Towry Law adds pre-paid debit card to flexible benefits

Towry Law has added a pre-paid debit card to its flexible benefits scheme in time for this year’s enrolment period.

Employees at the wealth advisory firm could choose to either put part of their salary onto the card each month or to load it with any leftover flex allowance. When staff use the card, a percentage of their spend is loaded back onto the card for them to spend at a later date.

The perk was seen as an additional way of helping employees to obtain maximum value from the package. 

Richard Higginson, head of reward at Towry Law, said: “In the past, people would sign up for the benefits they really needed and then think ‘what else can I buy?’, so they would go for something like health screening. We have seen a drop off in the popularity of that kind of benefit because now they get the benefits they really need and put the rest on a card and take it as cash.”

Most employees who have taken up the benefit have done so in order to use their leftover flex allowance, said Higginson. “We have had a fantastic take-up,” he explained. “Some 35% of employees have taken the card, which makes it the most popular benefit in the package.”

In order to encourage more employees to contribute monthly amounts to be loaded onto the Spree card, provided by P&MM, Higginson is planning a communication campaign to highlight the advantages of this approach. Some employees have already expressed an interest in doing so. “We only launched it last month and we have already had requests from people using it on a one-off basis who want to use it monthly. We are going to open a mini election in June to let them sign up,” he said.