EarnIn was founded on empowering workers and is committed to providing people the tools they need to achieve financial stability. Our focus is on freeing customers from the traditional payment cycle to help them meet their financial obligations and increase their ability to budget and save – without incurring high bank fees and overdraft charges or turning to payday loans.
The reality for too many Americans is that there are systemic racial and economic barriers that hold them back financially. They continue to be left behind by a system that doesn’t work for them. EarnIn wants to change this reality.
Changing this system, and building an economic ladder to opportunity, requires a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. These values are at the core of EarnIn’s mission to build a financial system that works for more people. It means rethinking how we recruit, hire, and train our employees, what events we attend and who we contract and do business with. What does this mean in practice, though? It starts with building a workplace that:
Actively seeks out new perspectives: from the people we hire, to the ideas and viewpoints they bring to our collective work. (diversity)
Acknowledges that equity doesn’t mean treating everyone the same – it means giving people what they need to access opportunity and succeed. (equity)
Encourages people to bring their backgrounds, be themselves and contribute to a respectful, safe, inclusive environment. This has to start with educating people about bias and working together to foster an anti-racist and inclusive environment. (inclusion)
This is easier said than done. It can and will require difficult conversations. It can and will require us to listen. But it also requires that we are accountable to these goals – measuring our progress to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Below is an outline of how we will approach this work.
Our Approach
1. Accountability – Establishing a Baseline and Measuring Progress
Accountability starts with measuring where we are starting from. Below is the demographic data of our Earnin team, as of March 2021, collected using the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) questions and selections during an employee’s onboarding process.
We are proud of the progress we have made with gender and racial representation at Earnin over the past few years, including at our VP level which is now nearly 75 percent female. However, we recognize we still have a long way to go, especially in ensuring better diversity within our leadership team which reflects the communities we serve.
This data drives our formalized DEI plan, including our hiring process, and will serve as the foundation of our next diversity report which we will publish in August to foster transparency and accountability as we work hard to become a company with a truly inclusive workplace.
2. Diversity – Rethinking How We Recruit, Hire and Train Our Earnin Team
Earnin has always worked to recruit diverse applicant pools, however we have more work to do to make sure we aren’t just attracting – but are actively searching for – more diverse candidates. Below is what we are working on this year:
We instituted mandatory company-wide training in August 2020 that raises awareness of diversity, inclusion and belonging, and provides tools to overcome unconscious bias. Our leadership team enrolled in specialized inclusive leadership training to address unconscious bias in hiring decisions.
Earnin established a dedicated diversity council in 2021 with a team of employee representatives to work alongside leadership to define and provide visibility into Earnin’s approach to DEI. The council will also offer feedback on our August diversity report. These efforts ensure that our team has a workplace that fosters a respectful environment for all. Some initiatives that have come out of our diversity council’s efforts include the formation of employee resource groups, mandatory anti-bias training, and voter registration efforts.
We have introduced monthly diversity “lunch and learns” where our team is invited to discuss different topics grounded in racial equity and social justice. These events create space for employee-led conversations about allyship, anti-racism and foster transformational, not transactional, leadership within Earnin.
3. Equity – Helping Everyone Succeed
In 2020, we launched a voter registration partnership with When We All Vote to fight voter suppression efforts. Earnin also entered a census completion partnership with the National League of Cities to ensure that all Americans are represented in Congress. We will continue to find ways to be involved in non-election years and back legislation that fights predatory lending and overdraft practices that prey especially on underbanked communities of color.
As a company working to create a financial system that creates stability for all people, we feel passionately about addressing racial disparities in consumer banking which leaves too many American workers behind. We are currently establishing four community-based partnerships that focus on financial literacy and cultivating future leaders in underrepresented communities.
The murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 made us reflect on how we have a duty to not only make our workplace a truly diverse and equitable place, but to be a force for change in the communities we serve. Our leadership team personally matched all employee donations to Black Lives Matter, totaling $10,000, and Earnin made a company donation to Stop AAPI Hate in March this year.
4. Inclusion – How We are Working to Foster an Inclusive Environment
We recognize that the fintech industry needs to improve access to jobs and career opportunities for people from underrepresented backgrounds. We want to create a company where all of our employees feel represented, respected and listened to. To help achieve this, we have established four Earnin Resource Groups, or Employee Resource Groups, for members of our team, including Intersections, LGBTQ+, Parents, and Women. Later this year, we will also launch three more ERGs: African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander and Hispanic/Latinx.
Since last summer, Earnin has hosted bi-weekly current events discussions. Open to all team members, these discussions create an open forum where people from all walks of life can come together to engage in thought-provoking discussions about the state of the world.
5. Examining the impact of our products
There are inextricable links to how race, ethnicity, gender, and ability status affect individuals’ socioeconomic standing. Income and credit scores determine whether a person will be served well by the traditional financial system or fall to the fringes where predatory practices become the only options.
Earnin wants to change this and our financial tools are designed for everyone regardless of: how much money they have, their credit score, or who their employer is. We believe through these tools we can reshape the financial system and bring more fairness to the status quo.
To change this, we need products that hold up the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe that we are meeting this challenge. Our customers are diverse and come from every state in the US.
In a recent survey conducted in partnership with FTI Consulting, 1,010 Earnin customers were surveyed and self-reported the following demographics:
55% of Earnin customers are Millennials, between the ages of 25-40
32% identify as Black or African American, 38% White, 17% Latinx or Hispanic
70% are female
The mean annual household income is $45,100
At Earnin, we understand that the work to create a truly equitable financial system in the United States is far from complete. We are encouraged by these statistics and are committed to helping underrepresented Americans by giving them a tool to reach financial independence.
