Your Salary Arrived. Now What?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

It's the Morning Drive. UE workers are getting paid more reliably under the latest Wage Protection System changes, WPS. But for millions of frontline workers, getting paid is just the first step. Lots of people are sending money home, supporting families, they're managing savings and transfers and financial risks with perhaps in some cases, limited guidance. So what we want to do this morning is look at what practical financial support for workers should look like and why employers perhaps have a bigger role to play. Syed Ali is the founder and CEO of MyZoi. He works on financial solutions designed to support frontline workers and help them better manage their money.

Ali, good to welcome you here.

Syed Ali (0:46)

Thank you. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_1 (0:48)

Good to have you.

Let's look at the impact of the recent changes that we've seen to the Wage Protection System and how reliable digital salary payments have shifted the baseline for workers. Essentially, it means that millions of frontline blue collar workers are now getting paid more reliably, more transparently than ever before. But what changes for workers, and this seems like a counterintuitive question, but what changes when workers can actually count on their salary arriving on time?

Syed Ali (1:22)

It makes a big difference. So, the Wage Protection System is obviously such an amazing initiative. It's old, actually. It was launched, I think, back in 2009 to ensure that... It's been around a while. Yeah, that everyone gets their salary as per their contract. But there was this 15-day grace period in terms of the salary being paid versus the date stated in the contract. What the new requirement changes is that now the salary is going to be paid on the first of every month, so it becomes predictable. And it's really important, like for anyone, right? Not just for low-income workers. It's important to know on which date the salary is going to come in because people have obligations. They have bills to pay, payments to make, fees to pay.

So this is really important for the people who are going to benefit from it.

SPEAKER_1 (2:15)

So what are the biggest financial pressures that the frontline workers deal with?

Syed Ali (2:21)

Yeah. So if you're talking about the low-income segment, which forms a large part of the UAE society, to an estimate, it's about five million plus, low-income individuals in the UAE, more than half the population here, playing a really important role in the society.

We feel they're heroes because they've obviously, they're not from very well-to-do backgrounds. They're not often, not educated at all, but they've taken on the responsibility to come away from their homes, away from their families and work hard to support their families, sustain their day-to-day lives, but also hoping for a better future, educate their children, go back to a better life. And for them, therefore, the salary that they receive here, they need to ensure that one, the main purpose that they're here for, to send money back home and support their families, they can do so reliably, securely, hopefully in a cost-effective manner. And so get the money back home so that their families can go about their daily lives and sustain themselves. But it just doesn't stop there. They're not just here to sustain the families, they obviously have hopes of a better future. So they would love an opportunity to be able to save some money, to even invest and get us some kind of a return on that. They also run into emergencies and therefore, because of their financial status, often not having bank accounts, no financial track record, it's very difficult for them to borrow money officially and then they fall into debt traps and loan sharks, etc. So these are some of the considerations that they have in working here and receiving their salaries and dealing with the money that they've got.

SPEAKER_1 (4:04)

Sure. I guess if you're supporting, if it's a single UE salary, you're supporting family back home, that changes the way you manage your money. If you're paid on time, that's obviously hugely important. But if you're working to support a family across international borders, just having a bank account doesn't mean financial security, particularly when, I think for all of us actually, I had no formal financial education. So there is very little or was very little available.

How does it, if you're earning a single UEE salary, how does that change the way you manage your money? If you've had absolutely zero formal financial education, like most of us.

Syed Ali (4:49)

Yeah, it's really tricky. And like you said, even people who have a formal education, financial education is not something which is very common.