Everyday employees are more financially stressed than ever. In fact, our Financial Wellness Think Tank™ found that the percentage of employees in financial crisis – defined as not being able to meet basic needs – increased by 24% from 2022 and 2023.
It’s clear that financial stress negatively impacts employees’ quality of life and hinders employers’ productivity.
That’s where Aimee comes in.
Aimee, short for Artificial Intelligence Motivating Employees Everywhere, is the first virtual financial coach to diagnose users’ most pressing financial needs and immediately connect them to tools, benefits, resources, and even live financial coaches to meet those needs. Users also receive a unique Financial Wellness Score and personally tailored Action Plan that breaks down priority actions into digestible, easy-to-understand steps. As users progress, Aimee provides financial recommendations, nudges, and motivation in real-time, all while allowing users to ask any financial- or benefits-related questions, producing concise and trustworthy answers instantaneously.
A few more noteworthy details that set Aimee apart from any other AI tool:
- The knowledge base underpinning Aimee is unmatched: 25 years of live coaching experience, regular training input from our team of experienced CFP® professional financial coaches, and ongoing proprietary research conducted by our in-house Financial Wellness Think Tank™ drive constant improvements to Aimee’s capabilities.
- We put end-users/employees first – always: As mentioned, we are independent and unbiased, and Aimee (and our live coaches) is 100% aligned with the user’s best interest. Plus, Aimee is provided free of cost to employees (as an employer-sponsored benefit), making her accessible to everyone, especially those who need help the most.
- We are a holistic solution: There are thousands of point solutions, from earned wage access tools to student loan payoff tools to emergency fund building tools, and more. Some solve for specific needs very well, but there are virtually no personalized, holistic platforms that understand an employee’s overall financial situation to help ensure point solutions are used responsibly to guide employees down a path to financial wellness. Aimee fills this gap.
- We prioritize the human element: Our coaches will always be at the center of what we do, but our technological innovations amplify their expertise, knowledge, and proven strategies – driving meaningful change for millions of employees. We studied the market and looked closely at how our live and AI-powered coaching could and should connect before building BLUE, a proprietary back-end system that seamlessly links the two. With the user’s permission, live coaches are able to pick up where Aimee left off, quickly understanding the user’s challenges, goals, and personalized Action Plan they are working on. Collaborating in real-time over calls (of chat) allows coaches to record progress on the plan and also add any necessary steps, which users see in their plan when they visit Aimee again, resulting in seamless integration and enables faster, more meaningful progress for users.
- We consistently change financial lives: For example, 54% of users who initially report “high” or “overwhelming” financial stress go on to report “some” or “no” financial stress, 81% of users with little or no emergency savings go on to build a 1-month emergency fund when prompted by Aimee, and 72% of users who report low credit scores go on to boost their score to at least 740 when prompted by Aimee.
- We deliver significant value for employees and employers:Employees get trusted, personalized, and ongoing coaching at no cost (provided as an employer-sponsored benefit). For less than $10/employee annually, employers can provide critically needed help. Employee financial wellness improves, which in turn improves productivity and morale, reduces turnover, and increases awareness, appreciation, and usage of often ignored but valuable benefits. On average, the platform costs less than 0.01% of an employer’s annual benefits budget and delivers significant ROI.
New developments:
In last year’s entry, we teased the upcoming launch of Ask Aimee Anything, a new feature underpinned by the AI technology behind ChatGPT but designed to overcome common AI limitations and challenges like social biases, information accuracy, and information recency.
We are happy to report that it was successfully deployed in January of 2024! With it, users can ask Aimee any personal finance questions and instantly get concise, digestible, and, most importantly, trustworthy responses.
Our platform uses multiple transformer models that have been fine-tuned to ensure that responses are fast, accurate, and up to date. Importantly, Aimee is trained on a closed universe of original content created and maintained by our on-staff team of CFP® professional financial coaches only (not the wider internet), preventing biased or inaccurate responses. Additionally, our coaches provide ongoing training input, accelerating Aimee’s learning.
This July, we took things a step further with the launch of a first-of-its-kind enhancement to Ask Aimee Anything, making it possible for employees to ask Aimee any questions about their own benefits package and receive instant, accurate responses plus direct links to their benefits and curated support resources. In this case, the AI is trained on the users’ own employee benefits package only. The result is increased understanding, awareness, and usage of valuable benefits that can enhance financial wellness that otherwise would go under-appreciated and underutilized.
By making it easier to get answers to pressing financial and benefits questions, we are closing the gap from intention (i.e., “I know I should increase my retirement savings”) to action/benefits utilization (i.e., the employee is now getting their full match and feels informed/empowered).
This is only the beginning. Solving for GPT’s biggest limitations is opening the door for a new wave of advancements within the financial wellness and benefits industries—creating new tools to help everyday employees improve their financial situation.
Aimee has grown significantly since its launch in 2021, surpassing 8.3 million interactions in 2023, a 300% increase YOY. Now available to over 20,000 companies, including Comcast, Ally Bank, The Capital Group, CVS Health, JP Morgan Chase, the NFL Players Association, Meta, LVMH, and more, we’ve established a track record of motivating positive change, at scale (NOTE: CLIENT NAMES CONFIDENTIAL).
- CEO Liz Davidson on Aimee, Bloomberg Technology
- Aimee demo:
- To view additional functionalities, visit our employee Hub.