Turning Wellness into Financial Savings with Om Suthar of SQRL

In this 70th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host conducts an interview with Om Suthar, Founder of SQRL. SQRL is a company that combines fitness tracking, behavioral finance, and insurance into one product that services and encourages workplace wellness. During the course of the discussion, Om Suthar offers information about how vital wellness is from a productivity and insurance level and how SQRL is impacting within their unique convergence of these spaces.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:42–  Om Suthar introduces himself and explains SQRL.
• 00:56: – What was the impetus for Om to start SQRL?
• 03:00: – How does the SQRL app work for users?
• 04:39: – Where has SQRL led Om thus far?
• 05:47: – How can employers benefit from utilizing the service?
• 07:21: – How does activity and insurance data converge with SQRL?
• 08:55: – What are some of the potential positive outcomes of Squirrel?
• 11:33: – What has been the response to SQRL up to this point?
• 12:24: – Why has the traditional distribution model been less than pleased

             with this solution?

• 14:38: – What has been effective in SQRL’s efforts to penetrate the market?
• 16:52: – Which scary health statistics demand positive results?
• 17:32: – How does the monetization of SQRL work?
• 18:07: – What has been the end-user reaction?
• 19:33: – If there was one change Om could see happen, what would it

             be?

• 20:06: – What has been the biggest challenge for getting this company to grow?
• 22:12: – What keeps Om driving forward and excites him as an entrepreneur?

3 Key Points:

1. The dashboard showcases aggregate anonymous-level data to track user activation, progress, long-term behavior change. 
2. Om Suthar believes the responsible thing for SQRL to do is to not actually work with the insurance companies, because, wellness programs today appear to be designed to help health insurance companies create public health records off our personal health data.
3. If every American walked 10,000 steps a day, the American healthcare economy would save $550 billion dollar in treating chronic cardiovascular diseases every year.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “What you can do with Squirrel is you can sign up through our portal, customize the conditions and the pay-out amount.” – Om Suthar
• “For every 2000 steps that you add to your habit and keep, which most of our users do within the first 166 days on average, that’s an 8% reduction of the risk of chronic cardiovascular disease.” – Om Suthar
• “We only charge per employee that activates the program.” – Om Suthar

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Om Suthar– Linkedin for Om Suthar
• SQRL – Website for SQRL

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