“We are experiencing unprecedented times around the world,” said Dan Macklin, US CEO, Salary Finance said. “With many people experiencing financial uncertainty and hardship, we are relieved to know that, through SpringFour, we are still able to provide additional services to people in need. In our recent study over nearly 3,000 US workers, we found that more than 40 percent were dealing with financial stress – a percentage that has undoubtedly increased since the beginning of the health crisis and the economic fallout we are currently living through. While affordable credit access is not as easy to come by in a down economy, we want to ensure that every Salary Finance customer is able to make strides toward financial dignity.”

SpringFour’s S4pro technology provides easy access to local financial resources that Salary Finance customer service agents can share with consumers who need financial assistance. The cloud-based tool enables Salary Finance to provide customized service and referrals with real-time access to thousands of local resources for employees of partnered employers who are experiencing financial hardship. Employees can contact Salary Finance’s customer service team to discuss options they have for financial relief and are provided with a list of resources that have been vetted by SpringFour.  Last year alone, SpringFour saved referral customers thousands of dollars each in areas like prescription medication, utility bills, and groceries.

“These are uncertain times and the financially vulnerable population in the United States is growing. In partnering with Salary Finance, we have an enormous opportunity to make a positive impact on people’s lives and ease the financial stress they are feeling,” said Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey, co-founder and CEO, SpringFour.

About Salary Finance

Founded in 2015, Salary Finance is an award-winning organization that partners with employers to offer financial wellness solutions that help employees improve their financial lives. A company underpinned by a social purpose, we’re driven by an ambitious mission in the US: to help 10 million Americans out of debt and into savings. Salary Finance is a United Way Worldwide corporate partner and works with over 500 of the world’s leading employers. To learn more, please visit www.salaryfinance.com/us. Salary Finance branded loans are offered by Axos Bank®, Member FDIC.

Katie Gottschall Donohue

Vice President, Strategy and Customer Engagement, SpringFour

We are here to help. The very reason our company exists is to help people through financial challenges. We were founded under the premise that people need and deserve to be directed to local resources when they need it most. This could not be more true today. As COVID-19 continues to impact lives across the country, and the world, we want to be certain that people know where to turn for assistance. 

Over the last few weeks, our team at SpringFour has been working tirelessly to curate and launch resources available to those impacted by COVID-19. Our team has: 

Curated and built out new resource categories to help our clients respond to the COVID-19 crisis: COVID-19 Food, COVID-19 Health, and COVID-19 Financial — addressing the most pressing needs.

Added over 2,000 vetted and curated resources specific to COVID-19: This includes national and statewide information about the federal stimulus and official health recommendations (updated daily) as well as local resources that provide targeted help in the 100 metro areas most impacted by the crisis. Our team is adding hundreds of local resources each week as they become available. We will continue to do so.

You can continue to count on SpringFour to help you direct customers and clients to local, vetted, and curated nonprofit and government resources. Our team will be closely monitoring organizations for their capacity to serve and will be adding new resources as they become available. We will continue to help you deliver best-in-class resources to those that need assistance. One of the best things you can do right now is to be certain that people have the information they need to find legitimate, reputable organizations that can assist. 

During this unprecedented time, if you learn of any new and emerging resource(s), please let us know so we can have our data team vet and add the resource to SpringFour. 

Thank you for your commitment to ensuring the financial health of your customers and clients and for your leadership today and every day.

Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey

Co-Founder & CEO, SpringFour

Rochelle shared the stage with Moderator Linda Darragh, Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurial Practice at Kellogg, Jennifer Fried, CEO and Co-Founder of Explorer Surgical, and Dana Wright, Managing Director of MATH Venture Partners. Each woman shared their insight on their perceptions of risk and how it impacts the management of their business.  Lots of great stories were shared and insight gained with an engaging Q&A session with the audience of Kellogg alumni and BMO employees and clients. It was an inspiring evening, and Rochelle was delighted to be a part of it.  The event was made even more memorable as Rochelle’s two daughters were in the audience to hear their Mom and the other entrepreneurial women share their stories.

Rochelle and her daughters at the event.

Katie Gottschall Donohue

Vice President, Strategy and Customer Engagement, SpringFour

At SpringFour we value what our users think. That’s why we reach out each year to hear from our users and understand their experiences with SpringFour. This allows us to gain feedback on our applications, find out what is working best, hear what new enhancements are most appealing, and where we can improve. We view all of our subscribers as true partners, and understanding what individual users think  about our products allows us to provide the best service possible.

Coming off of a tremendous year, and a decade of growth and accomplishment, we were excited to see what our users were experiencing.  The results of our 2019 survey are in and we gleaned some great insight:

          – 98% of users agree that SpringFour helps them to provide better customer experiences.

          – 95% of users agree that SpringFour helps their customers reduce monthly expenses.

          – 90% of users believe customers feel more positive about their company after being offered SpringFour.

          – 95% of users agree that using SpringFour helps them feel better about the work they are doing

These stats confirm for us that SpringFour is assisting our users in providing tangible, vetted, local resources to their customers and clients, helping them get on the path to financial health. As Charmain Welsh from InCharge Debt Solutions stated, “Spring Four makes me feel great about my job, knowing I can provide resources to my client to help reduce stress and cut back on monthly spending to increase cash flow.” 

 We also gained some great insight into how our new Tip Sheets for Saving Money are being accessed by our users, and with over 13% of our users not knowing about the Tip Sheets, we’ll be planning some targeted outreach to raise awareness.  We also learned that over 74% of SpringFour users access the SpringFour platform every day.

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“It’s an extremely good tool, being on the collections division can be very difficult and sometimes frustrating, and with SpringFour I can take a breath of fresh air and help the customers in a direct way, the gratitude they show is something amazing, I´m really happy that this company provides SpringFour to our customers.” – Sebastian Godinez, Oportun

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 The results confirm that SpringFour is helping consumers get through a difficult financial period and improving the overall customer experience. We collected numerous fantastic impact stories from users such as:

 “A customer I was speaking with had  lost employment and was now struggling with their cost of living and paying back their loan. I provided SpringFour referrals, and the customer was able to access Catholic Charities and a debt management resource to receive help. The customer is now able to stay on track and not have to choose what bills to pay or how to budget.” – Lanita Crawford, OppLoans 

To understand that SpringFour is also empowering our users to make their jobs easier and provide better customer service tells us we are on the right path. 

 Thank you to those users who took the time to complete the survey, and for continuing to share your experiences with us. We’re excited about the coming year and working with you to increase financial health opportunities. If you have any additional feedback or great customer stories, please reach out to us, we’d love to hear from you.

Katie Gottschall Donohue

Vice President, Strategy and Customer Engagement, SpringFour

It’s amazing how creating the time and space to look back provides the fuel to propel forward momentum. I can’t wait to see what this year brings. While many are looking back at 2019, we are looking back at an entire decade of growth, impact, and momentum. 

And what a decade it was!  We are proud of our ten plus years of impact.

I hope you will take the time to check out the infographic we put together that highlights our achievements over the last decade. Let’s pause here and consider the significance of just that– for an entire decade (and more!), our team has been dedicated to providing the best in class solutions for financial health and for helping our subscribers increase repayment rates while also improving employee and customer experience.  We have accomplished so much while maintaining the same mission since we were founded!

And in doing so, we received accolades, surpassed many milestones and achieved the trust and respect of our clients. We have built partnerships that we value immensely. None of this comes easily or quickly. But more than any of this, I am most proud of the team we have built who have dedicated their professional lives to ensuring that those who experience financial challenges are treated with respect and are able to get the resources they need to help them see greater financial stability. We are helping many people do exactly that and are creating the impact we had intended from day one.

Onward and upward,

 Rochelle

Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey

Co-Founder & CEO, SpringFour

BMO Harris Bank’s Ben Schack was the recent guest on Bank Innovation’s podcast, “Fintech Unfiltered” which first aired January 15, 2020. In this episode Schack, who leads US Digital Partnerships for BMO Financial Group, shares his experience working with startups, and in particular fintechs, to increase offerings at the bank.  The podcast focuses on what BMO looks for when engaging with fintechs, and how they are building out capacity to increase opportunities for innovation by collaborating with fintechs and other startups.

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“SpringFour has changed the way we are engaging with our customers who are kind of in a moment of truth in their financial life, and really changed the nature of that interaction and the way that we are engaging with them for the better.” 

-Ben Schack, Head US Digital Partnerships, BMO Financial Group

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When asked about fintechs that BMO is excited about and examples of partnerships in the past few years that went very well and are doing interesting things in Fintech, Ben had this to say, ”The best example to talk about is our partnership with SpringFour.” 

Ben went on to say that SpringFour “has changed the way we are engaging with our customers who are kind of in a moment of truth in their financial life and (SpringFour has) really changed the nature of that interaction and the way that we are engaging with them for the better.”

Tune in for great insights and of course to hear more specifics about how BMO Harris embraces fintech partnerships and specifically how BMO Harris has deployed SpringFour to bring benefits to its business and customers.

And a thank you to Bank Innovation for featuring this important topic of collaboration.

Katie Gottschall Donohue

Vice President, Strategy and Customer Engagement, SpringFour Inc.