America’s largest banks know that customers with a good understanding of basic financial principles are among the best with whom they deal. In an effort to improve customer satisfaction, Bank of America has partnered with the Khan Academy to provide educational materials that add to personal financial education. The partnership was announced in 2013 and since that time a lot of progress has been made.
The Khan Academy is the brainchild of financial guru Sal Khan, who developed a series of videos that helped people learn high school mathematics. With his expertise in finance and creating interactive, engaging videos and Bank of America’s expertise in helping customers they have created a phenomenal collection of personal finance learning videos.
To showcase the learning videos, they have launched a website called Better Money Habits. The finance lessons feature 50 videos, each focusing on a bite-sized topic in language easily understood by non-experts. They are crisp, visually attractive, fun to watch and give succinct directions as to how to apply the information for better personal money management. Among the topics are easy ways to save, how to get out of debt, setting and sticking to a budget, understanding mortgage issues and other aspects of personal resource management. Though created with bank customers as the target audience, they are available free to anyone who has an interest in enhancing his or her understanding of grassroots financial matters.
“At Kahn Academy, our mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere and we believe that financial understanding is now an economic imperative for all, said Kahn. He said the bank partnerships will help the academy “reach a significantly larger group of people searching for unbiased information on personal finance and other topics we teach.”
Surveys made by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling in 2013 indicated there is fertile ground for basic, easily accessed financial education. When asked to grade themselves on their understanding of personal finance issues, 40 percent of the survey respondents graded themselves at C, D or F. A whopping 78 percent said they would welcome professional advice and answers to basic questions. The desire to obtain the understanding that would make their money work harder and better was overwhelming. With such clear direction, huge financial companies such as Bank of America allied themselves with Kahn to provide that information in a simple, easily understood format.
Bank of America expanded on the online Kahn Academy series by sponsoring financial workshops in several major US. cities.
