What do caregiving and divorce have in common? Financial stress for employees

When Sheri Atwood initially founded SupportPay, the fintech platform was built to help divorced couples financially navigate co-parenting. But she quickly realized that her app could offer solutions to other demographics of caregivers, too.

According to the company's data, 28% of SupportPay's users are "financial caregivers" — folks who financially support a loved one but are not the primary caregiver. Twenty percent of those are sharing that financial responsibility with other family members outside of their household — and struggling to split the burden. SupportPay has recently expanded their offering to meet those needs.

"'I was getting approached by so many of our clients that were facing that same pain, that same stress, that same conflict — except it wasn't with an ex-husband or ex-wife but with family members," Atwood says. "As their parents were getting older they were trying to do the exact same thing with their siblings — sharing, managing and tracking expenses — but there were no tools out there to help actually manage the process." 

Read more: 'There's a lot of guilt': The emotional burden of caregiving

The caregiving extension is almost identical to SupportPay's original co-parenting offering:  Both iterations include an in-app communication platform to keep a record of conversations, and a function that allows users to split receipts and manage custody or caregiving schedules. The platform will also track expenses and support the upload of receipts.

"It's another full-time job just managing it all," Atwood says. "Siblings are fighting over finances on top of thinking about whether a parent should live at home or in a nursing home. It's about handling all of that communication, coordination of schedules, payments and just the sheer stress and conflict associated with all of it." 

Thirty-nine percent of caregivers spend one to three hours a week on financial caregiving, according to SupportPay's findings; 20% spend over four hours a week. Thirteen percent of caregivers reported feeling stressed, 10% anxious, 9% overwhelmed and 8% frustrated. They also experienced negative side effects on their quality of sleep and mental health. At work, they reported using office hours for non-work matters — which is bad for business and employees, Atwood says.

Read more: At every stage of caregiving, employees crave more support from their employer

"If you look at this segment of the population, these employees tend to be the most loyal and the least likely to turnover, yet they tend to get the least amount of benefits," she says. "So it really comes down to, how can organizations and employers help [caregivers] become more productive?" 

SupportPay will be rolling out the caregiving extension of their platform in the fall to their 65,000 users following a successful beta test of 500 users. The current pricing of SupportPay for just the divorce support is at $1 to $3 an employee. The team intends to keep it in that price range even after adding the caregiving support in an effort to ensure affordability. 

"This has not only opened up our individual conversations with the companies in our pipeline but we know that this will also open up conversations to new employers and new customers," Atwood says. "Because maybe not everyone relates to divorce, or being a single parent, but maybe they can relate to being a caregiver."