Two new financial wellness reports containsobering thoughts for workers and employers, and the financialprofessionals who serve them.

Prudential Financial Inc. has published a guide to financial wellness programs by two of thecompany's top executives. Financial Finesse Inc. hasreleased a report on optimizing financial wellness programs for adiverse workforce.

Typical medical wellness program reports give straightforwardanalyses of how conditions such as obesity and diabetes affectemployees' health, and employers' benefits costs, and how employerscan use the right kinds of programs to lower benefits costs andincrease productivity.

Labor groups have raised some questions about wellness programfairness and privacy issues, but most players have agreed on theneed to resolve the concerns and keep wellness programs inoperation.

Many financial wellness program reports have taken a similarupbeat approach to the topic.

The authors of the Prudential and Financial Finesse reports givesimilar information, but they also take on some difficult questionsrelated to worker demographics.

Here's a look at three reasons the reports are more serious thanthey sound.

1. The growing focus on financial wellness is a symptomof financial stress.

The concept of financial wellness has been around since at leastas far back as the early 1990s, when J. Grady Cash trademarked theterm and used it as the name for a financial planning firm he ranin Hampton, Virginia. The topic really took off in theemployee benefits community around 2012, when Aflac Inc. reportedthat fewer than half of the workers it surveyed had at least $1,000in savings they could use to cover unexpected medicalexpenses.

Today, many more insurers are putting financial wellness in thespotlight.

One reason is that surveys show that many Americans' financesare in terrible shape. Christine Marcks, president of PrudentialRetirement, and Andrew Sullivan, president of Prudential GroupInsurance, write in the Prudential report that fewer than40% of Americans have enough savings in a rainy day fund to cover a$500 emergency.

Only 22% of the individuals who participated in a recentPrudential survey said they felt financially secure, Marcks andSullivan write.

A second reason for insurers to focus on wellness is pressurefrom the U.S. Department of Labor and other state and federalagencies to base investment product recommendations on what workersreally need. Financial wellness questionnaires can help insurersthat are selling annuities, retirement plan administration servicesand related products and services understand what workers need.

A third reason is that insurers can sell financial wellnessanalysis services without worrying about the effects of lowinterest rates on their general account portfolio yields. Lowyields are squeezing the profitability of interest-sensitiveproducts such as guaranteed investment contracts and disabilityinsurance. Offering financial wellness analysis services is a wayto generate revenue that's not correlated with interest rates.

2. Some employers might be interested in financialwellness programs because, frankly, they want workers of a certainage to leave.

Some workers now think of working past the age of 65 as a goodway to make Social Security benefits and retirement savings lastlonger.

Government commissions around the world are trying to think ofways to persuade more employers to keep older workers on thejob.

Marcks and Sullivan show in their report that, from theperspective of the employer, delayed worker retirement is aproblem.

“Employees who are unable to retire on time may experiencehigher stress levels, a lack of engagement and lower productivity,”the Prudential executives write. “Their delayed retirement may alsoresult in turnover of younger employees due to lack of upwardmobility.”

The cost of a three-year delay in retirement for aprivate-sector worker amounts to 3.6% of total compensation,according to Marcks and Sullivan. That's comparable to the cost ofoffering workers paid vacation time, the executives write.

3. A financial wellness program could lead to difficultconversations.

Financial Finesse makes another potentially controversial point:Financial stress levels may have a correlation with employeedemographics.

Financial Finesse sells web-based financial education programsfor employees to employers.

The company analyzed employee financial stress data for thenew report by reviewing the financial wellness questionnairescustomers' employees completed in 2016.

The company gave each employee a financial stress score, and putthe employees in five different stress level categories, rangingfrom Suffering to Secure.

The company also came up with an estimate of how much employees'level of financial stress might cost, or benefit, the employer eachyear.

Having an employee in the Suffering category might cost anemployer about $198 per year, according to the analysis, while eachemployee in the Secure category might lead to $143 in employergains per year.

One challenge for an employer that wants to address the effectsof financial stress on its productivity, and maximize the financialgains resulting from financial security, is that average financialstress levels appear to vary with ethnicity.

Financial Finesse came up with separate sets of figures for thenew report for workers who described themselves as beingAsian-American, Caucasian, Hispanic or African-American.

The firm found, for example, that the percentage of workers inits Suffering category ranged from 3% for Asian-American workers to14% for African-American workers.

When the firm broke out data only for workers with annual incomeranging from $60,000 to $100,000, the financial stress levelfigures still followed the same pattern. The Asian-American workersin that income category received the lowest financial stressscores, and the workers in other ethnic groups received higherfinancial stress scores.

That suggests that any financial wellness efforts that lead toquestions about privacy or fairness for workers facing financialstress could also lead to questions about fairness for workersin different ethnic groups.