Case Study 01
Building Financial Confidence Across a Diverse Customer Base
The Challenge
A major financial services institution needed to meet its consumer financial education obligations under the Financial Sector Code whilst genuinely improving the financial wellbeing of the customers and communities it serves. Financial concepts intimidate people: dense terminology and small print shut learners down before the learning starts. The institution needed a programme that would qualify as a scored B-BBEE initiative, reach learners across vastly different literacy levels, languages and locations, and hold up to verification, without feeling like a compliance exercise to the people going through it.
Our Approach
We designed a multi-theme financial literacy journey covering the full arc of financial decision-making: financial foundations, banking and financial services, saving and investing, credit and debt, loans and major financial decisions, insurance and risk, and fraud and financial safeguarding. Rather than lecturing learners with formulas and jargon, we built picture-based learning maps and discussion cards that turn each topic into a visual story learners can relate to their own lives. Content was developed and delivered in all South African languages so that every learner engages in the language they think in, and designed with accessibility in mind from the outset, including considerations for visually impaired learners. Delivery was built for flexibility: facilitated classroom workshops, virtual facilitator-led sessions, and standalone topic sessions, so the programme could reach employees, customers and community members wherever they were, with monitoring and evaluation built in from day one to keep the institution's spend defensible at verification.
Developed Deliverables
Design Process
Analyze
- Stakeholder interviews
- Needs analysis
- Current-state audit
Design
- Learning strategy
- Curriculum mapping
- Success measures
Develop
- Content build
- Storyboarding
- Pilot testing
Implement
- Facilitator enablement
- Rollout
- Manager coaching
Evaluate
- Completion tracking
- Impact review
- Iterate & refine
The Outcome
Learners move from financial anxiety to financial confidence, able to budget, save, borrow responsibly and protect themselves from fraud using knowledge that is grounded in their own everyday reality rather than abstract theory. The picture-based, multilingual format means the programme lands with learners who would otherwise disengage from financial content entirely. For the institution, the programme delivers on its Consumer Financial Education scorecard obligations with evidence to support it at verification, whilst building the kind of financially confident customer base that uses products with more confidence, defaults less, and stays loyal to the institution that took the time to educate it.