Making financial education digestible: Bite-sized lessons advisors can provide

Financial advisors provide substantial value and service to their investor clients by guiding their strategy and actions, but it’s important to dig deeper to address the root of most people’s financial woes: lack of financial literacy.

Barely half of American adults qualify as financially literate (measured by correctly answering 3 out of 5 basic personal finance questions), and these already distressing rates are plummeting generationally — only 43% of Gen Z are financially literate. This is cause for alarm, as these basic skills are crucial to building a fiscally responsible and prosperous life.

Instead of helping clients navigate situations on an ad hoc basis, financial advisors can provide more comprehensive and long-lasting support to clients by teaching them foundational finance principles that endure beyond individual matters. Promoting financial wellness through education is essential for people of all ages and stages of life, but especially pertinent for Gen Z who are on track to become the most economically influential generation but do not have the education to knowledgeably wield that power.

But how can financial advisors incorporate financial literacy education/? Traditional education tactics like dense PowerPoints, boring books, and in-person learning events are failing to be effective in the digital age. As imperative as it is to offer financial education, it’s even more important to ensure the offerings are effective and engaging for long-term knowledge retention. So what does that look like?

Accessibility: Mobile-optimization

The vast majority of American adults use smartphones, spending an average of 5.4 hours on their phones per day. This far exceeds the amount of time clients can spend learning from and working directly with their financial advisor. By optimizing financial education for mobile-first learning, advisors can make financial literacy and wellness accessible beyond the time clients are in their office or Zoom room.

Related: Why every employee benefits program should include financial education

Mobile learning tools allow clients to continue flourishing in their financial lives long-term — and increase the value of financial advisors. Instead of competing with financial advisors, effective digital education teaches foundational concepts and encourages learners to consult with a financial advisor to see how these principles apply to their unique life circumstances. With externally accessible education, clients are able to ask better questions and unlock the full advantages of working with a financial advisor.

These digital tools can also support advisors’ work by providing investors a place to bookmark lessons or search the glossary for terms they learned from an advisor. Instead of going over the same topics at each meeting, mobile education helps retain clients’ knowledge long-term so they can apply their learnings in future situations and graduate to a greater depth and breadth of financial advising.

Incentivization: Gamified user experience

For many, navigating finances can be boring or intimidating, which discourages people from learning personal finance skills. Even for those willing to push through those mental obstacles, it can feel that learning about and managing finances is just one hurdle after the next. It’s critical to ensure that the education financial advisors offer is incentivized and rewarding to encourage clients to continue their learning journeys.

Gamification is the perfect way to incentivize and reward education on a mobile-first platform. Just like CandyCrush and other binge-able apps, offering ways to earn points and “level up” are extremely effective impetuses to keep playing. These gamified features can work much the same way for financial education — offering clients points or advanced virtual levels for learning encourages them to keep going.

Digestible: Bite-sized lessons

As attention spans dwindle in the digital age, landing at a mere 8-second attention span for Gen Z, longer-form educational resources like textbooks or PowerPoints fail to keep minds engaged and knowledge retained. It’s critical to make personal finance lessons shorter and easier to consume, especially to minimize the potential intimidation of financial jargon.

It’s recommended to split your curriculum into bite-size lessons, also known as microlearning, to make financial literacy resources more accessible and engaging. This also aids in the gamification aspect, as short lessons encourage bingeing more lessons!

What next?

As important as it is for financial advisors to offer accessible, rewarding, bite-sized education, it can be a lot to take on. Luckily, financial advisors don’t have to invent innovative education platforms all on their own. By partnering with a fintech or education program that offers these tools and share similar values about financial literacy, financial advisors can take their client service to the next level.

Shyam Pradheep is general manager of Zogo, a financial technology company focused on democratizing access to financial education. Zogo works with financial institutions, large companies, and enterprises to build financial confidence.