This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
We’re sitting down with leaders on the business side of the creator economy to get their best advice for creators looking to launch and develop their careers. This week we spoke with Kristen Anderson, the CEO and co-founder of Catch.
Catch is a U.S.-based payroll and benefits company for creators, freelancers, contractors, and other self-employed people. It provides free health insurance shopping assistance, free automated retirement and paid time off savings tools, and free tax withholding services. Catch doesn’t charge users anything for its services and instead makes money through commissions from health insurance providers.
We spoke with Anderson about the “antiquated” financial system in the U.S., why creators sometimes struggle to plan their finances; what creators need to know about securing healthcare in 2023, and more.
Catch is on a mission to help creators set up services that employees working at a traditional company would normally receive—tax withholding, retirement plans, accumulated paid time off, and health insurance. While Catch is not a health insurance provider, it allows users in the U.S. to shop for federal marketplace health insurance plans. Users can also enter and track their income streams, and automatically set aside money for retirement, vacation time, and taxes.
“Unfortunately, our financial system in this country is built off of this fairly antiquated model of connecting employers to employees through benefits, right? … And what we found, and sort of why we started the company, was we don’t think that that’s how the world has to work,” Anderson told Passionfruit.
