Brief
Research by the Money Advice Service shows that many young people about to turn 18 are ill prepared for dealing with adult financial responsibilities, while a third of young people have no experience of putting money into a bank, and only 43% of young people are confident about managing their money. A quarter of all children worry about their family having enough money, with those from less affluent households the most likely to worry.
To service its customers well, NatWest needs to understand the financial and societal issues they face. Statistics suggest persistently low levels of knowledge, understanding and capability among adults in the UK, and providing financial education in school was ranked as extremely important by 87% of teachers (All-party Parliamentary Group research). The same research showed that 95% of UK adults believe that young people are leaving school without the skills and knowledge they need to manage their finances, while one in five secondary teachers said they lacked confidence in this area.
As every young person deserves a solid financial education, NatWest takes seriously the responsibility of helping its customers of today and tomorrow to develop good money management behaviours. So, they created MoneySense, their impartial, award-winning financial education programme for young people aged 5-18 years old. For almost 25 years, MoneySense has provided financial education and created a suite of educational resources that thousands of teachers rely on.
In 2019, NatWest had two key objectives for the programme:
• To reach 2.5m students by the end of 2019 (period Oct 2015 – 2019)
• To have a presence in 40% of primary and 75% of secondary schools – also by year-end
These were to be widely achieved by creating a content hub that enabled teachers, parents and students to access impartial financial education tools linked to the curriculum that are:
• Free to all – to further enhance the NatWest commitment of bridging the gap in financial education
• Accessible to all – although the programme caters for 5-18 year-olds, research has shown that good money management habits are ingrained aged 7 – we are able to capture children before this age
• Community spirited – to help NatWest gain trust and advocacy for the brand
Source: Money Advice Service 23/05/13
Solution
The changes we’ve introduced to the MoneySense site have brought a breath of fresh air to our content:
New audience strategy: Sometimes it only takes a simple strategic insight to give performance metrics a boost. Like these:
69% of parents have some reluctance to discuss money matters. And 61% of parents only discuss money with their children when their children ask about it. So we decided to widen our audience to cater for parents, and have seen 246% more page views*** in comparison with the previous period since the enhancement of this section, and 742 home-schooling registrations in 2019.
New content creation: Providing the most comprehensive and representative financial education resource available to UK teachers, pupils and parents means creating content like our ‘How can I pay for things’ activity sheet for pupils with special education needs and disabilities, which has garnered 1,113 downloads. We’ve produced 48 curriculum-linked assets for SENDpupils – the first from any UK bank. “We’re delighted [MoneySense] now has SEND-specific resources which will help even more of our pupils to engage with learning about money and budgeting,” said one SEND schoolteacher.
New user experience: When visitors bounce from your site and you’re confident it’s not because of the content, it’s possibly because you’ve been too demanding with your sign-up protocol. We implemented a registration wall too soon in the discovery process, dissuading visitors from exploring the site. By moving the wall ‘back’ and enabling easier access to information through a Resource Finder, we saw a clear uptick in effectiveness – not just in page view numbers, time spent onsite and overall conversions, but also in SEO performance.
New distribution strategy: In April 2019, we launched our MoneySense social channels, enabling us to promote content to parents. Organic social activity has been effective in driving session referrals, with its emphasis on seasonal money moments.We also work with NatWest’s main social channels: a recent SEND-focused post reached 85k people organically, making it the highest-performing NatWest post on Facebook in August. But it’s the paid support, like the Facebook post we produced forMental Health Awareness Week, that has been invaluable in amplifying reach and engagement, with over 150K reach. These reactive, editorial posts have helped us reach 400,000 parents as of July 2019 – just four months since launch – halfway to our2019 target of reaching 800k parents through social.
** T Rowe Price
*** (01/03/19-31/07/19 against 01/10/18-28/02/19)
Results
Our 2015 brief was to reach one million young people in England and Wales by the end of 2018. This target was exceeded early, at year end reaching more than 1.6 million young people. Kenneth Clarke, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, commended NatWest for ‘exceeding their financial education target of reaching one million young people by the end of this year. I would strongly recommend all schools to use these essential free resources to help teach children and young people about money and finances.’ (Primary Times, July 2018). A further 779k young people have been reached in 2019 year to date, and saturations levels stand at 72% of all secondary schools and 36% of all primary schools.
Results continue to exceed target:
1. Total student reach 2,929,237 (since 2015, UK/ROI)
2. Total student reach 7,429,237 (since 1994, UK/ROI)
3. 36,813 registered teachers
4. 14,275 registered schools
5. 7,972 registered volunteer bank staff
6. On average 17 workshops are delivered per teaching day
7. 1,633,607 million pages viewed (10%+ YOY)
8. Average time spent onsite 5 mins 33 seconds
9. SEND resources were downloaded 6,804 times
1-5, 7-9: July MoneySense site database and Monthly Report July 2019
6: MoneySense volunteer database August 2019
6-9: Sep 18-Aug19
Outstanding results from a 2018 MoneySense Volunteers Post-Workshop survey show teacher appreciation:
• Teachers agreed or strongly agreed that the workshop materials were comprehensive (97%) and well designed (94%)
• Teachers also agreed that pupils responded well to the workshop (99%) and that it was engaging for them (98%)
Teacher testimonial
“It has transformed our teaching of financial responsibility.” Primary school teacher, England (teacher survey 2018)
Client testimonial
“We knew that for the MoneySense programme to continue to be as successful as it has been since its launch nearly 25 years ago, we had to make the digital content experience outstanding. By partnering with John Brown to create a seamless content platform that houses over 800 resources, we have been able to open the doors to an even bigger audience – bringing financial education to seven million young people, with MoneySense content now being used in one in three schools across the UK and ROI.” Caroline Edwards, Sustainable Banking Lead, Financial Capability, NatWest
Metrics
Target student reach:
Oct 2015 – Dec 2018: 1 million students England/Wales; actual reach 1.6 million
Oct 2015 – Dec 2019: 2.5 million students UK/ROI; actual reach 2.9 million (31.07.19)
1. Total student reach 2,929,237 (since 2015, UK/ROI)
2. Total student reach 7,429,237 (since 1994, UK/ROI)
3. 36,813 registered teachers
4. 14,275 registered schools (72% of all secondary and 36% of all primary)
5. 7,972 registered volunteer bank staff
6. On average 17 workshops are delivered per teaching day
7. 1,633,607 million pages viewed (10%+ YOY)
8. Average time spent onsite 5 mins 33 seconds
9. SEND resources were downloaded 6,804 times
