Can ‘saving' be ‘fun'?

I set up the non-profit Doorways to Dreams in 2000. Most of the work has been on how to improve the delivery of financial services to low-income communities in America. We have a research and development lab which comes up with new products that we test and roll out in conjunction with either the Government or the private sector. In the case of prize-linked savings, it is with both.

The concept goes back at least to 1694: which is, to combine the essence of a lottery product with the essence of a savings product. What makes it different from other products is that your principal is never at risk. The interest pool is combined by all the savers, and that is lottery-ed off. So, instead of the certainty of a small interest payment, you have a small probability of a large payout. So it's structured as a fair bet, as opposed to a lottery.

The product has been tremendously successful in about 20 countries. It was rolled out in the UK in 1957 as Premium Bonds. In the US, unfortunately, this product was illegal. We, however, found a loophole in the state of Michigan that allowed us to offer this product. We launched something called ‘Save to Win' in January 2009. That was a daunting time to launch a new savings product — especially in Michigan, which was extraordinarily hard hit (because of the auto industry) by the economic downturn.

We found that people who didn't save were quite intrigued by the product. Our subsequent research confirmed this: Save to Win is a savings product that appeals to non-savers. We have shared the results of this research with other credit unions and legislators. At this point, I think four or five American states have adopted laws that mimic the Michigan laws. In the last few months, the credit union in one of the states has launched another version of Save to Win. We are in discussions with at least two sets of Governors in the US who want to test this product at the state-level (as against at the private level).

The point of all this is to build up an evidence base that will demonstrate whether or not this product is an effective savings vehicle. Early indications are that it is.

This gives regulators confidence; it paves the way to make this a product that can comply with existing regulations.

Whether this will work in India, I don't know. What I do know is that lottery play is extremely popular around the world, and wherever it is popular, the idea will work. And it will also work among people who would otherwise not save.

There have been hurdles in some places. In South Africa, the product was launched by a bank. It's take up was very strong. Even a large number of people who hadn't banked bought the product. The lottery commission in South Africa wrote a suit against the product in the High Court. It was deemed to be a lottery and shut down.

In one country, the slogan was ‘Everything to gain, nothing to lose'. There is a universal element to this programme, which is why it has succeeded in Michigan, the UK, South Africa, a number of Latin American and African countries. In countries such as the UK, the product is offered by the Government.

Financial Entertainment

Two or three things led to that specific initiative. I had spent over 20 years teaching in a case method environment. It was pretty clear to me that the pedagogy that puts people in the shoes of decision-makers works, as opposed to just lecturing.

Secondly, and this is a true story: we had not gone into financial education with Doorways to Dreams. We thought that there wasn't much that we could do there. Our model is such that we only go into things that we think are scalable solutions.

Some members of my team were at an event for adult financial education. Low-income families often can't afford babysitters. So the parents were in the front of the room sitting and listening to this lecture, and the kids were in the back playing their video games. The insight was: ‘Why can't we engage parents in learning about finances, as their kids are about video games?'

We decided to go with video games (it could have been TV, or something else) and our target population was young women. Because, surprisingly, young women are avid players of video games. We experimented with whether we could create a class of financial education products called financial entertainment. The first title here was called Celebrity Calamity, which is available on i-Tunes for free. It has the player assume the role of the manager of a messed-up celebrity (I suspect that translates well in all economies).

They have to manage a simple debit account, credit card and small balance. It doesn't teach them all the lessons. In general, what we attempt to do is carve out a small set of lessons and embed them in a relatively fun game. In this game, the celebrity asks you to buy her shoes and cars and other things. It's as much a game as it is a financial lesson, so it's engaging. Early indications from our research suggest that people do learn about credit cards and debit cards and other products as they play the game.

We have four or five titles. A recent title we developed in conjunction with a number of employers is Bite Club, which won an award just last month. The idea there is to teach people about retirement investing. How do you make retirement investing interesting? So we ‘amp-ed' up the game a little bit and set it around vampires. The slogan is ‘When you're immortal, retirement is eternal'. The game asks you to manage the retirement plan for a vampire. At least in the US, vampires are trendy and in popular culture. So we built a game around that.

The whole idea is, on the one hand, to teach a handful of small, clear lessons. And on the other hand, to do it in a fun and entertaining way. Doorways to Dreams distributes these games in multiple ways. We haven't built in an activation mechanism that can lead people to savings options, yet. For sure, we need to make that happen.

We track how much time people spend on www.financialentertainment.org — they spend a long time on it, playing our games.

This links back to prize-linked savings, in terms of concept. The whole point is, whether it is through a lottery or a video game, how do you make savings fun? ‘Savings' and ‘fun' are not two words that typically go together. But if there is a possibility that your savings can instantly change your life (in a material way), then it might get a little interesting.

Dean

A founding co-chair of Harvard innovation lab, Dr Peter Tufano, now Dean, Said Business School at University of Oxford, founded the non-profit Doorways to Dreams (DTD) fund in 2000. It promotes innovations that cater to financial needs of low-income households. In conversation with The New Manager during a recent visit to India, Dr Tufano explains how DTD has built a body of evidence to show that initiatives such as prize-linked savings schemes and financial education through video games are making a difference.

(As told to Gokul Krishnamurthy)

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