Financial wellbeing is an increasingly important topic for both employers and employees. A survey of multinational companies by Aon found that 88 percent of employees surveyed experienced financial stress, which has a major impact on resilience, self-esteem and relationships. In this episode of Better Being, our experts — Paul Gordon, Aon’s chief commercial officer for global financial wellbeing, and Fleur Iannazzo, financial wellbeing coach and content creator at Aon — explore how understanding and reshaping financial behaviors can lead to lasting financial security.
Key Takeaways:
Experts in this episode:
Key moments:
(3:24) Financial stress is felt across all salary levels and industries.
(5:33) There’s a big mismatch between employee expectations of financial wellbeing support and what employers are providing.
(13:00) Financial wellbeing is coming to the top of everyone’s agenda.
Additional Resources:
Soundbites:
Paul Gordon: "So just retaining your best people by helping them understand their attitudes to money and how they can do things differently helps that organization."
Fleur Iannazzo: "When you feel secure financially and resilient financially, it really improves your relationships and your emotional connections to people because of that independence."
Intro:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Better Being, where we explore the ideas and insights shaping the future of work.
In this episode, we delve into the psychology of money with two of Aon’s leading voices in financial wellbeing: Paul Gordon, Aon’s Chief Commercial Officer for Global Financial Wellbeing, and Fleur Iannazzo, Financial Wellbeing Coach and Content Creator at Aon.
Paul shares insights from his best-selling book in Australia: Spenditude: A Life-Changing Attitude to Money, which explores how our habits and behaviours shape our financial outcomes.
Fleur brings practical tools from her award-winning book The Money Pizza: The Slice-by-Slice Guide to Being Your Own Money Coach, which was recently named Best Book at the 2025 Money Awareness & Inclusion Awards.
Together, they unpack how understanding and changing our financial behaviours can lead to greater financial security — and how employers can play a vital role in supporting their people’s financial wellbeing.
Paul Gordon (00:00.184)
Hi everyone and welcome to Better Being. My name is Paul Gordon and I'm the Chief Commercial Officer for Financial Wellbeing at Aon. And I'm really excited to be here with my colleague Fleur Iannazzo. Hi Fleur.
Fleur Iannazzo
Hi Paul, how are you?
Paul Gordon
I am so well. We've been so excited to share a couple of things and one of them is why do two Aussies who are both based in London and have written books in Aon writing content for this program? It's amazing, isn't it?
Fleur Iannazzo
Yeah, it's a bit odd. think we're taking over, but it must be something about how we're willing to say the unsayable when it comes to talking about money. Do you think that's it?
Paul Gordon
Yeah, I think that's it. So this program is part of the On Aon series. Please enjoy and let's get on with it, Fleur.
Fleur Iannazzo (00:53.324)
Yeah, look, this sits in our wheelhouse pretty well because we are in financial wellbeing. I'm an associate partner here in London and honestly, this could be the longest podcast Aon's ever done because Paul and I often can't stop talking about it. But Paul, when it comes to financial wellbeing, we have a lot of people asking us like, why bother with this? Why should individuals even bother?
Paul Gordon
Yeah, I think it's worthwhile looking at why individuals should and also why corporates should. So individuals, we survey thousands of people a year around how they feel about their relationship with their finances. And this year we're seeing on average 88% of the audience are saying they're financially stressed in some way. And we don't really need to go into chapter and verse why people would be stressed. It's a volatile time.
So I think what we're trying to do with our program is make sure that people have the tools to be able to reduce that financial stress. We also know that pension funds are reporting much higher levels of members looking for crisis counselling around finances. And this is not based on any age group, it's across the board. So that's another indicator.
Fleur Iannazzo
It's not necessarily salary either or profession. You said 88% of the audience and I was thinking, wow, and some of the presenters too. I'm not talking about anyone in this room, but I would say also we see it across income levels and we see it across professions as well. You'd think that perhaps people who work in financial services are going to have it all worked out.
But actually they don't and they need as much support and perhaps even more support to overcome the shame of talking about money problems because they should have it sorted.
Paul Gordon (02:56.92)
Yeah, and look at corporates too. I mean, why are they interested? We've got 60 multinationals currently as clients engaging in our behavior-based programs. We're very proud of that, but it means, and across different countries, different languages, different cultures, etc. But why are they interested? There's a couple of things. So even our own research, the Aon Employee Sentiment Survey, gives us a great insight into why corporates should be interested in financial wellbeing.
Because out of the top five employee expectations, four relate to financial wellbeing. One is basically we want more financial education. The second one was we want more information about how to retire successfully, particularly in volatile markets. The next one was around women's health and childcare and the related costs to both those things. And finally, more about wellbeing. And we know that financial stress is directly related to our overall wellbeing. So there's a lot in there, isn't there?
Fleur Iannazzo
Yeah, yeah, there's heaps and there was one that stuck out for me. I'm more of a feelings girl rather than a facts girl, but what struck me was in that survey, 37% of employees say they expect their employer to provide financial education, but only 11 % say they receive it. So for me, I'm thinking that's a great opportunity for us in delivering financial wellbeing in a different way to see how we can fill that gap.
Paul Gordon (04:33.656)
Yeah, and we love getting to every corporate because they're all different. They've all got different issues. We've got some corporates that are worried about high performers leaving the organization because they're not managing their finances so well and there's so much pressure on pay. And that's a big one. So just retaining your best people by helping them understand their attitudes to money and how they can do things differently helps that organization.
Others are talking to us about an uptake in fraud, particularly cyber fraud. And we know whenever there's recessionary times, employees can start to think about the shortcut way of finding some money. And the fraud of choice these days is cyber fraud. that's a real thing, isn't it?
Fleur Iannazzo
We're seeing it increase and the social engineering that drives cyber fraud as well. Part of our role is also helping individuals protect themselves from that kind of, from being a target. But Paul, like we could talk statistics for days and days and days, but let's talk about books.
You wrote Spenditude. [Why] did you write it and what did you get out of it?
Paul Gordon
About 15 years ago, I was asking the question: Why are some people naturally better with money than others? And we know this type. You see them and it doesn't, it's not their age or their income. Some people just seem naturally good with money, whereas people maybe even on higher incomes aren't so good. So I went researching that and I researched about 10,000 people who were going through a redundancy program. So they were under pressure around their finances and I found that there was three distinct behavior types.
And from there, I started to research how that all worked, and we're sharing those behavior types in our programs. And along the way, I interviewed lots of different people and found that there is these types, one is a spender, one is a slender, and one is a defender.
And the way we describe that as a spender is a today thinker, no future focus, a defender is totally future focused. And the slender in the middle sort of jumps from one to the other, but is quite frustrated.
And we use that as a baseline to start to educate people on their own money behaviors and how they can make incremental change. But Fleur, speaking of books, just recently you were awarded this amazing prize. I was there when you got it. It was a room full of corporates, charities, and government in London, but it was a global prize on your book, The Money Pizza.
I get hungry every time I mention that book, but what motivated you and how does it feel?
Fleur Iannazzo
Honestly, it feels great. As an author, you write this thing and you hope people are going to read it. You hope it's going to be helpful. Look, I wrote The Money Pizza because when I went through my own crisis, it was hard. It was really hard. I needed to change my behavior really quickly because my income had plummeted [for] various different reasons. I was really struggling with my mental health as well as the finance side of things.
But at that time, I was a banker. So whenever I went for help with working out my money, people would look at my income and my expertise and go, you should have it worked out. Who am I to tell you what to do? And then I really struggled. And like many people, I thought what I need to do is increase my income, but I hit a plateau.
And long story short, I worked out that it wasn't just income, it was: you have to look at your outgoings, you have to look at whether or not you have a cash buffer, how you use debt, what your investment is, whether or not you invest. But also you've got to look at your attitude. Are you willing to make financial decisions? Are you willing to step into this? Most people have a strength somewhere. Maybe they're really good at budgeting or maybe they're ready to take responsibility for their financial decisions.
It's about finding where your strengths are now and also what you can do to change your behavior so that you can be more financially resilient. I could go on and on, but I love it. It was the book I wish I had.
Paul Gordon (09:05.964)
And that's such a lovely thing to hear when people do say that, I wish I'd have read that when I was 20 or whatever it is. Come to Aon and we share all that content and those thoughts with all age groups. And that's why our clients love it. I think one thing to consider too is around how we go about talking to our clients about financial wellbeing. What we do know is every client has a financial wellbeing offer. They just don't know about it.
Because guess what? They pay people. That's financial wellbeing. Thank you very much. They invest in benefits that have been well thought out. They offer incentives. They have wellbeing programs. So, what we do is go in and see how we can make them more effective. And then we drop our behavior-based content in the middle of all that. And therein lies the start of a wonderful discovery and client relationship. The thing, Fleur, I was going to say too, is because Aon is global, it gives us such an advantage when it comes to dealing with multinationals.
Fleur Iannazzo
Yeah. It's one of the first things people asked was how do we get a consistent global program which is culturally appropriate on a global scale, but also can drill down into the specifics of each region of the regulatory system, of the cultural system within each region. And what we have is this network of offices that we can provide that technical on-the-ground guidance, expertise and knowledge. But also to provide a consistent program so that if you do have a multinational company, that you can have the US talking to Germany, for example, and understand that you have your consistency and well-being, but differences, consistency and financial well-being, I should say, but differences due to the different markets that you work in.
Paul Gordon (11:12.378)
Yeah. So in summary, I think it's fair to say that with Aon's expertise in risk and our expertise in human capital, we bring all that together when we talk to our clients. We have clients across every industry. I mean, even last week, Fleur, we hosted a dinner in London where we had senior people from eight different industries represented. And we just said to them, tell us what's on your mind.
It was so interesting to hear that there were similar but very different challenges facing all clients. So not one size fits all. What do think?
Fleur Iannazzo
Yeah, that's right. It's not one size fits all and yet we can definitely learn from what companies are doing or what they're trying to do. But also what's really struck me is just the visibility of financial wellbeing and how that has, it's coming to the top of everyone's agenda. It's becoming even more and more relevant and essential that we're supporting people a bit more in these areas.
Paul Gordon
I might just leave you with a thought. There was research done last year around the link between being financially prepared and our overall well-being. What was learned from that is that if you're financially prepared, and the definition of that is quite simple, it's you cover your current commitments, you've identified the big risks and you've insured against it, and you're putting some money aside for the future. That's what financially prepared means.
If you have that, you will feel more resilient. You will have higher self-esteem and you'll be more positive about the future. And they're three big things that go towards our overall wellbeing. It's a great wellbeing conversation. It's a great conversation for all of us to have with our clients.
Fleur Iannazzo
Yeah, and I'd say don't forget relationships. When you feel secure financially and resilient financially, it really improves your relationships and your emotional connections to people because of that independence.
Paul Gordon
Yeah. So we look forward to talking to you and any of your clients. You're all asking the question, when is Aon going to roll out these wonderful programs for our own colleagues? Don't worry, we're working on that. Fleur and I have rolled a program out in Australia, obviously, start first because they can understand us and then take it around the world. You as a colleague will get to taste some of this very soon.
Fleur Iannazzo Yeah, and just come and talk to us.
Paul Gordon
So that's about it. Bye Fleur.
Fleur Iannazzo
See you Paul.
Paul Gordon
Bye bye. See ya.
Fleur Iannazzo (13:54.235)
Talk to you again.
Outro:
Thanks for tuning into the latest episode of On Aon. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to visit Aon.com to learn more about Aon.