In the wake of climate change and social unrest surrounding racial inequality, many companies are ramping up their environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs to highlight the importance of being a good corporate citizen with a positive impact on customers and community. Banks in particular are reimagining their role as corporate stewards, and rethinking what ESG means for them as part of a broader emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR). In fact, in a report focused on banks in a post-COVID world, McKinsey states that in order to thrive, banks must bring “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations to the fore, along with a better sense of corporate purpose.”

According to Forbes:

“ESG issues were first mentioned in the 2006 United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) report… ESG criteria was, for the first time, required to be incorporated in the financial evaluations of companies. This effort was focused on further developing sustainable investments. At the time, 63 investment companies… signed with $6.5 trillion in assets under management (AUM) incorporating ESG issues. As of June 2019, there are 2450 signatories representing over $80 trillion in AUM.”

Indeed, in the wake of COVID-19, political protests about racial inequality, and natural disasters and climate-related tragedies that have devastated many communities, we understand the domino effect that one area of inequality has on others. At SpringFour, we see these impacts every day: as renters are disproportionately impacted by job loss; as communities of color are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters; as a worldwide pandemic leads to hyper-local impacts in neighborhoods that lack access to adequate healthcare. Each one of these realities means that people struggle in a variety of ways every day–one job loss, one health care crisis, one prolonged utility outage can have a cascading impact on a family’s ability to pay for other basic necessities, like food and childcare.

And so often, those families don’t know where to go for help. For 15 years, long before ESG and CSR  became household acronyms, SpringFour’s mission was to assist companies in realizing their larger role and impact on families and communities by giving them tools to help those in financial crisis become whole. We have always believed that financial institutions have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility, to be a positive force in people’s lives.

Banks seem to be on the same page in the wake of the COVID crisis. Recently, more than 60 major companies, including large financial institutions such as Bank of America, have announced that they will be adopting a new framework for reporting on ESG metrics in partnership with the World Economic Forum. This framework encompasses metrics from greenhouse gas emissions to board and staff diversity to programs to fight income inequality. 

According to BankDirector, “the banks that become ESG leaders will create products that improve the long-term financial health of their retail and small business customers.” ESG programs at financial institutions include more than just retail products–they encompass community services, partnerships with nonprofits and fintechs, green investing strategies, and more. Recently, SpringFour has become an important component in ESG  reporting for many of our clients, who are highlighting the social impact of their partnership with us as part of their overall corporate social responsibility strategies. 

“Banks and other financial institutions play a crucial role in the fabric of every community. They are not only the places that families trust with their money–they impact community development, serve as employment anchors, influence environmental practice and lead local investment policy. Banks have an opportunity through ESG programs, in partnership with experts such as SpringFour, to showcase their values and commitment to holistically-healthy communities.”

–Katy Jacob, VP of Research and Impact, SpringFour

We know that families want to engage in a variety of ways with the companies with whom they have a financial relationship. For example, in a survey conducted by SpringFour last summer, we learned that 83% of respondents would like to get additional financial resources and assistance from their bank. Almost two-thirds would appreciate the same kind of assistance from their credit card company. People are looking for meaningful relationships with entities that they already have a financial relationship with–and they are expecting those companies to deliver.

“It was important for Mariner Finance to include its partnership with SpringFour in its inaugural ESG report. Mariner is committed to ensuring that its digital platforms and customer service initiatives provide borrowers with local support in their communities. Working with SpringFour has enabled Mariner to provide tens of thousands of referrals to its customers who are able to use the SpringFour tool to access verified and vetted food, financial, and health resources in their communities.”

–Mariner Finance

A 2021 survey by MX Technologies found that 50% of bank customers don’t think their financial institution helps them become financially healthy. While this means that half of customers DO think their banks are helping their financial health, there is obvious room for improvement. This is where programs that focus on ESG come in, in addition to compliance with regulations such as CRA that demonstrate a bank’s commitment to investing in all of the communities that they serve. Financial institutions can show that they recognize the role they play in the larger community by dedicating resources to environmental and social programs–and by actively not harming the environmental and social infrastructure of their communities. ESG puts a company’s larger values on the table, and customers are hungry to understand what those values are in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted almost every economic sector and reverberated across America. 

“As banks ramp up their ESG efforts and define their metrics of success, they can be assured that they are not alone. For more than a decade, SpringFour has put thousands of financial assistance resources into the hands of bank clientele. We are proud that our partnership with banks is core to their business model – and that it is a win-win-win for all, helping them meet clients’ needs, increase repayment rates, and improve the world.”

–Rochelle Gorey, Co-Founder and CEO, SpringFour

Since the arrival of the COVID pandemic, it has become clearer than ever before that many American households are living precarious financial lives. While this was true before the pandemic, these struggles are now exacerbated by historically high unemployment rates, food insecurity, and a decreased ability for individuals to band together with family and friends to overcome hardship.

Now more than ever, people need access to appropriate resources to help them through this crisis–and they need those resources right now.

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

The financial shocks associated with COVID-19 have brought housing insecurity to the forefront of our national consciousness. Renters and homeowners have both faced hardship and dealt with tenuous holds on their homes as the pandemic continues, but researchers are beginning to recognize the unique ways that renters have suffered during the crisis. A study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University describes the overlapping set of challenges that renters have faced through COVID-19. With half of renters losing income through joblessness and reduced hours, and a full 40% of renters losing half of their income, renters relied on eviction moratoriums and other financial assistance programs to stay in their homes during the pandemic.

The federal government mandated a moratorium on evictions during COVID-19, but that moratorium is set to expire in June of this year. An April 2021 study by the Urban Institute shows that while the nation’s $60 billion in accumulated rental debt has been offset by over $300 billion in allocated emergency housing assistance, renters continue to struggle, and local and state housing counselors have become increasingly crucial support systems for renters facing potential eviction this summer.

SpringFour has been following the needs of renters closely and has seen a major uptick in demand for rental resources, especially in Q1 of 2021. Rental Resources is now the 4th most in-demand category, accounting for 15% of all SpringFour referrals in Q1 2021. The SpringFour team has responded quickly to the changing landscape of rental assistance, quickly incorporating the new Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) programs into its database. 

“Our focus on the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Programs that are beginning to accept applications at the state, county, and city level is a perfect example of how the SpringFour Resource Integrity Team works. Because there is no centralized ERA access point and the program rollout has been confusing, SpringFour users rely on us to point them in the right direction. In addition to immediately researching, vetting, and adding programs to our database, we are continually analyzing our tools and working with our subscribers to ensure that this unique offering is elevated for easy access by counselors, agents, renters, and landlords.”

 — Cassandra Compton, VP of Data Integrity & User Experience, SpringFour

Housing counselors are at the forefront of helping renters stay in their homes, and SpringFour is pleased to highlight the commitment and dedication of one of its partners, Money Management International (MMI), to step up and provide resources that can fight housing insecurity for renters across the country. Our report, Overcoming Housing Insecurity One Family at a Time: A Case Study of SpringFour and Money Management International, highlights how a partnership like this can be a crucial stopgap for renters seeking assistance in a confusing and challenging time. As noted by the President and CEO of MMI:

“Our vision is to make life affordable for everyone, but sometimes financial coaching and debt management alone aren’t enough to make ends meet. Because rent and utility costs represent some of the most common household expenses, our clients often find themselves needing more help in these areas. For clients unable to meet their obligations, referral to legal services is often to review them for possibly bankruptcy and to avoid home foreclosure.”

—  Jim Triggs, President and CEO, MMI

We applaud the on-the-ground leaders who are helping renters stay in their homes and having profound impacts on those families’ financial health and security. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are ongoing, and renters face increasing housing insecurity as evictions are set to rise this summer. As we work to stave off this impending housing crisis, we recognize that we are all in this together.

“At the end of the day, our mission and housing counselors’ missions are the same: to see people succeed, stay in their homes, and become financially healthy. People need access to trustworthy advisors, resources and programs. This makes all the difference in a person’s success on their financial health journey.”

— Rochelle Gorey, Co-Founder and CEO, SpringFour

Read our Case Study: Overcoming Housing Insecurity One Family at a Time: A Case Study of SpringFour and Money Management International

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

In the year since COVID-19 lockdowns began, more financial institutions than ever before have committed to their customers’ financial health. Together with banks, lenders, employers, and nonprofits, SpringFour is proud to be part of the solution, delivering almost 3.8 million financial health referrals to individuals in need in the past year.

Like everyone around the country, the SpringFour team was thrown into our new reality just over a year ago. There was no way for anyone to predict just how long the lockdown restrictions would continue – and that we would still be dealing with the aftermath, particularly the financial shocks, today.

“Like so many others, the dark cloud of lay-offs and furloughs directly hit me in early 2020. I was faced with figuring out how to pay my utility bills, mortgage, and prescription costs with a loss of household income. Assistance and support from companies were not readily available and phone calls to customer support were met with hours on hold and no real answers. SpringFour’s solutions allow real people, no matter their background, economic class, or education level, a way to get back on track to financial health. When people are faced with job loss, paying prescriptions out of pocket, or any additional family expenses, SpringFour makes  trusted resources accessible nationwide.”

 

– Maggie Kaiser, Client Success Manager, SpringFour

Our staff actually grew within a few months of the pandemic. While everything changed around us in an instant, and we acclimated to being at home with our families during work and school, adjusting our daily rituals, and hoping our loved ones stayed safe, we found ourselves busier than ever at SpringFour.

The mission of SpringFour has always been to provide resources to people who need assistance in a time of financial difficulty. We believe that families deserve help when they have fallen on hard times, and recognize that it can be extremely challenging to know where to go to get that help. Our research shows us that 83% of households would like to get financial assistance from their bank, but at the same time, a minority of households know where to go for financial assistance. So when COVID-19 hit, we knew people and companies would need SpringFour more than ever – and we knew that we were in a unique position to help. 

We immediately brought our experienced Resource Integrity Team together, and in just days, we added hundreds of resources. Within a month, we built three new COVID-specific categories containing over 3,000 local resources focused on food savings, financial support, and healthcare assistance related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Even before the extent of the pandemic was clear, the SpringFour Resource Integrity Team swung into action. In addition to the challenging task of looking for pop-up and ad hoc resources, we were also faced with closures and changes to the organizations that we feature in our database. The advantage of a small organization powered by experienced community development and social services professionals is that we were able to completely shift our focus to the needs in front of us. That meant developing new resource categories and creating a financial assistance guide that has been referred over 260,000 times. Every single person on our team is dedicated to providing accurate and helpful information to people in need – that’s what kept us going through a challenging year.”

 

– Cassandra Compton, VP of Data Integrity & User Experience, SpringFour

While it is a sobering reality that 1 in 10 Americans found themselves facing food insecurity due to the pandemic – many of them for the first time – it is a privilege to be a part of the solution in providing access to affordable and healthy food. And while high unemployment levels impacted families, and record numbers of women left the workforce to care for their children who could not go to school, SpringFour was grateful to be in a position to help thousands of those families weather the storm.

“As someone who has researched financial health, economic systems and economic development for more than 20 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a unique financial shock due to its ongoing impact and widespread reach. Suddenly, financial crises were impacting families who had never experienced such acute need before, for reasons outside of any individual family’s control. The pandemic uncovered what those of us in the financial health field have long known to be true: we are all one crisis away from financial catastrophe. And there should be systems in place to help.”

 

– Katy Jacob, VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

The need was not only widespread – it was immediate. SpringFour reduced its deployment time to less than 15  days in response to the high number of new clients we took on during the pandemic who needed fast emergency assistance for their customers. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic is an event that caused immediate and unexpected chaos – impacting and disrupting lives and businesses. As a SpringFour team, we knew we had to act quickly and figure out a way to respond to pressing financial needs by delivering our solutions faster than we ever had before. Presented with this challenge, SpringFour was able to streamline its deployment processes, enabling current clients to expand and new clients to onboard within a two week window. This efficiency focus by our SpringFour team showcased our role as a leader in delivering financial health and amplified the social mission we share with our valued client partners.”

 

– Scott Freeze, Chief Operating Officer, SpringFour

Our clients became close partners in delivering financial health solutions to families in crisis. Together with banks, lenders, nonprofit agencies, and employers, we prioritized financial health for millions of individuals, making it possible for them to find the support they needed when they needed it most.  

“At SpringFour, we have always viewed our subscribers as our partners. As our subscribers saw their customers’ needs rise, we strengthened those partnerships to make sure we could help them meet those needs.  Whether it was repositioning their S4direct applications to draw attention to much needed resources, adding new categories to meet these new needs, or incorporating new scripting strategies to address new challenges, we worked closely with our subscribers to quickly get the most needed resources into the hands of struggling customers. We know that our partners see SpringFour as a key resource to show compassion and provide real solutions to their customers. We were honored to continue to do this as the COVID crises overwhelmed so many.”

 

– Katie Donohue, VP of Strategy & Engagement, SpringFour

Together with our clients, in the year since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we helped provide:

• 700,485 food assistance resources
• 473,089 employment resources 
• 328,738 utility assistance resources
• 268,033 rental assistance resources

These resources help millions of people keep food on the table, find jobs or apply for unemployment, and stay in their homes with their lights and heat turned on. While families struggled, we dedicated ourselves to providing a way out of that struggle. We know that the impacts of COVID-19 are not over, and will be far-reaching. But even without a global pandemic, there has always been and will always be a need to help families in financial distress. SpringFour remains committed to that mission, in partnership with like-minded banks, lenders, nonprofits, and employers. 

“While this past year was harder than any one of us could have imagined, I am deeply grateful for my team at SpringFour who worked tirelessly even when their own lives were in upheaval to ensure people had the help they needed. I am proud that companies of all sizes and shapes chose SpringFour to be their trusted partner in providing COVID-19 assistance. I am inspired by the way our industry came together to serve those in need and I am hopeful that brighter days are ahead. The silver lining is that financial health solutions have moved to the top of the priority list and we are going to come out of this with a roadmap to enable people to achieve financial health.”

 

– Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey, Co-Founder & CEO, SpringFour

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

Enova and SpringFour are Chicago-based fintechs working together to improve families’ financial health. The two companies began to explore a partnership in October of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, Enova had launched SpringFour resources via S4direct to its CashNetUSA and NetCredit brands. Read the case study to find out more about how this partnership helped customers through the COVID crisis and beyond.

Read the Case Study

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

In fact, in 2020, SpringFour worked with its partners to provide over 3.2 million referrals in over 30 categories of need to families facing financial difficulties. We worked together to quickly respond to the COVID-19 crisis, and it shows: half of our 2020 referrals went to help people in need of food, financial, and health care assistance specifically due to the pandemic. We are proud of this work, and very pleased to share our 2020 Annual Report with you.

We couldn’t have done this without you. The entire SpringFour team remains committed to transforming the way our industry assists those experiencing financial challenges.

To read SpringFour’s press release about the Annual Report, click here​.
To see the Annual Report, click here.

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour

Each year, SpringFour surveys users of its S4pro tool – agents and counselors who use it to provide vetted financial resources to customers in need. The survey helps us get a finger on the pulse of the experience and the impact our referral tool has on our clients’ employees, who are working directly with consumers in need of financial assistance. The survey seeks to gauge the impact of referrals on end users, ascertain what is working and what we can improve, understand how SpringFour affects employee satisfaction and brand value, and gather feedback on individual success stories. This year, we added questions about the COVID-19 pandemic so that we could understand our role in our clients’ COVID-19 relief strategy. Please find the full report of survey results HERE. 

“To truly help a customer, you need personal resources that hit their needs head on. SpringFour provides exactly what we need to give our customers the best experience and chance of success.”

 

– Counselor, Money Management International

SpringFour is very pleased with what we have learned from our survey. We see that we are clearly an important part of our clients’ work to help their customers get out of financial difficulties and lead financially healthy lives. At the same time, we are positively influencing how our clients’ employees feel about their work, and are helping to increase brand value and strategy.

“We increasingly see lenders/financial institutions turning to SpringFour because they know that it’s good for their business to be in a position to offer assistance when people need it. They see that customer experience scores increase, their employees feel a sense of relief, and repayment rates increase because they now have a tool that helps them respond and offer help in a way that they could not before.”

 

– Rochelle Gorey, CEO, SpringFour

SpringFour’s business model has always maintained that providing families with the tools they need to be financially healthy is a win-win-win: for the consumer, the company, and for SpringFour. We are especially grateful for all of the partnerships that we have with companies seeking to do the right thing in this difficult and unprecedented time. SpringFour continues to see 40-50% of its referrals coming from the three new COVID-19 resource categories that we created in the wake of the crisis.

“Anyone who has gone through a financial crisis knows how lonely and frustrating it can be. SpringFour wants to erase the stigma from this extremely common experience by working with financial institutions and counseling agencies to  provide practical solutions from an empathetic source. Our survey results prove that this model works.”

 

– Katy Jacob, VP of Research and Impact, SpringFour

Katy Jacob

VP of Research & Impact, SpringFour