04 Feb 2019

Report: Financial Wellbeing Index 2019

Close Brothers’ Financial Wellbeing Index assesses how financially fit employees are, measured against the eight categories of money worries, budgeting and planning, debt, protection, savings and investments, retirement, properties and mortgages, and tax. The Index also explores employers’ perceptions of their workers’ financial wellbeing and compares this against employees’ actual scores.

Close Brothers Financial Wellbeing Index 2019 1

Key findings include:

94% of employees worry about their finances and only 40% feel prepared for unexpected financial costs. But less than half (45%) have a future plan in place to meet financial goals.
55% of employers don’t offer any support to improve financial wellbeing, but 77% of employees admit worrying about money at work, which affects productivity, talent retention and absence rates.
48% of employers say fewer people are retiring than they would like, and the same number say that their people costs are increasing as a result of the rate of retirement. However, 43% of workers say they won’t be able to retire when they would like.

The Financial Wellbeing Index research analysed the financial health of 5,000 employees and 1,000 organisations in October 2018. In addition to top-level findings, it also analyses scores using different demographics and breaks findings down by sector.