(Especially if you’re in FS)
In 2015, we received an amazing brief from a UK High Street bank.
It was to find or develop a platform capable of delivering social impact and building community engagement. With reach, relevance and salience. For a retail bank, that means community with a small c, ie communities the length and breadth of the UK. The public, in other words.
It was a tall order, but we like a challenge and we worked for months to present some truly incredible options, largely rejected because they were relatively new. Amongst these was a way to transform their financial literacy offering.
In the UK, and many other western countries, banking regulation obliges banks to contribute to financial inclusion. This often translates to opening up banking services to people without access, and financial education.
We’d conducted a major review of financial literacy programs in the UK and USA and findings were bleak: most banks were doing the minimum to satisfy their regulatory obligations. Lacking in resource, imagination, human insight and – apart from a few passionate employees – love.
Our proposal, a collaboration with Sim City, would have transformed their financial education programme from the level it was – cottage industry powerpoint inspired with ACCA styling – into a living, breathing and above all fun application of finlit skills. It went the way of all the others, of course.
Our thinking was that financial literacy potentially held two out of the three key success criteria: huge reach and relevance, because very few people, even in the UK, would not like to manage their financial affairs more positively. It just lacked salience.
From the perspective of : ‘don’t get into debt’ and Micawber style learnings, Finlit is like much other sensible advice – boring. But from the perspective of: look what control you can take of your life, look at how you can empower your own growth and happiness, look at some soft skills which underpin every successful entrepreneur, Finlit is the most empowering subject on the curriculum. As the FT has realised.
Michael Gilmore, who’s behind the MAIA, is a successful financial analyst and former journalist, who’s been combining those two skillsets for years to promote Finlit with his Seven Dollar Millionaire content, amongst other projects.
But he saw, as we now see, that there is no silver bullet, no one size fits all approach. Sim City might have rocked in UK secondary schools – but bombed in Singapore, where mobile gaming had already rewritten the rules.
Michael describes the MAIA as a pin for the pinwheel. A fun spotlight to encourage a coherent framework to aggregate learnings, enthusiasm and community, bring financial awareness into the collective consciousness, encourage and catalyse .
We advised The Global Teacher Prize back in 2016 on how to combine their impact with commercial appeal – and it was clear what a positive impact Sunny Varkey’s investment was having on the brand of teaching. The MAIA will do the same for financial literacy.
If you’re in financial services (or professional services for that matter),you should take a serious look at FinLit sponsorship, with MAIA.
What’s on offer?
- support and promote impact which directly links to your ESG policy
- energise your own FinLit activity and leverage as a platform in your key markets
- input into the development of the MAIA to leverage your impact investment
- a superb, fun event with a real sense of purpose and momentum