This is what banks are missing
Having your first child changes everything. Not only your daily life, but also the way you think. Actually it revives the instinct of sharing your knowledge and teaching your kids everything. Of course you want to teach him or her how to play football. But in the meantime looking after your family makes you more financially savvy than ever before. And you are getting really eager to raise them to become a financially savvy people as well. Most of our team members had the same feeling so we started working on an extension of the banking app that we are developing.
Of course we got started with a lot of research, e.g. parental attitudes towards giving pocket money, talking about money (either digital or cash), how to spend and save. We were also inspired by Ron Lieber, the author of The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money which was an instant New York Times bestseller.
We really believe in the Design Sprint methodology and focused work. So we spent three full days to create a prototype which can help parents to raise their children to become financially savvy people. During the first interview sessions we identified the focus points as follows: 1. educating 2. wants & needs 3. understanding money 4. curiosity & interest 5. saving for future. It quickly became evident that the sweet spot is the education of the young generation(s). All of the solution sketches aimed to solve this problem. For me, being in the decision-making role, it was an easy call to pick out the right way. Afterwards this led to a framework which supports different age groups, sets the structure of the syllabus, helps parents to stay motivated and prevents them from getting lost.
We had long discussion about linking pocket money and chores and reached the same conclusion as Ron Lieber’s advice: “Allowance is instructional, and money is a tool for learning. We don’t yank kids’ books or art supplies when they don’t finish their chores (or don’t do them well, or whine while doing them), so we shouldn’t take money away either.” Linking pocket money and chores seems an easy choice for parents and it may work for a while, but we don’t want to feed a bad habit. Kids should learn that they must do chores for free, same as parents, even if it is hard to accept.
Our philosophy is to learn by doing things so we didn’t stop at this point. When parents considered their kids mature enough they will be able to open a bank account and request a bank card for them easily. This is the point when kids start exploring how to manage their money on their own. This can be started at a surprisingly young age since we are not just giving the opportunity, but also the possibility for parents to have control over their kids’ finances. Besides the lessons framework there are pocket money-related functions: parents can set the allowed merchants, check the transactions and motivate their children to learn of the advantages of saving up.
These are achingly missing functions in almost every bank even though these parents make up one of the most appealing target groups for all banks. These parents are becoming as financially savvy as ever at this life stage and therefore they are the most open to several banking products, for example mortgage, retirement saving, etc. These functions are the added value that our app could give as an advantage to innovative banks over traditional banking that doesn’t pay much attention to their clients’ changing life stages and needs.
We are all ears about your tricks in regards of family finances! Reach out if you want to be included in the evolution of our concept.
