Less than four months after announcing its financial capability and services division for drivers, Uber Money, has opened a new center with over 100 developers in India to add to teams already in place in Palo Alto, Amsterdam, New York and San Francisco. Financial capability nonprofits working with employers should take notice.
Uber is challenged by double digit driver turnover as it attempts to become profitable without significantly raising fares or driver compensation. While keeping compensation low, the company is still spending billions of dollars each year to attract new drivers and lower its turnover rate and the driver benefits offered by Uber Money is a key part of the effort.
What does this all have to do with our “speed and scale” theme? Well, in less than one-year, Uber Money has grown from start-up to arguably the largest non-governmental financial capability organization in the world with a client base of close to four million drivers and a technology team of hundreds of developers working on tools utilizing machine learning and big data.
Many financial capability nonprofits today are attempting to grow their organizations by providing employer sponsored programs for employees. The problem is that private sector companies are soon going to expect that these services be driven by the kind of advanced technology and data the companies themselves use daily in their own work.
It remains to be seen whether Uber Money will provide real benefits to its drivers. But you can rest assured that as soon as companies like Uber build systems and have processes for their own employee financial capability programs in place, they will start to offer the program to other companies and the public sector as well (imagine an Amazon Web Services for employee financial capability).
