Financial inclusion: Collaboration is key

Jonathan Brill
Chief Executive
Eduvate

Seven organisations met at SFE’s fruitful late August workshop, to explore amongst other issues, all necessary moves to improve access to bank accounts.

Evidence suggests that turning good thoughts into action through collaboration will require sweat and determination, arguably with more effort than previously.

Main finding

Workshop members agreed to develop a proposal to address the unbanked population in Scotland. It will highlight resource and investment requirements.

Tests, trials or pilots will be developed, that can be shared elsewhere in the UK; Scotland’s size and culture lends itself to such an approach.

Elevating financial literacy

Why is improving financial literacy across this wide topic, a vital contributory factor? Some believe that elevating financial literacy is best understood on the supply side on classic supply/demand economics. Here, the emphasis is how to make best use of a bank account, once secured. Our focus lies in upskilling young adults in financial literacy, including those described as NEET. It’s a proposition that is to be actioned rapidly and at scale. 1.5 million young adults in Scotland could be upskilled in five years. The best means to achieve this is through online gamification. Playing games is well recognised as the best means to secure engagement, improve retention and produce data. The technology challenge, to process 300,000 people annually through an online game is straightforward. To secure optimum up take, it must be free to the user.

The sweet spot of collaboration

Expert provision into the wide-ranging and frequently changing landscape can only come from the Financial Services Industry itself. On the one hand banks, insurance companies, building societies, credit unions and so on, are particularly well placed to supply the basic information to allow gamification to proceed along real-life use case scenarios. This will require collaborative effort. However, this appears to be achievable with light cooperative effort. The best organisation to facilitate this in Scotland is SFE.

The tricky part of collaboration

Someone has to pay for this; evidence from the workshop suggested that government currently is an unlikely source. Government can play a role in promoting participation. It would not be very expensive to upskill 20% of the population through online gamification, if it accepted that on the table is a good solution that can be actioned rapidly, but not a perfect plan. Individual corporations in the financial services industry have their own initiatives underway. The opportunity identified is that pooling resources around this proposal would be cost effective, producing economies of scale, and enhanced innovation, not least from the diverse perspectives of those organisations attending the SFE workshop. Collaboration can strengthen brand recognition, credibility and most importantly trust, perhaps the key factor for customer facing financial services companies.

Challenges

Effective collaboration requires an alignment of objectives and values, cultural compatibility and open communication. As above, SFE is perfectly positioned to facilitate this. The frequently changing socio-political landscape in Scotland was acknowledged by participants. So, productive collaboration demands adaptability and flexibility from all elements of Scotland’s Financial Services ecosystem, if Scotland is to mirror successful initiatives at scale, such as the Smart phone revolution in India, where the number of internet users using financial services rose 50% in 5 years involving over 200 million people.

Call to action

It was clear to all that cultural change underpins all initiatives relating to improving access to bank accounts.

1: Eduvate will action invitations to work with organisations new to them as test beds for financial literacy gamification.

2: Eduvate would be pleased to develop gamification around an issue aired at the workshop, to improve awareness of and activate individuals around  a residue of £23bn in unclaimed Benefits in the UK £2bn in Scotland.

3: Workshop participants agreed to develop a stakeholder engagement and communication plan.

4: Members of SFE and others are invited to provide further strength to this multi-dimensional initiative industrialised by SFE.