Segment: Special Reports
Publication date: Monday, July 20, 2009
# Pages: (93 pages)

Abstract | Table of Contents

For over 15 years, Corporate Insight has tracked the retail financial services industry, evaluating the customer experience firsthand. In that time, we’ve seen firms add a dizzying array of products and services, while developing cutting-edge websites to serve clients. These changes have mostly been for the better, but the industry hasn’t always done a good job teaching consumers how to take advantage of the resources available to them. Fortunately, this is changing.

Several institutions – like Charles Schwab, JPMorgan Chase, Mass Mutual, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade and T. Rowe Price – have all recently revamped their educational offerings, incorporating rich media into their websites to create a more engaging experience. The reason for this investment is clear: effective financial education empowers consumers and creates opportunities for firms to promote suitable products and services to them.

To help our clients understand the evolving state of consumer financial education, we have compiled this study, Consumer Financial Education Today: Best Practices. For this report, we examined the educational resources available from over 70 financial services firms’ websites and identified the leaders within each industry segment. Based on this analysis, we have assembled recommendations and best practices to help our clients improve their educational offerings.

Our research revealed that a growing number of firms are using interactive multimedia, social networking and webinars to teach consumers about personal finance. While this trend is most pronounced in the brokerage industry, some banks have also used these techniques with positive results. Microsites – or concise websites that focus on a specific financial issue or audience – are also emerging as popular and effective educational tools.

Unfortunately, the industry isn’t without its weaknesses. Credit and home financing education remain poor, as does annuity-related education. Interactive tools like financial calculators also rarely fulfill their full educational potential. That said, we believe that the growing number of firms experimenting with innovative educational techniques is a positive for the industry and for consumers, as this report illustrates.

Subjects

Education

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