Brightside Raises $35.1M in Series A Financing To Fuel Growth

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Jun 16, 2020, 11:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, June 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Brightside, the leading financial care platform for employers, today announced that it raised $35.1 million in Series A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from existing investors Comcast Ventures and Trinity Ventures, the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, and others. This funding will be used to bring Brightside to more employers and families at a time when they need it most, and improve its financial health offering.

Employee financial stress costs employers nearly $4,000 per employee per year under normal circumstances, according to recent estimates.^1,2 Millions of working Americans facing the loss or reduction of income in at least one family member will exacerbate this impact. Financial stress reduces productivity and retention, drives up healthcare costs, and poses a major challenge to any employer with diversity and inclusion goals. Brightside helps employers improve the financial health of their workforce by providing a single destination for employees to address any personal finance need. Brightside combines a human-approach to financial health via dedicated Financial Assistants, available to all employee families with advanced rules engines and unique products linked to paychecks in a way that provides real solutions to employees' financial stress. On average, Brightside puts over $1,200 back in the pockets of the families they serve.

"The cost to employers of poor employee financial health is staggering and point solutions, while good for some situations, often make the situation worse," said Tom Spann, CEO and co-founder of Brightside. "We have proven that a holistic approach, combined with financial products built for this population, can have a significant effect on people's lives and on the employer's bottom line. This funding will help us bring Brightside to more families as more employers see real financial health as a crucial part of their health benefit package. Investing in employee financial health has a much greater benefit for the health and well-being of families than simply providing stop-gap financial relief."

"Brightside is creating a new way to improve the financial health of working families, at a time when this endeavor is mission-critical to the future of our country. Employers are uniquely motivated and positioned to improve employee financial health, during business-as-usual and especially during times of economic crisis, but need a single platform that simply curates and integrates the myriad of point solutions in a way that really works for employees," said Alex Rampell, General Partner at a16z. "With Brightside's experienced management team and their unique approach of human navigation and tech, the opportunity to meaningfully improve families' lives is tremendous. I'm excited to work with Brightside as they continue to develop and scale their platform."

About Brightside
Brightside is the first employer-based financial care platform to drive meaningful ROI for employers by making paychecks go farther for the 72% of Americans who are not financially healthy.³ Since 2018, its Financial Assistants, proprietary rules engine, and innovative products have helped thousands of families save more than $1,200 each while improving emergency savings and reducing debt, resulting in improved productivity, retention, and diversity while lowering healthcare costs. Brightside is located in San Francisco, CA, Chandler, AZ, and Philadelphia, PA. For more information, please visit: https://www.gobrightside.com.

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¹John Hancock 2019 Financial Stress Survey, https://assets.jhnavigator.com/managed_assets/itemFiles/USA/Financial_Stress_Whitepaper_Secured_FINAL_10.28.19.pdf

² Salary Finance study as reported in World at Work https://www.worldatwork.org/workspan/articles/employees-financial-stress-costs-employers

³Financial Health Network 2018 Baseline Survey, 2/26/2019
https://finhealthnetwork.org/research/u-s-financial-health-pulse-2018-baseline-survey-results/

SOURCE Brightside