Benefex joins forces with FutureLearn to promote widespread financial understanding

Benefex members can learn to manage household budgets or even use a short online course as a pathway to university credit

London, UK, 03 April 2017: FutureLearn, the social learning platform, is delighted to announce that Benefex, the UK’s leading employee benefits technology provider, will be promoting financially-focused online courses on our platform to their clients as part of an expansive financial wellbeing ecosystem.

Benefex works with the world’s foremost organisations, across every sector from retail to energy, to help impact business performance by engaging people. As part of their new financial wellbeing product, they will be pulling together a variety of different offers and insights that can enhance their clients’ employees’ awareness and understanding of finances in order to manage their finances more effectively.

Two FutureLearn courses are being promoted as part of the initiative: Finance Fundamentals: Financial Planning and Budgeting, and Finance Fundamentals: Managing the Household Balance Sheet.

Developed by The Open University Business School, a pioneering institution that is triple accredited by AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB, these courses will not only deliver valuable skills to help learners to manage finances at home and at work, but learners who choose to go on to complete additional courses within the specific Business and Finance Fundamentals Program can also earn degree credit.

Learners who complete and achieve Certificates of Achievement for these two courses, along with the additional six short online courses that are part of the Program, can be awarded 30 UK credits towards the The Open University Business School’s BA in Business Management. Learners who choose to do this will need to pass a linked Open University assessment module requiring separate OU registration and fee.

Stephen Somerville, Director of Business Development at FutureLearn, commented, “We’re thrilled to be working with Benefex to help their members build their financial skills. Managing finances is a fundamental life skill today and something that everyone should be able to learn about. We’re proud that our platform offers a range of high quality courses from acclaimed university and institutional partners, to help learners get the financial education they need and that for those learners more interested in the subject, we offer a pathway into a more formal accreditation.”

Gethin Nadin, Director Ecosystems at Benefex, commented:

“We believe financial wellbeing is an outcome and not a single product. Our approach is to ensure employees fully understand their own finances before they can plan for the future. Adding FutureLearn to our ecosystem means our clients’ employees can gain financial confidence as they start their journey to financial wellbeing. ”

Notes to editors

About FutureLearn

“Pioneering the best social learning experiences for everyone anywhere”

Founded by The Open University in 2012, FutureLearn is a social learning platform, designed to support learning through conversation. It offers almost 6 million learners free online courses from world-leading UK and international universities, centres of research excellence and specialist education providers like the British Council, Creative Skillset and European Space Agency. FutureLearn is an international platform with over 75% of its users based outside of the UK.

About Benefex

Benefex is the business behind RewardHub, the award-winning global employee benefits platform. We tailor smart and measurable packages built specifically to engage employees.  It’s the perfect home for your reward and benefits scheme, and is a powerful and secure portal for everything from employee data to the benefits themselves.

With an average 22% of payroll worldwide being spent on employee benefits, we’re helping HR drive untapped value from this spend. Using real-time data, we enable organisations to truly personalise their benefits, delivering more choice than ever before to employees around the globe, anytime, anywhere, on any device. As an accredited Living Wage Employer, we are as passionate about employee engagement as our clients are.

Launched in 2011, RewardHub enables over 200 of the world’s largest employers to run, manage and engage their employees in reward and benefit programmes. Our clients include Autotrader, Barclays, Boots, BT, E.ON UK, Experian, London Stock Exchange and Worldpay. Experience the one platform you need to drive employee engagement in benefits; find us at www.benefex.co.uk.

For more information, please contact:

Rachel MacPherson, PR Executive, FutureLearn
Email: rachel.macpherson@futurelearn.com

Niamh O’Grady, Senior Communications Manager, FutureLearn
Email: niamh.ogrady@futurelearn.com