees nowadays, you know, expect more from employers. So I think it's like, and I see it in the younger generation, like in my son that for them, you know, the paycheck is important, but the culture of the company is important. How much the employers or that they care about the employees is important. So I think it buys loyalty. It buys productivity. And we have all those statistics that people who are stressed financially, they cannot really focus on their work. They have to take day. So they are less creative. It's all of the statistics about, you know, people who are fit both healthier and, and feet are more productive, more creatives. They give more to the employer, they are more loyal. And I think that's an employer. You should care about the happiness of your employees, right?

Speaker 3:

I think today we're certainly seeing, uh, just a huge level of competition for employees. COVID has certainly made employment and flexibility, a primary focus. And so not only a moral responsibility, but certainly wanting to be able to keep and attract talent. I just have to say, Gina, this has been such a great conversation. And one, I hope our audience can take away some new insights and ideas on how to adjust within their own organization. You have given us so much wonderful insights to take away today around personalization, how to help employees with these complex decisions and the benefit of how math and data can really drive the right outcomes for employees. I love that connection. So I just want to say, uh, you know, um, on behalf of our podcasts, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 4:

Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

And I'll echo Heather's thoughts and say, thank you very much, Gina. I'd like to also thank our listeners for tuning into today's episode, as always. We hope you've heard some ideas here that might be beneficial considerations, particularly does. We're getting into open enrollment season to keep hearing more, remember to go to our show page and hit subscribe. So you're notified when we drop new episodes. Thanks for coming along on our journey today, stay with

Speaker 1:

This information is provided by[inaudible] for your education. Only need the voice nor its representatives to offer tax or legal advice. Any opinions expressed within do not necessarily reflect those of the way a family of companies, sports representatives, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Please consult your tax and legal advisor before making the tax related investment or insurance decision products and services offered through the Voya family of companies.