I had the pleasure of chatting with some of my fave industry peeps about a subject very close to my heart… at our Evolution conference. Up on stage. In front of 200-odd people. Gulp! 

If you made it there on the day, I really hope you had a blast and that the panel gave you some food for thought. If you couldn’t make it, fear not, I’m here to give you a little flavour of what you missed. You’re welcome.  

Kicking off our first panel of the day, I was joined on stage by Sarika Dhanjal – Head of Advice Quality at Progeny, John Somerville – Director of Financial Services at The London Institute of Banking & Finance and Emilie Bellet – Founder and CEO of Vestpod. 

The opening question – “How can we engage the next generation with finance when it’s typically viewed as something really boring?” – was posed to each of our guests in turn.  

Sarika started off by explaining how she engages her own children with finance. The secret is bribery. Okay, not quite, but I’m here for the lols! Sarika believes that making finance relatable to everyday life can help get kids interested in finance at a younger age and make it a little more fun.  

One tip she gave was to put the children in charge of dinner. Give them £10 to get everything they need for that evening’s meal. This teaches them a valuable lesson on budgeting and getting them involved in managing the money as a family.  

If you wanted to set them a bit more of a challenge, you could tell them that they can spend whatever’s left over on pudding – see if they can make the meal as cheaply as possible, prioritising the main meal as we often need to with our money when budgeting! 

John argued that perhaps finance shouldn’t be viewed as boring at all! Money can buy you nice things, so getting the message across that if you apply yourself and do well in life, you can buy those cool things. Using money as a motivation can really engage the next generation with the all-important topic.  

Emilie believes we should raise awareness, make financial education mainstream and relevant, and also be more inclusive. Her key message on the day was around communication, sharing stories, fostering community, and encouraging peer-to-peer interactions to build confidence. Social media is a fantastic platform to enable these communications and if we can share knowledge in a relatable way, we can really give the next generation a head start. 

We all agree that financial education in schools is important, but the younger we engage children with the concept of earning money, budgeting, saving and talking about it, the more comfortable and confident they will be in adulthood.  

Saying “Well they should teach it in schools” is a bit of a cop-out – yes, they absolutely should, but if we as an industry have the knowledge and power to help, then surely, we should. If parents have the skills to pass on to their children, they absolutely will. So, why don’t we all do one thing to help spread that knowledge, share ideas, and work together towards our goal? What are YOU going to do to take a different approach to financial education?

Hayley Rabbets, Head of The Verve Foundation

–The Verve Group