Many of the employees Greg Palmeri talks to have already suffered in silence for years before calling him. “A lot of times people will come to us when their financial situation is so bad that it’s almost too hard to fix,” Palmieri, a senior manager of financial planning at SoFi, said. “You wish you had talked to them a year ago, before they made that big financial decision.” 

That all-too-common moment of crisis illuminates a yawning gap in workplace benefits. According to WTW’s Global Benefits Attitude Survey, 66% of employees say they want more financial well-being support from their employer, yet only 23% of companies are currently providing it. 

During a conversation at a From Day One webinar titled “From Advice to Action: How Financial Coaching Drives Impact For Employers,” Palmieri and his colleague, Trevor Smith, SoFi’s business development director, explored how personalized financial coaching can bridge that 43-point gap, moving employees from reactive panic to proactive planning and giving employers a measurable stake in their people’s financial health. 

The Front Lines of Financial Anxiety

With nearly two decades of experience, Greg Palmieri hears firsthand the financial anxieties employees carry into coaching conversations, often long after the stress has taken root. The questions, he says, shift with economic cycles but often circle back to the same core anxieties.

“When we were in the pandemic era, a lot of people had more time on their hands, and they were more detail-oriented about their finances and wanted a more complex view,” Palmieri said. “Now I find that a lot more people are dealing with debt and trying to juggle that debt—what’s the best way to pay it down? Should they be saving for retirement while paying down debt?”

Palmieri says the triggers that prompt employees to finally book an appointment with a financial coach are almost always reactive rather than proactive. A job change, a home purchase, a new child. He notes that people often seek planners “when their financial situation is so bad that it’s almost too hard to fix.” He often wishes they had sought his help earlier. 

“A lot of people will come to us after the fact. They didn’t really know they could even talk to someone before some of these big financial decisions,” Palmieri added. 

Three Personas, One Approach

Palmieri described three broad personas that often emerge on planning calls: the worrier, the juggler, and the optimizer. The worrier struggles to make it to their next paycheck. The juggler manages competing priorities, such as student loans, equity compensation, and saving for a home, and does reasonably well, but lacks clarity on what to tackle first. The optimizer has the resources but needs help refining their strategy, particularly around tax-efficient retirement planning.

Despite these differences, Palmieri’s approach begins the same way. “The first question I’m really going to ask someone is, what are they looking to accomplish from that call?” he said. “I like to come in with an open mind and try to understand. Basically, people have no clue what they want to accomplish, which is perfectly fine.”

That investigative conversation, asking about goals, then about the data behind them, is what Palmieri views as the real craft of financial planning. “Everyone can kind of Google search it, but trying to understand, does this person know their finances? How do they think about money? Tailoring that advice to that person is what separates a good planner from an exceptional planner,” he said. 

Accountability Over a Sales Pitch

A recurring concern Smith hears from HR leaders is whether financial planning benefits are simply a vehicle for product sales. SoFi’s model, he emphasizes, is built differently. Planners carry no sales quotas. Their performance scorecard is based on three metrics: appointment availability (50%), Net Promoter Score (30%), and compliance with regulatory standards (20%). 

“There are no sales goals or anything,” Palmieri said. “They’re 100% salary. They get a bonus, but that bonus is tied to how well SoFi does, not how many products they sell.” This framework appears to be working, says Palmieri. The show rate for scheduled appointments has climbed from roughly 60% in the early years to 80% today, and 25% of all calls are from returning members. 

“Some people don’t necessarily have a complicated situation. It’s a budgeting or a debt thing, and they want to be held accountable,” Palmieri said. “They want someone to talk to, a nonjudgmental person, understanding, like, hey, your debt was at $8,000 last time we spoke, you’re doing good, you’re at $6,000. Or, wait a second, now we’re at $10,000. What’s going on here?”

The Human Element in a Digital Age

Digital tools now handle the first wave of financial curiosity. Smith sees a pattern where younger employees often start their financial planning journey with budgeting apps or AI chats, and eventually graduate to a live planner when they need the high-touch, one-on-one conversations they can’t get from a screen.

“AI is an interesting point. I actually help train AI models here at SoFi,” Palmieri said. “But it’s still hard to get actual financial advice. It coaches you, it educates you. What I think a lot of people want is, ‘What should I do?’ They want specific [advice]: pay $5,000 toward your credit card debt, keep $10,000 in savings, contribute 10% toward your 401(k). All the frameworks are online. They want to know exactly what to do and walk away with it.”

To address HR leaders weighing the benefits of investing in employee financial wellness, Smith points to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finding that such programs can deliver a three-to-one return on investment by reducing stress-related absenteeism and productivity loss. 

He says the immediate business case lies in the 43-point gap between what employees want and what most companies currently offer. “This is against the backdrop where 88% of folks are worried about basic living expenses, and employees with financial stress are twice as likely to be job searching.”

When Greg Palmieri thinks about the return on his work, he doesn’t measure it in balance sheets. He thinks about one member who found her way out of nearly $50,000 in credit card debt, got on track for retirement, and recently bought a home in the Bay Area. “She just says, ‘I couldn’t do that without you,’” Palmieri said. “I can only be there as a sounding board. They’re doing the hard stuff.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SoFi, for sponsoring this webinar.

Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.

(Photo by CHUBU/iStock)