Update on ASIC’s
MoneySmart project
June 2012
‘This is one of the best all round websites I have found regarding financial literacy. I use your website at least once a week for work (I refer my customers to your website, specifically the budgeting tool and the superannuation planning for retirement tool) and in my personal life. It is well presented and works very efficiently. Thanks for the great site.’ – Tenneal, MoneySmart user
Contents
Introduction from the Chairman 2History 3
Goals 3
Overview 4
Campaigns 5
Calculators and tools 8
Videos 11
Publications 11
Social media 12
Feedback 12
Awards 13
Future plans 13
Further information 13
Introduction from the Chairman
Since 2008 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has been the Commonwealth government agency with overall responsibility for financial literacy. ASIC’s MoneySmart website project is one of the key initiatives in the National Financial Literacy Strategy.
The website is also one of the ways in which ASIC promotes the confident and informed participation of investors and consumers in the financial system.
In this update we profile what the website has achieved in its first 15 months. MoneySmart has been an outstanding success in helping Australians take positive steps to improve their personal finances. Of people who use the website, our research shows that 89% are subsequently taking specific action to manage their money better.
ASIC’s MoneySmart website has received widespread praise for excellence in communication and financial guidance via numerous awards but, most importantly, in the enthusiastic feedback from Australians who have used it.
Greg Medcraft
Chairman, ASIC
History
MoneySmart was launched on 15 March 2011 and replaced ASIC’s previous consumer websites: FIDO and Understanding Money.
FIDO was a great source of consumer financial information for almost a decade. Understanding Money ran for almost five years, providing simple steps and basic calculators to help people sort out their money.
MoneySmart combines the best of these two websites and adds many more features such as new calculators and apps, comprehensively revised content and engaging formats such as expert video, case studies, quizzes, an interactive glossary and smart tips.
Goals
Many people find financial issues daunting. Information is often complex and the range of choices is bewildering. MoneySmart’s goal is to give people clear information, useful tools and personalised guidance so they can make the most of their money.
ASIC’s MoneySmart website is for all Australians
– young or old, rich or poor, investing or paying off debt. MoneySmart can particularly help the following groups:
Young adults
· avoid the traps in credit cards, car loans and mobile phones
· achieve their saving goals sooner
· get out of debt
Young families
· look into buying a home or renovating
· deal with their mortgage
· cope with child care and education costs
· save more
· manage debts and credit cards
Pre-retirees
· build their super
· formulate retirement plans
· understand financial retirement products
· take stock of their financial situation
‘I have used MoneySmart Tips and have found it very useful. I did not have savings, now have $7000 saved … My grandson, 8, and granddaughter, 5, both have savings accounts which they do odd jobs for. My financial health has not felt so good in a very long time, so thank you for your tips and commonsense attitude to finance.’
– Bobbie
Overview
MoneySmart received 1.9 million unique visitors between 1 July 2011 and 30 June 2012 (based on monthly unique visits). By April 2012 we had reached 7% of adult internet users. On average users spend almost five minutes on the website – double the time they spent on the FIDO website.
The most popular parts of the website are the sections on budgeting, unclaimed money, superannuation, retirement and scams. Users’ favourite calculators include the budget planner, mortgage calculator and retirement planner.
Monthly traffic to MoneySmart has doubled since the website was launched. This graph demonstrates the growth in visitors over 15 months.
Increase of visitors to MoneySmart
The peaks in visitors are due to specific campaigns – the unclaimed money campaign in October 2011 and the start of the advertising campaign in June 2012.
User surveys
We conduct six monthly tracking surveys to monitor progress in key areas.
October 2011 / April 2012Aware of MoneySmart brand (among adult Australian internet users) / 16% / 19%
Have visited MoneySmart website (among adult Australian internet users) / 5% / 7%
Take specific action as a result of visiting MoneySmart / 91% / 89%
Key actions people took after visiting MoneySmart included:
· preparing or updating a budget
· reviewing superannuation
· shopping around for a better deal X keeping a closer eye on spending
· increasing savings
· reviewing financial situation and investments
· taking specific actions to sort out debts and credit cards.
We received very positive feedback about our calculators. Nine out of 10 people rated them useful, with more than half of these people rating them extremely useful.
Campaigns
Each month we refresh MoneySmart’s homepage and send out an e-newsletter MoneySmart Tips to over 20,000 subscribers. These promotional activities focus on a main campaign message every month. Here is a selection of campaign highlights.
Mortgage health campaign – September 2011
The mortgage health campaign encouraged people to take action when experiencing mortgage stress. The campaign featured a mortgage health check tool, tailored information for people in different stages of mortgage stress, and video clips featuring real people’s stories about how they dealt with mortgage problems.
The campaign was promoted to media in the regions of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, which have higher rates of mortgage stress. More than 75,000 copies of our brochure Problems paying your mortgage were distributed to 1,200 community organisations. BankWest promoted the mortgage health check tool by SMS to customers in arrears, and the campaign was featured on Facebook and Twitter.
Unclaimed money campaign – October 2011
The unclaimed money campaign encouraged people to search for their lost money in our database which holds the records for $600 million in old bank accounts, shares and life insurance policies.
The campaign generated the biggest spike in MoneySmart’s short history on 25 October 2011, with around 260,000 visits in one day (usual average is 5,000 visits a day). Over 20,000 people viewed our unclaimed money video. Twitter also helped spread the word to 238,000 people.
The campaign resulted in blanket media coverage in all states and territories. Unclaimed money featured as a top story on the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age websites and was promoted on Channel 7’s Sunrise program.
Culturally and linguistically diverse communities campaign – March 2012
We produced a suite of online and printed resources to help newly arrived Australians understand money, after extensive consultation with community settlement workers.
More than 450 hard copy Money Management Kits were distributed through a national training program to settlement service providers that assist over 14,000 new Australians annually.
The Kit has translated resources in audio, video and print formats on ten key money topics. The translated audio stories were broadcast nationally from March to May 2012 on SBS and community language radio; and we published online content in 26 languages.
‘The calculator tools and budget are without doubt the best I have used. As a financial counsellor with a busy workload, the entire site supports and facilitates my client work daily. As a tool of empowerment on financial matters it scores very highly!’ – Kevin
Advertising campaign – June 2012
ASIC began its first advertising campaign for MoneySmart in early June 2012. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of the website among the Australian adult population and increase usage of the site.
The key target markets for the campaign were:
· Young adults
· Young families
· Pre-retirees
The campaign focused on the issues facing people at these life stages, as research highlighted that they would be most receptive to messages about improving their financial situation. The campaign included print, radio and online advertising.
The print advertising promoted MoneySmart’s calculators, tips and tools to pre-retirees to help them improve their knowledge of retirement planning and ways to build their superannuation.
The radio advertising targeted pre-retirees and young families in situations where they might need MoneySmart tips and tools.
The online advertising was placed on travel, home buying, parenting and car websites, where people were at decision points and where messages would engage them. Most of the ads directly linked to calculators and let people input their own data.
The campaign also included print and radio advertising in Turkish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Greek, Arabic and Italian, and ads created for Indigenous audiences.
New Year’s resolution campaign – January 2012
The New Year’s resolution campaign encouraged people to create a budget as part of their fresh financial outlook, using our newly updated budget planner.
The campaign was covered on major city radio stations and generated articles in most major city papers as well as a story on A Current Affair.
The website received over 17,000 unique visitors on 9 January when the campaign was launched.
Credit card debt clock campaign – March 2012
Our credit card debt clock campaign kept a running tally of Australia’s increasing credit card debt and gave people practical steps they could take to lower their credit card balance.
At the time Australians had over $36 billion owing on credit cards where interest was being charged, an average of $4,700 per card holder.
If the average card holder made only minimum repayments on their debt, they would take 49 years to pay it off and it would cost them $14,600 in interest. The campaign encouraged people to reduce their debt and not just pay the minimum each month.
The debt clock was featured on Channel 7’s Sunrise program and on media outlet websites including smh.com.au, news.com.au and Your Money magazine
Calculators and tools
The calculators have been our most popular content, with over 1.8 million visitors from the launch of the site in March 2011 until June 2012.
ASIC’s MoneySmart website provides 25 financial calculators – many either unique to MoneySmart or the best of their kind in Australia. Thirteen calculators allow users to save and retrieve results via a secure login.
Our most popular calculators (based on June 2012 figures) are:
· Budget planner – 41,000 views per month
· Retirement planner – 19,000 views per month
· Mortgage calculator – 16,000 views per month
‘Excellent, you guys rock, this is fantastic (referring to the budget planner). I use it down to the last cent and will teach my teenage sons and let all my friends know. A great service thank you!’ – Linda
Credit card calculator
In June 2012 we updated our credit card calculator to demonstrate the benefits of early debt reduction. Within a month of re-launching it, 8,000 people had used the calculator.
Mobile Calculator app
In May 2011 we released a phone app that combines a mortgage, savings, loan and superannuation calculator in a smart phone/tablet application. It had over 93,000 downloads by June 2012.
The app was number one in the iTunes Australian Finance category in June 2011.
My account
In January 2012 we introduced a new functionality to MoneySmart calculators that allows users to create a ‘My account’ to save and retrieve their calculations. Over 14,600 people have created an account over six months.
Financial counsellor map
In May 2011 we published a new online search tool to help people find their nearest financial counsellor. The tool was created in consultation with Financial Counselling Australia, who have also embedded the map on their website. Over 550 financial counsellors are listed on the map. More than 32,000 people have used the map to find a financial counsellor.
Videos
We have a growing number of YouTube videos on MoneySmart, covering a range of financial topics. By June 2012 our 198 videos had been viewed over 54,000 times.
One of our most popular videos is about how to search for unclaimed money. It received over 20,000 views in a month during the unclaimed money campaign.
Publications
We have more than 75 publications available on MoneySmart. We distribute over 12,800 printed publications a month using the online order form on the website.
New publications released during 2011/12 included Financial Decisions in Retirement and Problems paying your mortgage? (both September 2011).
We also updated Credit, loans and debt, our Credit factsheets series and Super decisions to take into account changes to credit and superannuation laws.
Social media
MoneySmart uses social media to promote its campaigns and content. By June 2012 we had over 1,700 Twitter followers and more than 1,000 Facebook Likes. During 2012 MoneySmart was reaching over 50,000 people each month on Twitter.
‘The mortgage calculator is brilliant. I now know how much to pay on my mortgage so I own it by retirement. The site gave me info the banks just don’t.’ – Jacquie
Feedback
MoneySmart received around 18,000 items of feedback from launch in March 2011 to June 2012, the majority extremely positive.
Feedback items include page votes, page comments, emails and phone calls via ASIC’s call centre.
We respond to most feedback within 2–3 days. Here is an example of the type of feedback we receive.
‘I have always been very bad with money and generally tried to ignore the fact that I was slowly building up a debt and completely avoiding saving of any kind. I got to the stage where I was completely unsure where my money was going and was always wondering why I was broke!
My friend introduced me to the MoneySmart budget and within minutes I had tracked all my expenses and set up an achievable budget for the next quarter. MoneySmart is so simple to use and showed me exactly where my money was going allowing me to cut down all the spending that is completely unrequired! I am now on track to purchasing my first home, with budgeting and saving now a simple task! Thanks MoneySmart!’ – Melissa
Awards
· Best government website at the 2011 Australian
· Web Awards
· Best service delivery website at the 2012