Every June, workplaces put up the flags.
And most of them mean it. The intention is genuine.
But there is a conversation happening around financial wellbeing and LGBTQ+ employees that most employers are not having.
Not because they do not want to.
But because nobody has framed it that way yet.
This is that conversation.
LGBTQ+ employees are often worse off
People who are LGBTQ+ are, on average, worse off financially.
And your benefits programme probably does not know that.
This is not about politics. It is about data.
Research consistently shows that LGBTQ+ people face higher rates of workplace discrimination, lower lifetime earnings and significantly higher rates of family estrangement.
That last one matters more than people realise when you think about financial resilience.
The bank of mum and dad is one of the biggest drivers of financial stability in the UK.
Help with a house deposit.
A loan to get through a rough patch.
A safety net when things go wrong.
For a significant proportion of LGBTQ+ people, that safety net does not exist.
Not because their families do not love them, but because the relationship was damaged, or lost entirely, at the point they came out.
You cannot replace that with a discount gym membership.
The chosen family cost
Many LGBTQ+ people build what are sometimes called chosen families.
Close networks of friends who are there in the ways that biological family typically would be.
That is a genuinely important thing.
It also costs money.
Informal financial support within those networks, covering a friend's rent, helping someone leave an unsafe situation, being the person people call in a crisis, does not appear in any financial planning tool. It does not get budgeted for.
It just happens, quietly, and it adds up.
Your financial wellbeing programme almost certainly was not designed with that in mind.
Are your benefits actually reaching everyone?
Here is the question worth asking this Pride Month.
Not whether your benefits exist.
But whether they are landing equally across your workforce.
Because a financial wellbeing programme designed around a default life, two incomes, family support, straightforward relationship structures, is going to quietly miss a portion of your people.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. Just consistently.
And the employees it misses are often the ones already carrying more financial pressure than average.
That is worth fixing.
What genuinely inclusive financial wellbeing support looks like
It does not have to be complicated.
It starts with asking better questions.
Not assuming that all employees have the same starting point financially.
Recognising that some people are supporting others in ways that never appear on a payslip.
Making sure the language in your benefits communications does not accidentally signal that certain family structures are the norm and others are the exception.
This is where personalised financial guidance makes a real difference.
Tools like moneyappi work from an individual's actual circumstances rather than assuming a standard financial life.
That means the advice an employee receives reflects their reality, not a template built around someone else's.
For LGBTQ+ employees whose financial lives often look nothing like the default, that distinction matters enormously.
It also means making sure employees know what they are entitled to, like pension nominations, death in service benefits and family leave policies.
Legal protections have improved enormously over the last two decades but awareness of those entitlements is still surprisingly patchy.
Some employees simply do not know what they can access, and they are not going to ask if the environment does not feel safe enough to do so.
Psychological safety and financial confidence tend to move together.
Employees who do not feel fully included at work are less likely to engage with the benefits on offer, which means the support you have invested in is not reaching the people who might need it most.
What you can actually do
This is not about creating a separate LGBTQ+ financial wellbeing programme.
It is about making the one you already have genuinely work for everyone.
Review the language in your benefits communications.
Is it inclusive or does it default to assumptions about family structures?
Check your signposting. Do employees know what support exists and do they feel able to access it without having to out themselves in the process?
Ask the question internally. Are there voices in your organisation who could tell you whether your financial wellbeing offer feels relevant to their lives?
And consider whether the financial guidance you offer is truly personalised.
Advice that starts from the individual rather than the average is far more likely to reach the employees your current programme is quietly missing.
That is exactly what moneyappi is built to do.
Pride Month is a good moment to put the flags up.
It is also a good moment to look at what is sitting underneath them.
Written by Caroline Chell
Head of Communications
