Fees on the level
Client: Financial Markets Authority
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) is responsible for ensuring our investment landscape is a level playing field.
One of the big challenges is ensuring that everyone has a good base level of understanding to make the decisions that are right for them.
The Brief
With over 2.8m KiwiSavers, the need for greater financial understanding has never been more critical. We were challenged to help educate the public on how KiwiSaver fees work.
With a change in legislation, requiring KiwiSaver fund managers to publish their fees in total dollar, the FMA asked us to use this change to grow awareness of fees and how they impact your investment. Our job wasn’t to drive people to switch to lower fee options but to help audiences understand the decisions they make and the costs associated with them.
The Solution
In discussion with the client we elected to be very targeted in our approach, focusing on females between the ages of 18-30. Why so selective? Other than budget constraints, this is a group that research suggests has high KiwiSaver take-up but a low level of investment confidence.
Our campaign worked at three levels. First, reaching our audience on social media via Facebook and Instagram. Using our target audience, asking questions about their fees was designed to deliver immediate cut-through and association. Engagement drove respondents to an on-line tool – the FMA Health Checker – for a simple assessment of their KiwiSaver fund and how to make it work harder for them. Further tools we’re offered for those who wanted to explore further. At the third level, we used the power of peer-to-peer, creating a series of videos featuring the target audience talking about the choices they made after they had reviewed their fees.
Timing was very deliberate, chosen to coincide with when annual KiwiSaver Statements were being sent out. In fact, the campaign starts with ‘check the fees on your statement’ allowing for the fees conversation to be a personal one.
The design approach was bright and positive, looking to lift the campaign above the perceived blandness of investment talk. And using the target audience in the creative immediately made it feel friendlier and more accessible to a group who often find this stuff alien. Using actual dollar amounts also created a sense of reality and aligned with the change in legislation.
