Blog 11: OfColor

Financial wellness for employees of color

Company: OfColor offers a financial wellness platform designed to improve the financial health of employees of color. The company partners both directly with employers as well as HR benefit providers to offer their clients’ employees wealth-building solutions focused on budgeting, savings, and automated debt reduction, thus enabling employers to save on benefits, improve retention and compel recruitment while improving the financial health of minority employees.

HQ Location & Year Founded: Maplewood, NJ, 2019

Founder: Yemi Rose is the founder and CEO of OfColor. Yemi has spent almost two decades at the intersection of financial services and communications/marketing focused on financial wellness, most recently as the Vice President of Financial Wellness Enterprise Initiatives with Prudential Financial’s Global Communications Group. He led the development of Prudential’s Financial Wellness Census research project, as well as “The Cut,” which focused on underserved consumers. He writes and speaks extensively on the racial wealth gap, and his writings on the subject have been published in Time, Black Enterprise, The Root, Blavity, BenefitsPro, and Money.com. Yemi has also previously worked with major financial institutions such as BlackRock, KPMG, and Thomson Financial. He holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Communications from Cornell University.

Funds Raised and VC Investors: $2.7 million from PSG and Techstars

1.    Where did the idea for OfColor originate?

I came up professionally through several large financial services companies, starting in the analyst training program at Thomson Financial. I have long been working at the intersection of finance and communications, which is my academic background. I have also been on a personal journey as an immigrant and have been amazed at how this country tolerates such a huge racial wealth gap. I came to a moment in life where I decided to lean in on purpose. At BlackRock, I was part of massive machine and did not feel like I was making a real impact. Prudential offered me the opportunity to lean in on purpose as the leader of their financial wellness census, which was especially targeting underserved groups. There, I had a front row seat to financial wellness.

Through this experience, I knew that I wanted to focus on the folks most in need of intervention, namely employees of color. These are the folks most impacted by the racial wealth gap. I originally didn’t know what part of the problem to tackle first. The wealth gap is so large that it can be really disheartening. But I really dove into the data, and leaned in. I tested a few “silver bullet” ideas at first, but ultimately decided to create a holistic tool set that meets people where they are.

2.    What is the key problem that OfColor intends to solve?

Putting a real dent in the racial wealth gap is the north star for our entire team, but we know that we are only tackling a small slice of the problem right now.  This is because we’re focused on people who already have jobs, and good ones with benefits at that. But it’s a start for us and we make sure that we continue to advocate for policy change while we also do our work. We come to work every day focused on empowering workers of color to build wealth by giving them the technology, content, coaching, and community. There are a lot of large employers out there that want to live their values and support minority employees but may not know where to start. Anti-bias training can only go so far, and token promotions don’t solve the underlying issues. We offer an alternative that focuses on all employees of color and looks to drive real change in their lives.

3.    How are you most differentiated as a service?

We have built a financial services platform for us, by us, that puts people of color at the center. Personal finance very often defaults to “white” and focuses more on personal responsibility while ignoring the systemic barriers to wealth creation. We flip all of this on its head. We provide users with financial advice from coaches who look like them and can help to guide them through. We deploy in enterprises and focus on driving engagement. We are driving true systemic changes. Our platform helps organizations as well by reducing costs such as payroll taxes and healthcare spending and by increasing productivity. Our value to the individual is to help them build out a financial legacy.

What OfColor offers is not very easy to replicate. As one of very few Black founders that has raised this type of funding, we have an opportunity to lean in and create real change at scale, and companies are coming to us realizing that what we have built is special and unique.

4.    What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?

While we are just in our early days, we have already signed agreements and deployment with leading employers such as CVS. We came up through their Techstars accelerator program, and to support their efforts to improve the financial health of all employees nationally.

5.    What lies ahead in the product plans for OfColor?

Driving real change is difficult work, and so we are focused on really building up the community focused aspects of our offering that will serve to drive engagement with our offering. We aim to both entertain and increase knowledge that leads to financial health and legacy. This year look for us to continue to enhance our community and social platform offerings, as well as IP that offers fair capital to users that need it.

6.    What are the long-term strategic growth objectives?

We believe the workplace is one of the frontlines in the battle to close the racial wealth gap. If we improve the financial health of the employees that are most in need of help (known to be employees of color), then we create a ripple effect that benefits their companies and communities. Our goal is to grow the platform and usership to a point where users have a single place to get their money right, learn how to navigate biases in our financial system, and can actually invest towards building a financial legacy.

Ron’s Take

While segments of the country are pushing back on talking openly about the barriers and burdens that have been placed systemically on racial minorities in the US, the need is becoming increasingly acute to chip away at these barriers and the inequities they have created. Specifically, the way personal finance institutions speak to Black and other communities of color needs to change. Yemi Rose’s deep experience in financial communication and his passion for impact will give OfColor a sustainable edge as they partner with organizations that understand that better financial tools and a more customized experience will lead to more engagement, financial literacy and well being across the board. OfColor is still at a nascent stage, but has tapped into an opportunity of enormous magnitude to correct wrongs and build more wealth equality from the bottom up.