Announcing the Rapid Recovery Challenge winners: improving job prospects and financial stability

Advice for the government

Alongside the Challenge programme, Challenge Works commissioned a report from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) – Guaranteeing a Rapid Recovery. The report sets a series of recommendations for government and innovators to support consumers as the recovery from COVID-19 continues including:

• The government could take a leading role in developing and supporting innovation on jobs and financial resilience to support people to recover post-pandemic – including allowing GPs to ‘prescribe’ services to support people’s career and financial wellbeing
• Improved official data, particularly on household finances, to help identify where additional support is needed for individuals

It also calls on the UK government to take a more proactive role in coordinating innovation on jobs and financial resilience support. For example through curating a network of organisations with direct links to vulnerable users, enabling primary care professionals to refer people to a range of services to support their health and wellbeing, or allow innovators to co-locate within government-owned sites such as Job Centres.

READ THE REPORT HERE

Targeted and bespoke support

Since its launch in September 2020, the £3m Challenge innovators have provided support to 63,000 people during the pandemic. The two winners will receive an additional £200,000 each – bringing their total challenge funding to £475,000 each – and go on to collectively support a further 100,000 people by the end of 2023.

As part of the Challenge, Hastee enhanced its financial education offer to provide a bespoke tool for users allowing them to take better control of their finances. Giving people access to their pay as and when it is earned helps workers manage their incomings and outgoings, and reducing the need to revert to high-cost credit. This, in turn, reduces financial stress and improves financial health.

Meanwhile, Udrafter has improved its automated online technology, targeted at young people studying or recently graduated from higher education at college or university in the UK – with a particular focus on those whose employment status has been badly impacted by Covid-19. It has improved the onboarding experience and usability of the platform, while also being more targeted in reaching new users.

The two winners have collectively scaled to over 30,000 consumers in just 4 months, demonstrating that through innovative practice and smart use of technology, problems can be solved efficiently and effectively.

For more information on each of the two winners, check out the Rapid Recovery Challenge page. If you have any questions about the Challenge, contact the team.