Kit CMO Claire McIntyre on fostering a new generation of CommBank customers

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) wants to improve Aussie kids financial literacy and capabilities with a new app targeting kids aged four to 14 years. 

Kit, the CommBank’s kids’ money app, aims to help foster a generation of financially savvy young people in the way the bank’s iconic Dollarmites banking program did during its 90-year run. 

Claire McIntyre, CMO at Kit, told Mediaweek the app, which launched in May 2022 and is aimed at the five to 14-year-old market, builds on the legacy of Dollarmites program, which ran from 1931 to the end of 2021. 

“It’s a hard act to follow; so many of us do not know as much as we should, and we have to change that for the coming generations.” 

The Kit app, which is purpose-built for children with gamification elements alongside financial information, comes with a digital and physical prepaid card. The overall aims is to help kids earn, save, and spend, while learning the value of money. 

“We want them to be truly engaged to enjoy it to take ownership and mastery of finances and their financial education because we believe that leads to financial capability. We need to move beyond just literacy,” said McIntyre. 

Kit is being marketed with a kid-first strategy but is also targeting parents and guardians. McIntyre said, the app is aimed at parent’s who aren’t afraid to give their child autonomy and ownership of their money. However, despite the independence, safety is at the forefront, with parents given a passcode that can review and approve how money is moved in the app. This safety feature includes setting limits and blocking specific merchants.

“At the moment, we’re quite squarely in the basics,” she noted of the app’s current offering. “But there’s so much more we could teach them to get them ready for when they mature out of our product at 14.

McIntyre said that Kit’s association with CommBank, is “huge in building that instant trust with parents and carers.”

Taking money lessons and life lessons to the screen

Kit has teamed with Good One Creative to launch its first brand campaign that captures the attention of parents and guardians who want to improve the financial capability of young people living in Australia.

The platform’s recent campaign, Money Lessons are Life Lessons, showed that with the help of Kit, earning and learning about money can be both empowering and fun for young people from four to 14 years old.

The two 30-second adverts show kids devising genius new ‘hacks’ to help them earn pocket money by completing boring everyday chores, such as washing the car and putting the groceries away.

McIntyre, said the ultimate aim is to get more people talking about money as it is a “key indicator of a child starting to develop financial capability.”

“Our campaign is about the empowerment of the child, doing a fun life hack to their chores. I think the Money Lessons are Life Lessons campaign platform will perform for a long time for us, and we will just keep building to it.”

Kit, which began development two years ago under the initial name Project Billycart with an alpha version of the app and a prepaid card for kids. It underwent plenty of development and internal testing ahead of its mid-2022 launch. 

It follows data from the the National Financial Capability Survey in 2022 which revealed less than half (42%) of Australians aged 14 to 17 feel confident about money management, despite 94% acknowledging its an essential skill. 

Freddie Young, strategy director from Good One Creative, said: “It’s this kid-first approach to learning that makes Kit so exciting, and we wanted to reflect some of the same creativity, energy and playfulness in the campaign – to remind families that learning about money needn’t be boring.”

Where finance and games collide

There are different elements to how the Kit app engages with kids, one of the most crucial being the start of a conversation about finance between parents and their children.

McIntyre noted that while money is typically a “taboo” topic, the app encourages healthy dialogue about how accounts are set up, their balance, limitations and sticking to a budget.

It’s about having a conversation, and ultimately, we need to get more people talking about money because that is a key indicator of a child’s starting to develop financial capability.

Kit also features a gamified aspect with Money Quests, a new learning feature helping young people build financial capability through mini-challenges, bite-sized education, and experiences.

The app’s most recent release allows kids to create and express themselves as an avatar, with a wide range of designs and assistive devices, as well as learning opportunities through quests that teach them how to spot a scam, set a smart goal, etc.

McIntyre shared that the plan is to build out these quests of the fundamental basics of financial capability with the help of their game director, Jesse Perry, and a former teacher-turned-learning designer for Kit, Wendy Allott.

“There’s a whole curriculum that will underpin the gamification and the money quests. The gamification will be an incredible USP for us,” McIntyre added.

Kit worked with Chaos Theory gaming studio to build out the gamification (currently in beta), which will see the app eventually move its current product offering from a one-size-fits-all all to an offering appropriate to a child’s age, reading comprehension and understanding of the fundamentals.

Looking ahead, McIntyre hinted at potential ideas and collaboration with the defunct Dollarmites. “I’ve had a lot of conversations, and there have been some brilliant ideas because even just that generational nudge to the adult to go kind of like if you were a Dolomites customer, this might be right for you,” she said.

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Top image: Claire McIntyre

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