Personal Finance Online Training — Market and Competitor Research
We are a group of undergraduate students at UChicago intending to work on an online personal finance training module for our 100-day startup challenge. The module will be similar to the format of AlcoholEdu which we can potentially sell to colleges or other similar educational organizations.
-The potential size of the eLearning market
The size of the eLearning market was estimated to be over USD 165 Billion in 2015 and is likely to grow by 5% between 2016 and 2023, exceeding USD 240 Billion. Factors such as the possibility of allocating a lower budget for eLearning purposes (compared to traditional education methods,) together with increased flexibility in learning are expected to drive industry growth.
According to Ambient Insight, the U.S. eLearning market size should be over USD 27 billion by the end of 2016. The North American region accounts for more than 50% of the total self-paced eLearning market share in the world in 2015, and according to the latest market study released by Technavio, the market size of the global corporate eLearning market is predicted to reach close to USD 31 billion in revenue by the end of 2020.
An important trend in the market should be noted that the mobile experience is slowly impacting the browser experience. More than 60% of all online video is now consumed on mobile devices (Kleiner Perkins Internet Trends). According to Josh Bersin, the next generation of corporate learning systems, for example, could look more like social sites BuzzFeed and YouTube and less like a course catalog. Millennials “love their cell phones” and 87 percent of them claim that “Smartphone Never Leaves My Side”.
A large and growing market makes the design of an online training module promising. Accompanied by the growing consumer preference for mobile devices, we could further improve our training module to be accessible on the phone. One problem that we see with the Alcoholedu is that the course needs to be completed on a computer, which could be further improved by designing a mobile-capable user interface.
-The gap in the market and our opportunity
College students are often either unaware of the resources available to them or unable to utilize these tools to their maximum potential. Especially for first-year students, being in charge of one’s own finances provides unique challenges that are difficult to manage without help. Although personal finance classes are offered at some schools, the student must also work to balance their class schedule and thus must determine if taking this class will actually provide long-term benefit. Furthermore, students that are unable to fit the class into their schedule miss out on the learning offered through the class.
We see this as an opportunity to introduce a short module (~1–2 hours) that would be a mandatory requirement for all entering first-years in college, similar to existing training on alcohol and sexual harassment. We think its just as important for a college student to know how to balance their personal budget sheet as it is for them to know the signs of alcohol poisoning.
-Other products existing and assessment of their product-market fit
Currently, competitors are mainly online courses that require an extensive commitment for completion. These are often teacher-led and occur over multiple weeks.
- LendEDU: College Personal Finance Course
good: Clear curriculum plan, total duration: 1.5 hours
bad: not interactive, text heavy
https://lendedu.com/blog/college-personal-finance-course
- Dave Ramsey — Foundations in Personal Finance College Edition:
good: offer financial literacy curriculum to institutions and resources on how to improve their retention rates (reduce the # of people who drop out due to lack of financial resources)
bad: targeting niche colleges (most likely public schools? that don’t have enough funding); selling curriculum for classes
https://www.daveramsey.com/school/college
- Everfi: Financial Literacy for K-12
good: Interactive, comprehensive financial knowledge training
bad: Its financial literacy course requires 6–8 hours of commitment and is targeted at only K-12 students
https://everfi.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EVERFI-FinLit_Information-Sheet.pdf
Note: Everfi is the company in charge of the AlcoholEdu and sexual assault prevention training modules.
Additionally, there are a lot of online guides and calculators that aid with planning and similar forecasting functions.
good: plenty of options to decide which tools to use; customizable for individual schools
bad: difficult to effectively use all of the tools; assignments and quizzes may further demotivate students
-What potential customers want and what their other pain points might be
Colleges are interested in a simple, one-stop solution that would allow them to support college students in making better financial decisions. Developing colleges’ own system requires a large amount of input, which makes a third-party financial education training desirable. An interactive module with personalized feedback for college students is a good way to increase awareness of personal finance among college students.
-What are potential ways to make a profit?
It would be potentially profitable if the product could be sold to universities and other similar organizations. In addition, title sponsorship could also be a source of profit.
Universities would need to invest a larger amount of resources than buying a platform for
-What are the potential contents for this module?
Customer research and questionnaires sent to college students across North America are helpful for determining the needs of college students in order to design a curriculum suitable for them.
The platform will be interactive and include personalized questionnaires to assess the user’s basic financial literacy and awareness of the budget. Corresponding parts of the course will be displayed targeted at different types of audience. The training module will conclude with a short quiz to corroborate students’ awareness of personal finance.
According to our knowledge of college students, we are proposing the following potential modules: for financially illiterate students, basic personal finance knowledge will be provided, such as the difference between credit and debit cards, etc.; for financially literate students, the module will introduce behavioral economics underlying product marketing strategies and tricks, how to start a planner, etc. to make sure that students do not overspend money and keep good track of the money they are spending. There could be other modules such as personal investing, which depends on the feedback of questionnaires we collect and the time of the training module.
As mentioned above, making the course available on phone is important for increasing user experience and accessibility to all college students.
Team Members:
Ananya Vasagiri, Efe Oral, Jay Younger, Jenny Ni, Tuoyuan Li
