Many people struggle to save towards their goals, sometimes relying heavily on credit to make purchases which could lead them into debt.
Feature in Focus: Benefits Calculator
We have partnered with financial inclusion technology company Inbest, to integrate their Benefits Calculator into our Personal Financial Management platform.
Talk Money Week - Moneyhub features to help your customers #TalkMoney
November 6-10th 2023 was Talk Money Week - an initiative from the Money and Pensions Service that seeks to help people have more open conversations about their money - from pocket money to pensions - and continue these conversations all year round.
Money is a deeply emotive topic, and the anxiety, guilt or shame someone might feel around their finances may mean they find it difficult to talk about. Yet research has shown that people who do talk about money make better, less risky financial decisions, feel less anxious and can help their children form good lifetime money habits.
For the course of Talk Money Week we focused on one Moneyhub feature each day, that can help you to help your customers start talking money. Here’s the round up:
Budgets, forecasts and spend analysis
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Understanding how much money is coming in, and where it is going out is the first fundamental step towards financial wellness.
One of the most significant sources of financial stress is not knowing if there'll be enough money left at the end of the month. As cash usage continues to decline the increased use of 'Digital' money means its harder than ever to keep track of direct debits, BNPL repayments, ad hoc bills and spending on debit, credit cards or payment services like Paypal.
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Our budgeting, forecasting and analysis features make getting those healthy foundations in place as easy and intuitive as possible.
Users are encouraged to connect all of their spending accounts to give them a complete picture of their finances. Our technology can then identify income, regular bills and payments and the spending and income analysis helps build a very tangible, visual representation of what’s going where.
Every transaction is categorised so that the customer can create and set spending budgets for things such as fuel for the car, the weekly food shop, clothes for the kids or home repairs. No matter what account or card is used to make a payment the category is identified and allocated to the correct budget so they can see where their money goes and, when they are in danger of going over budget and take avoiding action.
Personal Debt Manager
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UK adults owe £1.9t in personal debt. Failing to keep on top of debt can impact health, wellbeing and the ability to work.
A study from the Royal College of Psychiatrists found that half of all adults with a debt problem also live with mental ill-health. This ranged from a consistent feeling of anxiety and low mood to a diagnosed mental health condition.
Debt can be a considerable burden, made worse by dealing with it alone.
Worrying about debt can affect sleep. Losing out on a good night’s sleep can not only affect mood and energy levels, it can also affect someone’s ability to work or have good relationships with friends and family.
All of these things in turn can further add to debt problems.
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Our Personal Debt Manager gives your customers a suite of tools to help them check, manage and adjust their spending so they stay in control of their income and outgoings.
We know that people get better outcomes when when:
They regularly check income, outgoing and bank statements, and;
Adjust spending on non-essentials when money is tight
Your customers can use Personal Debt Manager to connect all of their bank accounts, credit cards and loans in one place so they can check each and every transaction in real time. They’ll benefit from a range of tools, including Personal Balance Alerts, Spending Analysis, Regular Payments and Rent Recognition.
By utilising these tools, your customers can:
Gain sight of where their money is going and where changes need to be made and set realistic budgets
Reduce the risk of missing a repayment as they have a full list of upcoming payments to help them plan in advance
Even build their credit score through Rent Recognition
Eliminating debt is about more than the numbers - debt relief brings reduced stress and anxiety, improvements in cognitive functioning and changes in decision making. When someone clears their debt, it’s a significant life event.
With Moneyhub, you can help them get there.
Emergency Cash Builder
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Be it building an emergency cash fund for whatever life throws at them, or saving towards that all important first home, our technology can help you become a significant force for financial good in your customers’ lives.
With the Financial Conduct Authority reporting that nearly 13m UK adults have little capacity to withstand a financial shock, helping your customers build an emergency fund to weather a financial storm, or simply for a rainy day, can improve financial outcomes, build trust in your brand and deepen the relationship they have with your firm.
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Moneyhub’s Emergency Cash Builder makes it easy for your customers to increase their financial resilience in three simple steps:
Personalise: Choose a connected account in which the emergency cash fund will be created and give the fund a name. It could be simply an ‘emergency fund’, or something more personal, such as ‘my holiday fund’ or ‘Mum’s 60th birthday’. Customers can create multiple funds for different goals. After naming their emergency cash fund the customer will be prompted to set a target amount and time period over which they wish to save.
Monitor: Each Emergency Cash Fund will automatically appear in the customer’s personal dashboard. They’ll see how much they’ve saved in total and how close they are to achieving their goal.
Celebrate: Moneyhub’s dashboard view provides a visual measure of success. Overlay a nudge in the app or any other communications channel to help the customer celebrate their achievement and provide them with an onward journey.
Customers can transfer money to their Emergency Cash Builder fund using their bank’s banking app or by creating a standing order. Or if enabled, they can use Moneyhub Open Banking payments technology to make a payment from within a Personal Financial Management app.
When people have some savings to fall back on, their increased financial resilience leads to reduced stress and anxiety, a greater sense of choice and control and even higher self esteem. With Moneyhub, you can help your customers get there.
Benefits Finder
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According to Policy in Practice around 8 Million households in the UK are missing out on £16-19 billion in benefits every year. This works out at around £5k per household, every year - a potential lifeline for low-income households.
In 2021, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Welfare at a Social Distance found that the most common reason why people miss their benefits is that they are unaware of the welfare benefits they are entitled to or assume that they are not eligible
The main reasons people are not taking up benefits they are aware of:
Group A: 42% Wrongly assume they are not entitled
Group B: 39% Unaware of the range of benefits they could be entitled to
Group C: 19% Don’t apply because they are overwhelmed by the process, or find the stigma difficult to deal with
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Description text goes hereWe’ve embedded InBest’s Benefits Finder into our Personal Financial Management solution, enabling people to identify benefits they may be eligible for based on their financial data.
The benefits calculator can help those in Groups A and B to find out which benefits they are eligible for and the boost to their income they could receive.
By incorporating the calculator into a financial management app, we can better serve Group C through personalised nudges and support articles, to help guide them through their benefits applications.
Pensions Finder
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It’s no secret that the pensions industry has an engagement problem. In 2020 the Financial Conduct Authority found 59% of adults contributing to a workplace DC pension have low, or very low pension engagement.
Low levels of engagement correspond with low levels of understanding around pensions, and people are missing out on a better retirement.
In fact, one in five pensioners is now living in relative poverty in the UK, with the number of financially insecure pensioners soaring to more than two million.
With the government’s work on the Pensions Dashboard Programme stalled, our Pension Finder offers an interim tool to help people track down, understand and engage with their pensions.
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Pension Finder allows people to build a full picture of their pension and make crucial retirement plans by connecting the Moneyhub app with their LinkedIn profile.
It is designed to help pension managers, workplace pension providers, trustees or advisors help their customers engage with their pensions, encourage them to save more cash for retirement and understand the long-term implications of their current financial situation and savings strategies.
Users can combine the pensions information found by analysing their career history with other information aggregated and calculated by Moneyhub in tools such as Moneyhub’s Lifestyle Modeller, which predicts people’s financial situation after a major event such as retirement to set lifestyle expectations.
When people have a complete financial picture they are able to make better decisions or get the help they need. The Pension Finder seeks to make financial admin easier and ultimately encourage savers to take positive steps to secure their future financial wellness.
You can offer your customers any of these features as part of our fully customisable white label financial management app, or incorporate them into your own offering as widgets.
Employers: Now is the time to develop pension engagement and financial wellbeing strategies
As Pensions Awareness Week 2023 draws to a close, we’re reminded that 59% of adults contributing to a workplace DC pension have low, or very low pension engagement. Now is clearly the time for employers to be developing plans on how to better support staff with their retirement planning.
Low engagement isn’t good news for pension providers, individuals, nor the companies that employ them.
The benefits of high levels of pension engagement
Leading the charge in boosting pension awareness is Moneyhub partner Standard Life. Standard Life’s Retirement Voice 2022 found that people who dedicate time to pension planning, are reaping benefits to their wider financial wellbeing:
They are almost three times more likely to feel more positive about their financial situation
More likely to feel confident in making financial decisions
More likely to enjoy retirement
But, despite these benefits, and the cost of living crisis encouraging more people to pay closer attention to their finances, their research shows that “when it comes to retirement planning, the vast majority of people (72%) are still doing little, if anything.”
So, what’s stopping people?
Within the report, Standard Life put these low levels of engagement down to the advice and guidance gap, lack of education and support, and feelings of overwhelm when people do come across guidance or information on their pensions.
People who are not engaging with their pensions tend to have poorer financial wellbeing overall, with 66% worrying they are not saving enough for when they’re older and 47% feeling less confident in their ability to make good financial decisions.
For individuals, this leads to feelings of stress and anxiety, which in turn can lead to reduced productivity and performance for the companies that employ them.
Responsible employers must take action
While employers are beginning to recognise that financial wellbeing goes beyond paying salaries, it is still the least common area included in HR wellbeing strategies. Yet, as Gail Izat, Workplace Managing Director at Standard Life states, “employers are perfectly positioned to provide the information and guidance people need, because they can incorporate it into their workplace pension offering.”
In the midst of the cost of living crisis and the widening UK savings gap, it’s more important than ever that employers demonstrate a commitment to the financial wellbeing of their staff.
The good news is, with Open Finance technology like ours, it’s never been easier.
Unlocking value for pension providers and employers with Open Finance
Pension engagement is one part of the puzzle. If people are struggling with debt, managing their day-to-day finances or even focused on saving money for something like their first home, paying attention to or contributing more to their pension will be low on their list of priorities. For people to have healthy finances in retirement, they must adopt healthy financial habits through their working lives.
Standard Life has understood this and incorporated Money Mindset, built on our Open Finance capabilities, into their workplace offering.
Setting pension providers, and in turn employers, apart
Incorporating an Open Finance proposition like Money Mindset truly sets Standard Life’s offering apart.
Money Mindset offers users a complete picture of their entire financial world (current accounts, savings, properties, investments, pensions and more) alongside forecasting tools and even a financial education hub.
Providers who adopt these solutions will be the ones who see higher levels of engagement from employers, really differentiating their offering in a crowded market. They can work with clients to augment Employer Value Propositions and bring a host of benefits to their end-users.
It’s win-win-win
Fostering a more financially literate and resilient workforce benefits all parties mentioned in this blog post. Individuals gain confidence in managing daily spending and unexpected costs, get greater control and understanding of where their money is coming and going out, and get on track for a secure and sustainable financial future into retirement.
Employers reap the rewards of higher productivity and performance, reduced absenteeism and employee stress or burnout and become more attractive to, and better at retaining, top talent.
And of course, pension providers benefit from primacy among workplace clients and members, higher level of engagement and increased opportunities to boost AUM through consolidation or higher contributions. It’s win-win-win!
Would you like to find out more about how Open Finance could benefit your business? Talk to one of our guides →
How can Open Finance help bridge the UK savings gap?
The UK savings gap is a hugely pressing issue. The amount and rate at which working people are saving money for retirement is at a significant disparity with the amount required for a desirable living standard in later life.
Deloitte projects that the savings gap in the UK will reach a staggering £350 billion by 2050. This highlights the urgency to address the issue and find effective solutions to ensure individuals are prepared for their financial future.
What can Financial Services do?
Various factors contribute to the UK savings gap; increasing living costs, consumer debt, and a lack of sufficient financial education. Encouragingly, efforts have been made by the government and financial institutions to address this issue by introducing legislative changes and initiatives aimed at promoting savings, such as auto-enrolment, increased ISA flexibility, and the Personal Savings Allowance, but there’s still more to be done.
Savings capacity depends upon people having available money. At Moneyhub, we call this available money Potential. It’s the money left after non-discretionary spend is subtracted from income.
By helping users increase their Potential we can enable them to put more money in savings, investments or their pensions.
Helping people get established
According to the FCA, over a third (34%) of UK adults have less than £1,000 in their savings. For 18-24 year olds, that figure jumps to 47%.
These shaky foundations mean that as people then move through their late twenties and into their thirties, they may struggle to build savings capacity for things like a first home. Many are renting and may have taken on debt to get through the day-to-day.
So how can Open Finance help people establish themselves financially with firm foundations to build upon? And how can it help financial services engage them?
Engagement tools to help people take control
Whilst no amount of tools can make up for chronic low income or help families who simply do not have enough money to make ends meet, most money advisors say that the key to staying in control is to monitor transactions, set and stick to budgets and avoid missing regular payments.
Our technology is designed to help people do just that. You can embed the following solutions within your own offering to help users manage their money better, and make it easy to do so:
Financial MOT
Budgets and Forecasts
Credit Score Improver
Emergency Cash Builder
First Home Saver
Benefits Finder
Personal Debt Manager
Complete Personal Financial Management App
Get in touch to discuss which solutions could work for you →
Real users, real stories, real difference
Don’t just take our word for it. Ed is a Moneyhub user and father of 3. He’s worked in hospitality, the NHS and a forklift driver, and was struggling with debts he’d built up as a younger man
He explained, “I’d built up a lot of debt on credit cards by overspending and basically not having an understanding of where my money was and simply not caring. I used to buy things I could not afford and at the end of each month I was scrabbling around for pennies”
“I really like Moneyhub’s spending budgets, in fact they were almost life changing for me. I’d miss transactions in my bank accounts and credit cards and then spend ages going back trying to work out where everything was going.”
“By creating spending categories for everything such as fuel, beer, coffees, haircuts…all sorts of things, I could work out trends using the spending and income analysis, which enabled me to compare month on month. Looking back over the year I could see what I spent on average so I used that to set budgets and then every time I got paid I was able to put aside money in my bank account knowing that everything I had left was spare money. Since then my finances have turned around completely”
From day-to-day, to planning for the future
Once Ed felt in control of his day-to-day spending, he naturally started engaging with his longer-term finances:
“I had connected my workplace pension to Moneyhub so when the pandemic started I could see my pension’s value. Every day I looked it was going down as share prices were going down. Before Moneyhub I’d never have known about my pension but because it’s so visual, seeing the graph is brilliant. In fact it surprised me just how quickly pensions can go up and it's made me want to pay in more, especially now I’ve got spare money at the end of the month”
Building financial resilience unlocks customers’ Potential
Open Finance makes it easy for people to engage with their finances where they might have felt overwhelmed before. With oversight of where money is coming in and going out, incremental changes can be made, which include putting more money aside for later life.
Open Finance also offers businesses the chance to create highly personalised customer journeys throughout their financial life, resulting in stickier customers with increased Potential, to go some way to bridging the UK savings gap.
Find out more about how our technology can help you unlock your customers’ Potential →
Putting pensions within reach
How can we make Open Banking accessible to all?
Moneyhub's Innovate Finance Pitch360 video entry
Moneyhub is on a mission to enhance lifetime financial wellness and stop money-related anxiety for good by helping people every day with their journey towards financial literacy, wellbeing and independence. But actions speak louder than words. Hear what our customers have to say and see how, with our Open Finance platform, we are solving real world problems today.
The choice for wealth pioneers
Open Banking is changing the way people interact with their finances for the better. It’s no longer justifiable that managing investments, pensions, debt or daily spending is so complex. It’s even easier for businesses to connect with their target audiences and provide them with a more personalised service: capitalising on deeper insights surfaced automatically to help people manage their finances more effectively.