Neyber is an online lending platform for employees. The company makes its loans via an innovative salary deduction mechanism which is integrated into an employer’s payroll systems. The platform officially launched in January of this year after successfully closing a £6m Series A fundraise.
The new study’s headline finding is that “financial stress” costs the UK economy £120.7bn, with 70% of the nation’s workforce admitting to wasting a fifth of their time at work worrying about their finances. The backdrop is that 1 in 6 employees of the younger employees that were surveyed had defaulted on a debt repayment – a fifth of whom have consequently been subject to legal proceedings. Neyber sees this as something of a time-bomb; 75% of the UK workforce will be made up of millennials by 2025 (according to The Deloitte Millennials Survey 2015).
Opinium Research conducted the survey of 10,000 employees across the country on Neyber’s behalf. The study broke down the impact of financial worries in the workplace. 55% of respondents said that financial pressure negatively affects their ability to perform at work. 8% had taken time off due to financial stress. A further 16% struggle to focus at work when troubled by monetary issues.
Neyber also split out the results by gender and age. As expected, the data shows that younger people are generally more troubled by financial stress than older people. The study also suggests that women suffer more than men, with 44% admitting to anxiety in the workplace, versus 34% of men.
Financial concern appears to be a pan-nation phenomenon, with results from the study proving fairly consistent across the UK.
The report drew the following conclusion:
“This report highlights that employers can have an important role in granting their employees access to fair finance and that, just as with pensions auto-enrolment, this should be available in the workplace in the form of an employee benefit. In practice this would mean workplace based access to providers of fairly priced loans, saving and insurance products. However, unlike with pensions auto-enrolment, this need not result in a huge cost and administration burden for employers as they can be offered at no cost and using electronic payroll integration.”
“We urge the Government to tackle this growing crisis impacting the UK’s health, productivity and competitiveness head on. We know from our own experience of offering workplace based fair finance how people’s financial and health circumstances can change for the better, as a result of monthly credit costs being reduced by 20%, benefiting not only them but their employer.”
You can download the full report here.
