The step-by-step guide to writing a financial wellbeing RFP

When evaluating workplace financial wellbeing vendors, many teams choose to run a Request for Proposal, also known as an RFP. This guide walks through the RFP process step by step, drawing on the Ultimate Guide to Evaluating Financial Wellbeing Solutions and the 2026 LearnLux Workplace Financial Wellbeing Report for the latest industry guidance. It is written for HR leaders, benefits and total rewards teams, and the consultants who run RFPs on their behalf, including those supporting US-headquartered and multinational employers.

What is a financial wellbeing RFP?

A financial wellbeing RFP is a formal document that HR, benefits, total rewards teams, and the consultants supporting them send to vendors to compare programs against the same evaluation criteria. It typically includes the employer's workforce profile (global headcount, life stages, income bands), the program scope, the evaluation categories that matter most, and the timeline for review.

Financial wellbeing RFPs differ from other benefits RFPs in four ways. The topic scope ranges from daily budgeting to estate planning and beyond, so a program that covers only retirement can still leave most of an employee's financial life uncovered. The delivery model matters because employees engage over years, not days. Fiduciary standards and compensation models vary across vendors in ways that affect the quality of guidance employees receive. And global capability varies widely, so an RFP that does not ask the right questions about country coverage often surfaces vendors who can only support a US workforce.

Step 1: How do you assess your workforce's financial needs?

The first step in any financial wellbeing RFP is grounding the search in what your employees actually need. Skipping this step is the most common reason benefits teams and consultants end up with a program that looks good on paper but does not move the needle on utilization or outcomes.

Before surveying employees, align your team on four strategic questions:

• What is the primary goal? Reducing financial stress, improving the ROI of your existing benefits, boosting retention, driving productivity, or strengthening your reputation as a wellbeing-focused employer?
• What delivery model fits? Education, self-serve tools, coaching, CFP® guidance, or a combination?
• What would the ideal program include? Define what good looks like before you start evaluating vendors.
• Which vendor type aligns with that answer? The answer to the first three questions should narrow the field before you send a single RFP.

With internal alignment in place, validate your priorities against what employees actually tell you. Run a financial wellbeing survey covering overall wellbeing, top pain points, confidence levels, benefits understanding, work-related stress, and desired education topics. The Ultimate Guide to Evaluating Financial Wellbeing Solutions includes a full sample survey. Send it across income bands, life stages, locations, and any international populations.

Compare your results against the population baseline. According to the 2026 LearnLux Workplace Financial Wellbeing Report, 88% of employees report some degree of financial stress, 60% lack adequate emergency savings, 76% carry high-interest debt, and 61% need estate planning documents in place. Financial stress crosses borders, too, which is why a growing share of multinational employers now extend the same program globally rather than running a patchwork of country-specific point solutions. The Financial Wellbeing for the Global Workforce guide details how stress, savings, and benefits literacy gaps show up across regions.

Map your workforce against the financial lifecycle: younger employees concentrate on student loans, home buying, family planning, and benefits decisions; mid-career on retirement, investments, healthcare costs, and debt; later-career on estate planning and legacy. A workforce that skews young will under-engage with a retirement-centric program, and one that skews older will see thin engagement with a program focused on credit and budgeting. For global teams, layer in country-specific considerations like supplemental pensions, statutory benefits, expatriate tax, and cross-border financial planning.

Step 2: How do you evaluate your existing benefits programs?

Audit what you already offer to show where the real gaps are.

Pull data on retirement plan utilization, employer match capture, and 401(k) loan and hardship withdrawal frequency. Hardship withdrawals are a leading indicator of financial stress that retirement education alone has not resolved. Look at benefit utilization across compensation tiers, including HSA and FSA enrollment, life and disability elections, and equity compensation participation. For employees outside the US, audit local pension contributions, statutory savings vehicles, and supplemental benefit uptake. If higher earners are leaving money on the table at open enrollment, or if global employees rarely interact with country-specific benefits portals, that points to a need for personalized benefits guidance, not just more content.

Cross-reference your survey findings against current program utilization. If employees report difficulty with budgeting and debt but your existing offering centers on retirement, that mismatch defines the gap your RFP needs to fill. Document any programs you plan to keep, replace, or supplement so vendors can describe how their program fits, including any country-specific tools currently in place.

Step 3: Which type of financial wellbeing solution fits your workforce?

Financial wellbeing programs fall into three categories. The category you choose shapes the rest of the RFP, including who you invite to bid.

1. Legacy solutions

Legacy solutions include Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and bank-provided services. EAPs offer basic financial counseling for one-off questions with no continuity between sessions. Bank-provided services are limited to one institution's product set and tend to push products from the bank. Legacy solutions can supplement a financial wellbeing offering, but they rarely replace one, and most do not extend to a global workforce.

2. Point solutions

Point solutions address one slice of an employee's financial life: earned wage access, student loan repayment, lifestyle spending accounts, retirement-centric platforms. Each has limits. Earned wage access provides short-term help and can exacerbate long-term financial issues. Student loan programs only apply to employees with student loan debt. Retirement-centric platforms miss the mark for employees focused on financial foundations like budgeting, emergency savings, and debt payoff. Most point solutions are US-only, which forces multinational employers to stitch together vendors by country.

3. Holistic financial wellbeing solutions

Holistic solutions combine 1:1 guidance from Certified Financial Planner® professionals paired with best-in-class money management tools, covering the full financial wellbeing spectrum from emergency savings and credit to debt, investing, retirement, equity compensation, life events, and estate planning. They meet employees where they are across all life stages, geographies, and goals. The 2026 evaluation guide identifies holistic solutions as the industry gold standard, and the strongest holistic programs extend the same experience to global workforces. See the LearnLux program overview and Financial Wellbeing for the Global Workforce for how this comes together in practice.

Step 4: What evaluation criteria should you include in your RFP?

The body of the RFP is a set of evaluation categories that vendors respond to in writing. The eight below cover what matters in practice. The Workplace Financial Wellbeing Buyer's Guide maps each of these categories to scoring criteria HR teams and consultants can adapt.

1. Holistic program offerings

Ask vendors to describe their full topic scope. Strong answers cover benefits education, income and budgeting, financial goal setting, debt management, emergency savings, credit, home ownership, equity compensation, investment management, tax planning, Medicare and Social Security, estate planning, and survivor support. For multinational employers, ask whether each topic is supported in every country the vendor serves, or only in the US. Programs that cover only retirement or only debt are point solutions in disguise.

2. 1:1 guidance from trusted financial experts

1:1 guidance separates a content library from a program that drives outcomes. Ask who delivers it, what credentials they hold, in which countries they are credentialed, and how employees access them. Look for Certified Financial Planner® professionals, multiple contact channels (chat, email, phone, video), and availability beyond standard business hours and across time zones. The leap from learning to action almost always involves a conversation with a trusted CFP® professional. The CFP® credential indicates the professional is trained across the full financial planning curriculum and, in the context of a fiduciary program, legally obligated to act in the employee's best interest.

3. Fiduciary standards and compensation model

This is where vendors most often differ and where buyers most often skip the diligence. Ask three questions: Do your financial professionals act as fiduciaries? How are they compensated? Do they have any financial interest in pushing specific products or asset gathering? The strongest answer is direct: the financial professionals are fiduciaries, in-house employees paid on a salary basis only, with no product sales and no commissions. The contrast with commissioned contractors is the difference between guidance that improves the employee's life and a sales conversation in disguise.

4. Accessible and equitable programming

Benefits equity means every employee can get value from the offering. Ask about availability across income and asset levels, language support, accessibility for employees with disabilities, and diversity of the planning team. 47% of LearnLux participants earn less than $99,000 and 53% earn more, which reflects that financial complexity exists at every income level. See LearnLux member stories for how participants across roles, life stages, and regions use the program.

5. Global workforce considerations

If you employ workers outside the US, ask which countries vendors support today and which are on the roadmap, whether financial professionals are credentialed in each country, what languages are available, and how the program handles employees relocating or recently relocated. Localization covers cultural and financial nuances, local benefits structures, currencies, and country-specific tax and retirement systems. The Financial Wellbeing for the Global Workforce guide details what good global delivery looks like, from in-country planner equivalents to multilingual communications and country-specific content libraries. For employers with even small populations outside the US, this category often becomes a tiebreaker, and consultants running cross-border RFPs should weigh it accordingly.

6. Client support and reporting

Ask for sample reports covering in-app engagement, planner interactions, webinar attendance, financial stress and confidence trends, utilization by location and salary band, and integrated insights from your 401(k) and benefits data. Multinational employers should ask for reporting that breaks out engagement and outcomes by country and region. Ask how the client success team supports launch, ongoing engagement campaigns, open enrollment activation, and quarterly business reviews with HR, benefits, and consultant stakeholders.

7. Timeliness and launch flexibility

Financial wellbeing programs can launch any time of year, not only January 1. Ask how quickly vendors can implement and whether they support launches around Financial Literacy Month, Tax Day, open enrollment, or country-specific moments like UK tax year end. The Workplace Financial Wellbeing Calendar maps monthly engagement themes across global populations. Timing the launch to a moment when employees are already thinking about money drives stronger engagement out of the gate.

8. Return on investment

Ask how vendors measure outcomes and what results their clients have seen: financial stress reduction, retirement plan participation, reduced 401(k) hardship withdrawals, productivity, and retention. According to the 2026 LearnLux Workplace Financial Wellbeing Report, 79% of employees say they are more likely to stay with their current employer because they offer LearnLux, and 91% say they can focus more at work when they are not stressed about their finances.

Step 5: How do you score vendors and make a final decision?

Once responses are in, score them on a consistent rubric. The simplest approach assigns weights to each evaluation category based on workforce priority, then scores each vendor on a 1 to 5 scale within each. Multiply, sum, and compare. The Workplace Financial Wellbeing Buyer's Guide includes a sample scorecard with the categories above, designed for HR teams, benefits leaders, and consultants to adapt.

Before signing, invite finalists for live demos with your HR, benefits, total rewards, mobility, and consultant stakeholders. Have each vendor walk through the employee experience end to end, including a sample 1:1 with a CFP® professional if possible. For global RFPs, ask the vendor to walk through the experience for an employee outside the US to confirm parity. Ask for references from clients with workforces similar in size, industry, and global footprint, and read LearnLux member stories to confirm the program lands the way the sales team describes.

Finalize on pricing model and contract terms. Transparent pricing with no hidden fees is essential. Confirm whether the model is per employee per month (PEPM), tiered, or per-engagement, what is included versus what costs extra, and how pricing changes when global headcount is added. Wellness Dollars and other benefits budget vehicles can offset program costs for many employers.

When is the best time to launch a financial wellbeing program?

Financial wellbeing programs offer more launch flexibility than most benefits. Most benefits launch January 1st. Financial wellbeing programs can launch any time of year, and timing the launch to a moment when money is already top of mind drives stronger engagement out of the gate. Financial Literacy Month in April is a natural launch window because employees are already primed to think about money. Tax season generates real-time questions that a CFP® professional can answer. Open enrollment is when benefits decisions are top of mind, and a program can help employees make better elections in real time. For global employers, aligning launches to country-specific moments (such as UK tax year-end in April or year-end bonus planning windows across various markets) drives stronger engagement than a single global launch date. The Workplace Financial Wellbeing Calendar covers monthly engagement themes you can use to time a US-only or global launch.

Common mistakes to avoid when writing a financial wellbeing RFP

Over-indexing on retirement is the first most common pattern. Retirement is one part of financial wellbeing, but it is rarely the highest source of financial stress for most employees. RFPs scored heavily on retirement features tend to surface programs that under-deliver on the daily and life-event topics employees engage with most.

Treating fiduciary standards as a yes-or-no checkbox is the second. Two vendors can both say their planners are fiduciaries, but if one is compensated through commissions and the other through salary, the guidance employees receive is meaningfully different.

Underweighting global capability is third. If even a small portion of your workforce sits outside the US, a domestic-only program leaves that group without guidance and creates benefit equity issues. The Financial Wellbeing for the Global Workforce guide explains why this gap is widening as more employers go remote-first and expand internationally.

Not asking for outcomes data is fourth: engagement metrics matter, but stress reduction, retirement readiness, hardship withdrawal trends, and retention impact are what justify program spend at renewal. 

The fifth is forgetting the experience of the HR, benefits, and consultant team running the program after launch. The strongest programs include strategic engagement campaigns, multilingual communications, client success partnership, and reporting that lands on a benefits leader's calendar without extra lift.

A sixth common mistake is running the RFP entirely within HR without looping in Total Rewards, Payroll, Equity, and Mobility teams whose workflows the program will directly affect.

Frequently asked questions about writing a financial wellbeing RFP

How long does a typical financial wellbeing RFP process take?

Most enterprise benefits teams and the consultants supporting them run the full process in 8 to 14 weeks: internal scoping and survey work, vendor responses, scoring and finalist demos, and legal and contracting.

Who should be on the financial wellbeing RFP evaluation team?

Include HR leadership, benefits, total rewards, equity compensation, payroll, mobility (for multinational employers), wellbeing, and DEI or ERG leadership. Many benefits teams also include a finance partner to validate ROI and a benefits consultant to advise on vendor positioning and market norms.

What is the difference between a financial wellbeing program and an EAP?

EAPs offer short-term counseling for one-off questions, often without continuity between sessions. Financial wellbeing programs deliver ongoing 1:1 guidance from Certified Financial Planner® professionals paired with best-in-class money management tools, covering the full financial wellbeing spectrum over time and, in the case of holistic global programs, across countries. EAPs are useful for crisis support. Financial wellbeing programs are built for the long arc of an employee's financial life.

How do you measure ROI on a financial wellbeing program?

Track financial stress reduction, confidence increases, retirement program participation and match capture, reduced 401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals, HSA and FSA utilization, productivity, and retention. 79% of employees say they are more likely to stay with their employer because they offer LearnLux, and 91% say they can focus more at work when they are not stressed about their finances.

Should the RFP require Certified Financial Planner® professionals?

Yes. The CFP® credential is also the clearest signal for fiduciary obligation. It also indicates comprehensive training across the financial planning curriculum and ongoing continuing education requirements. Programs with 1:1 guidance from CFP® credentialed financial planners, or with country-equivalent credentialed planners for global populations, can deliver guidance on complex topics like equity compensation, tax planning, and estate planning.

How do you check whether a vendor's planners are truly fiduciaries?

Ask three questions: Are your financial professionals held to fiduciary standards? How are they compensated? Do they have any financial interest in pushing products, asset gathering, or additional services? A credential alone does not guarantee unbiased guidance. If a vendor's planners work for a company that sells financial products, manages assets, or earns commissions, a conflict of interest exists regardless of what credentials they hold. The standard to look for is a fiduciary obligation backed by a compensation model that has nothing to sell. 

What pricing model should we expect from financial wellbeing vendors?

Most enterprise programs price per employee per month (PEPM), with rates that vary by company size, scope, and global coverage. Some price per engagement or with tiered structures. Look for transparent pricing with no hidden fees, and confirm what is included versus sold separately, especially for international populations.

Can a financial wellbeing program supplement our 401(k) education vendor?

Yes, holistic programs cover retirement education as one topic among many and include 1:1 guidance from CFP® professionals on pre-tax vs. Roth, contribution strategy, employer match, and rollovers. Some employers keep a record-keeper education layer alongside the holistic program, but the holistic program typically leads on planning conversations. Multinational employers should ask the same question for country-specific retirement vehicles outside the US.

Bringing it together

A strong financial wellbeing RFP grounds in your workforce's real financial needs across global populations, audits what you already have, picks the right category of solution, evaluates vendors against a consistent scorecard, and ends with a finalist who can deliver fiduciary 1:1 guidance from Certified Financial Planner® professionals paired with best-in-class money management tools. HR leaders, benefits teams, and consultants running RFPs can find more vendor-evaluation tools on the LearnLux blog, or request a demo of LearnLux to see what holistic financial wellbeing looks like in practice for global teams.

Methodology and sources

Statistics on workforce financial stress, savings, debt, estate planning, retention, and focus are drawn from the 2026 LearnLux Workplace Financial Wellbeing Report. Evaluation framework, vendor diligence questions, and scorecard structure draw from the Ultimate Guide to Evaluating Financial Wellbeing Solutions and the Workplace Financial Wellbeing Buyer's Guide. Global workforce guidance draws from Financial Wellbeing for the Global Workforce.