The pandemic is not over, and while we are not on the frontlines of the fight, the work we do is critical in helping millions of people on the path to financial wellness. We’ve been supporting our team, our clients, and our communities for 20 years, and we’ll continue to find innovative ways to do so.
Supporting Our Team
In February, as the coronavirus spread, Envestnet convened a Pandemic Steering Committee to monitor the situation and protect the health and wellbeing of our team. Keeping our employees’ best interest in mind, Envestnet: transitioned nearly all staff to working from home, provided funds to cover some costs incurred by working from home, and expanded digital security and communication tools.
Of course, facilitating working from home wasn’t our only concern. We made sure all employees on our health plan have the coverage they need to stay healthy, including virtual doctor visits. If they get sick, they have access to the treatment and time they need to fully recover.
We’ve also significantly ramped up our internal communications to keep employees informed and connected. In addition to rolling out a corporate unity initiative called We Are ENV, Envestnet executive management has conducted biweekly all-hands calls that feature guest speakers including:
- Clare Kalemba, RN and Clinical Consultant, BCBSIL
- Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
- Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and Chair of African and African-American Studies, George Washington University
However long this uncertainty continues, we’re committed to supporting our team, equipping them to succeed and deal with whatever challenges lie ahead.
Supporting Our Advisors and Home Offices
As our team shifted to a new workplace model, we continued to focus on delivering the same high level of service that our clients have come to expect. Our trades across all platforms increased 140 percent, and our service volume increased 50 to 75 percent (as of April 1, 2020) compared with January 2020. In addition, our call and request volume significantly increased in March. Our strategic planning and flexibility enabled our current team to handle these inquiries, and we maintain the ability and capacity to add support individuals as needed.
We recognized early on that advisors and home offices may lean more heavily than ever on the Envestnet platform through this time, and that they may need help understanding the all the features Envestnet offers. We continue to deliver resources to help meet this need, including on-demand video trainings, live webinars, and more.
In April, we extended an offer to access MyBlocks™ for free for three months to advisors, their clients and prospects, and employees of enterprise customers and their families. MyBlocks, from Envestnet | MoneyGuide, is a digital financial planning tool that facilitates incremental financial decisions by breaking up key financial wellness topics into bite-size “blocks.” Investors can use each “block” to check in on their financial wellness, identify how long their money will last, help protect their families, and so much more.
Through a strategic partnership with EVERFI, Inc., a global social impact education innovator, Envestnet Institute In Classrooms has offered limited-time direct access to digital courses for K-12 students nationwide at no cost. Over 20 courses are available in EVERFI’s K-12 Family Portal, with a curriculum that features curated, quality educational content across the spectrum of life’s most important topics.
Envestnet specifically sponsored two EVERFI courses—Vault and Marketplaces—both of which can help support students’ emotional wellbeing during what can be a tumultuous and anxiety-inducing time. Advisors and home offices can share this resource with clients and prospects, deepening relationships and demonstrating care and guidance across generations. Marketplaces and Vault will remain available even after the current limited-time access offer expires, so that you can continue to provide these learning experiences to your clients and communities.
Supporting Our Communities
While the community also benefits from limited-time access to MyBlocks and EVERFI’s digital courses, which provide critical financial planning tools and vital at-home learning experiences, we have found other ways to provide support as well, including a partnership with Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization.
For every MyBlocks plan created during the MyBlocks three-month offer period, Envestnet donates $1, up to $25,000, to Feeding America. By supporting Feeding America, we help their nationwide network of food banks deliver programs at the front line of hunger.
Additionally, our charitable giving program, Envestnet Cares, focuses on long-term partnerships with community partners, annual corporate giving, volunteerism, and employee charitable matching and seeks to make a positive impact across communities, touching on a range of issues and supporting a spectrum of populations. The program pivoted quickly in the wake of the pandemic to focus its resources where it could make the most impact.
As the need for social distancing put a halt to all coordinated Envestnet Cares volunteer activities, the program’s co-chairs (who normally lead volunteerism in their respective offices) are instead using a portion of their budget to make donations to organizations, such as shelters and food pantries, in their communities.
Through the Envestnet Matching Program, employees always have their 501(c)(3) donations matched up to $3,000 per year. During the pandemic, we expanded this match to an additional $1,000 per employee towards any charity focused on food distribution, food pantries, or food banks.
As we continue to collectively deal with a global pandemic and historic market volatility, our team has been intensely focused on delivering the same high level of service that you’ve come to expect while supporting both our team and our communities. We know that this is a stressful time, impacting all of us at work and at home, and we’re striving to provide leadership and partnership to navigate a path forward.
The information, analysis and opinions expressed herein are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Envestnet. These views reflect the judgment of the author as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this piece is intended to constitute legal, tax, accounting, securities, or investment advice, nor an opinion regarding the appropriateness of any investment, nor a solicitation of any type.