Helping Low-income Workers Stay Out of Debt

助低薪员工摆脱负债人生

Stagnant wages, a rising cost of living, and increasingly irregular schedules routinely force many working Americans onto a financial knife’s edge; they’re able to pay their usual bills but lack a buffer to handle even small financial shocks. Part of the problem is that most U.S. workers are paid biweekly, and it can take as much as a week for a paycheck to clear, making the wait for compensation even longer.

停滞不前的工资，不断上涨的生活成本，以及越来越不规律的作息时间，经常迫使许多美国工薪阶层走到财务困境的边缘；他们有能力支付日常账单，但缺乏缓冲来应对哪怕是小的金融冲击。部分问题是，大多数美国工人每两周领一次工资，工资支票可能需要长达一周的时间才能兑现，这使得等待补偿的时间更长。

In addition, many workers lack the credit scores to qualify for standard market-rate loans. So to make ends meet or cover unexpected bills, they often rely on payday loans, auto-title loans, and bank overdrafts – high-cost instruments that may push them further toward financial ruin. Economic downturns, such as today’s pandemic-related recession, only increase dependence on these services.

此外，许多工人缺乏信用分数，没有资格获得标准的市场利率贷款。因此，为了收支平衡或支付意料之外的账单，他们通常依靠发薪日贷款、汽车抵押贷款和银行透支——这些高成本的工具可能会把他们进一步推向财务崩溃。经济衰退，例如今天的疫情相关的衰退，只会增加对这些服务的依赖。

A study conducted at the Harvard Kennedy School explores how innovative fintech products can disrupt this damaging cycle and benefit employees and employers alike. The researchers studied two start-ups that partner with employers to make new financial offerings available as part of employees’ benefits packages. PayActiv advances wages that workers have accrued but haven’t yet received.

哈佛大学肯尼迪学院（Harvard Kennedy School）进行的一项研究探讨了创新性金融科技产品如何打破这一破坏性循环，让员工和雇主都受益。研究人员研究了两家初创企业，它们与雇主合作提供新的金融服务，作为员工福利的一部分。PayActiv预支工人已累计但尚未收到的工资。

 

Sometimes operating in conjunction with payroll companies such as ADP, it serves employees of FedEx, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s, among others. Salary Finance goes a step further, offering employees low-cost loans that are automatically repaid through paycheck deductions. Based in the UK, it has expanded to the United States, where clients include the United Way and Tesla.

PayActiv有时与ADP等薪资公司合作，为联邦快递（FedEx）、必胜客（Pizza Hut）和温迪（Wendy’s）等公司的员工提供服务。薪酬金融公司更进一步，向员工提供低成本贷款，这些贷款通过工资扣减自动偿还。总部设在英国的PayActiv已经扩展到美国，那里的客户包括联合之路（United Way）和特斯拉（Tesla）。

The innovation fueling both business models is the “salary link” – the provider’s ability to directly access wages to ensure repayment of advances or loans. PayActiv applies algorithms to time and attendance data supplied by the employer, adjusting for schedules, tips, and so on, to accurately determine how much an employee has earned at any given point between paychecks.

推动这两种商业模式的创新是“工资联系”——供应商直接获取工资以确保预付款或贷款偿还的能力。PayActiv将算法应用于雇主提供的时间和考勤数据，根据时间表、小费等进行调整，以准确地确定员工在两张工资支票之间的任何给定点上的收入。

“PayActiv essentially takes on zero risk, as it’s only advancing earned wages,” says Todd Baker, one of the study’s coauthors and now a senior fellow at Columbia’s business and law schools. The firm charges $5 for each pay period in which the service is used (employers often pick up part or all of the fee).

该研究的合著者之一、哥伦比亚大学商学院和法学院高级研究员托德·贝克（Todd Baker）说：“PayActiv本质上是零风险，因为它只是提高了应得的工资。”该公司在使用这项服务的每个付费时段收取5美元的费用（雇主通常收取部分或全部费用）。

Salary Finance offers loans to partner company employees as long as they are 18 or older, have worked at the company for a year or more, and make at least $10,000 annually. Rather than rigidly applying third-party credit scores, it uses its own estimation of repayment probability to gauge an employee’s ability to afford the requested loan.

薪酬金融公司向合伙人提供贷款，只要他们年满18岁，在公司工作一年以上，年薪不低于1万美元。它不是严格地应用第三方信用评分，而是使用自己对还款概率的估计来评估员工支付贷款的能力。

The interest charged – as of this writing, rates range from 5.9% to 19.9% – does not change if the employee leaves the company; in that case, loan payments are drawn from the borrower’s personal bank account designated during the application process. “Salary Finance’s exposure is dramatically lowered because its automatic deduction turns an employee’s salary into de facto collateral,” Baker says. Indeed, the researchers found that the firm had a default rate just a fifth of that which would be predicted by credit-scoring models.

如果员工辞职，收取的利息（在撰写本文时，利率从5.9%到19.9%不等）不会改变；在这种情况下，贷款支付将从借款人在申请过程中指定的个人银行账户中提取。贝克说：“薪资金融的风险敞口大大降低，因为它会自动扣除员工的工资，使其变成事实上的抵押品。”事实上，研究人员发现，该公司的违约率只有信用评分模型预测的五分之一。

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