The One With Gregg Hall from Santander: Rethinking Who Financial Wellbeing Is For

Summary

Gregg joins Carl and David to push back on how the industry talks about financial wellbeing. Most programmes, in his view, are designed for people who are already doing fine — guidance on retirement planning, optimising pension contributions, making the most of salary sacrifice.

That misses two groups at once. People in financial trouble don't need a manual on how to avoid getting into a hole — they need a ladder out of one.

And high earners, often assumed to be financially resilient, often aren't. A career of fast pay rises, a big mortgage, a sales role with bonus dependency, and no rainy-day fund creates the same problem at a different scale — and redundancy exposes it.

They also dig into:

• Why financial wellbeing programmes default to wealth accumulation rather than financial stability
• The salary advance debate — and the senior pushback Gregg had to overcome to implement it
• Why take-up is the wrong metric to measure benefits by
• The case for transfers-in, expression-of-wish completion, and app logins as better signals
• Communication: starting with employee networks instead of all-staff emails
• "Do it and ask for forgiveness" — when to make the business case retrospectively
• The pet benefits trend coming over from the US

This episode is about what financial wellbeing actually means once you stop assuming the highest earners are fine and the lowest earners are the only ones who need help.

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Topics on the table:

• Why financial wellbeing programmes are aimed at the wrong segment
• Salary advance and short-term lending as a financial wellbeing intervention
• The senior pushback on contentious benefits
• Why one person using a benefit and getting value from it is enough
• Pension engagement metrics that actually mean something
• Building a programme when you have no budget and no provider
• Communicating benefits through employee networks
• The "just do it and ask forgiveness" approach to internal buy-in
• Industry vs. company — what actually shapes a benefits strategy
• The high earner financial resilience myth
• The next wave: pet benefits

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00:53 — Twenty Years, Four Industries, One Throughline

"I've been doing this over 20 years now. Started in payroll, moved into pension and benefits. Worked across a few different sectors — aviation with EasyJet, luxury fashion, and now financial services with Santander. I'd say I'm kind of a self-confessed pension geek."

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11:10 — Financial Wellbeing Is Aimed At The Wrong People

"A lot of what financial wellbeing is targeted at is wealth accumulation. It doesn't seem to be targeted a lot at people that are struggling financially. People that are in a hole financially, a manual on how to not get in a hole in the first place isn't particularly helpful. They need a ladder."

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12:08 — The Salary Advance Argument Most Companies Avoid

"One benefit I implemented at a previous organisation was the salary advance and loan set-up. I'm not going to lie, it was a really contentious subject. We had some quite senior leaders who were really against it — should we be doing this?"

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15:52 — Start. Just Start.

"If you can't implement a provider, start with signposting to knowledge articles. Start with building a financial wellbeing package that has links out to the Bank Workers Charity, to MoneyHelper. There's stuff you can do without money and without a lot of time. So it's starting somewhere."

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17:34 — The Pension Metrics Nobody Tracks

"The best way I measure pension engagement is how many people have transferred a pension in over the last six months. If you're moving your old pensions into it, you're engaged. You think it's a good product. How many people have filled out their expression of wish form — if you care about what's in your pot, you care about where it's going if the worst happens."

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19:44 — Do It, Then Ask For Forgiveness

"Sometimes the way to get buy-in is to do it, then ask for forgiveness after. Send the email, create the thing, see what impact happens. Then you can go back and say, look, what I did had a real impact. Maybe not in the regulated businesses I've worked in. But yeah, I've used that method."

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22:00 — Industry Matters Less Than You Think

"Ultimately, it all translates. It's all people and their loved ones' finances. So the people you're trying to solve problems for is the same. Where it's different is the organisation set-up — culture, embedded benefits, strategy, tech. The problem is the same. How you approach it changes."

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29:15 — Talking To People, Not Demographics

"I've been to so many conferences where someone stands up with the Gen X, baby boomers table, telling me exactly what I want in my bracket. I'm sat there thinking, I don't want any of this stuff that's in there. Not everyone fits into that neat bracket based on age. You need to go a bit deeper."

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37:42 — The Hot Take: Stop Measuring Benefits By Take-Up

"Senior leaders are always asking me, why aren't people using this benefit? Why aren't people using that benefit? My argument is, if one person is using it and getting value from it, it's valuable. If the benefits are there, communicated well, and people are choosing not to take them — that is absolutely fine. Take-up on its own isn't a valid measure."

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38:25 — The High-Earner Assumption Is Wrong

"There's always a big assumption that the people who earn the most are the most financially resilient. That's false. Someone climbs the career ladder fast, big pay rise after big pay rise, buys into a big mortgage, doesn't focus on pension, spends the bonus and commission — then gets hit with redundancy. Financial wellbeing impacts everybody. Just different problems at different scales."

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