Philippine Daily Inquirer Digital Edition

New toolkit to develop smart money habits

By Miguel R. Camus @miguelrcamusINQ

The country’s money literacy deficiency gets in the way of many Filipinos seeking to secure their financial future. The Ty family-led banking giant, Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co., sees an opportunity to close this gap.

During a recent media event, Metrobank unveiled its latest financial education drive, called Moneybility.

On the surface, Moneybility is an e-book that aims to educate more Filipinos and raise the current financial literacy rate of 25 percent.

But the lender assures the product will be much more comprehensive and interactive for its users, offering features such as quizzes and money trackers.

In other words, Metrobank wants to step in as the country’s next-generation financial educator—backed by a banking tradition that spans six decades.

“It’s not just a book but it’s actually a platform for increasing your financial education and your moneybility,” Digs Dimagiba, chief marketing officer of Metrobank, tells reporters.

Moneybility is now available for signups at moneybility. metrobank.com.ph. It will officially be launched this October.

It enters a crowded field of financial educators, including social media personalities on Twitter and TikTok whose visibility surged at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

In fact, data from TikTok show financial-related content views in Southeast Asia had jumped seven times from March 2020 through March 2021.

For Dimagiba, it is important to establish credible sources, especially when it comes to handling money and investing.

Making it fun

Moneybility is clearly targeting a younger audience, but he says even more experienced users can pick up important lessons.

“We created it for everybody” he shares.

At its core, Moneybility will be a “collection of money management topics that gets updated as market conditions change.”

It will also feature multimedia and interactive features and tools like tests, money tracker and calculator. The goal is to make financial topics more understandable and relatable. In doing so, users can start to build smart money habits on budgeting, debt, insurance and investing.

“We strive to go beyond just providing the usual banking services and aim to be the credible and reliable partner of our customers for expert financial advice. With education as our driving force, we hope to fulfill their needs while at the same time empower them to sustain a financially resilient way of living,” says Dimagiba.

“This advocacy of propelling financial literacy among Filipinos, wherever they may be in their financial journey, is consistent with our promise of keeping people in ‘good hands.’ Equipped with our decades-worth of experience and wisdom on banking and finance, Metrobank hopes to be the go-to-source of financial knowledge through our slate of learning tools and initiatives, starting with our flagship financial education tool, Moneybility,” he adds.

Metrobank has rolled out different financial education tools over the years.

For those willing to take the next step in investing, it offers “Earnest,” an investing platform with easy-to-understand lesson cards, digestible financial news and simple investing explainers.

This provides investment fund options starting at P1,000 and allows account opening of a Metrobank Savings account. Users can go to the website, earnest.ph or download the app in the Play Store and App Store.

Moreover, there is Tara Invest, which offers a series of bite-size social media video explainers on the basics of investing, and Wealth Insights, for high net-worth clients.

On personal finance, Metrobank has MoneyBasics, a collection of simple and creative articles and social media posts to help people build their savings habit.

“Money management is not one-size-fits-all, so we have a slew of financial education initiatives that can provide proper guidance to every Filipino,” says Dimagiba.

SUNDAY BIZ

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2022-10-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

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Philippine Daily Inquirer