Stride, the pioneer in portable benefits technology, has officially announced the launch of Stride Contributions program, which is designed to help companies with independent workers make contributions into an individual’s portable benefits savings account, These contributions can then be availed by the worker for health or other insurance coverage, as well as financial benefits like emergency savings, time-off, sick leave, or long-term savings. All in all, Stride’s platform will try and solve the top three benefit needs of independent workers i.e. health coverage, tax support, and savings. Talk about the whole program on a slightly deeper level, we begin from its flexible eligibility design, meaning program criteria can be customized as per user preferences. This goes a long distance to help the companies design their own rewards criteria, incentives, and tiered eligibility levels. Next up, we must get into how the program is fully-managed through a comprehensive toolkit and support. Mirroring the comprehensive nature of its toolkit and wider support system, Stride’s latest brainchild also enables you to bring forth a portal where companies can deliver rewards, while workers, on the other hand, can make smarter decisions across a complete set of health & financial benefits.
According to certain reports, Stride’s new contributions program has already bagged its first client in the form of food delivery giant, DoorDash.
“Along with our long-term partner DoorDash and Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro, we’ve delivered a breakthrough moment for independent workers,” said Noah Lang, CEO and co-founder of Stride. “We’re in an era where over 64 million Americans work independently. It’s time for our benefits system to catch up to the way Americans work today, so we created a solution that makes accessing and paying for individual benefits easy, serving the needs of workers while enabling the companies to more easily help them.”
Rounding up highlights is the program’s bid to offer personalized guidance. This involves leveraging Stride’s experience to help users pick the right health plan, set financial goals, allocate contributions towards them, and add personal funds, all in a way that is complimentary of their needs and financial health.
Markedly enough, Stride also took this opportunity to launch Stride Save, which expands the company’s benefits suite to now include savings-related benefits, Allowing a free saving experience with no minimum balance requirements, Stride Save basically enables you to automate saving for individual benefits like health insurance, time-off, and long-term savings. Furthermore, another detail worth a mention here is how individuals can set up multiple goal accounts, quite similar to the ease with which W2 workers are able to automatically pay and save for these financial necessities. In case that’s not enough, then we must mention how the savings account in question comes bearing a virtual debit card to securely and easily access funds. Having touched on the funds in your account, they are likely to earn interest at 4.11% APY.
“We believe that everyone deserves access, choice, and security when it comes to how they want to work,” said Tony Xu, CEO and co-founder at DoorDash. “We’re proud that dashing has helped millions of people achieve greater financial security, but we know that outdated rules have meant there are trade-offs for those who dash more consistently and may be missing out on important benefits. Instead of settling for the way it has always been done, we can continue to try new things and expand the safety net in ways that provide both flexibility and security.”
