Fintechs want to be top of mind when important financial decisions are made. Modern investors want to make better investment decisions and feel confident enough to make them.

Through education and community, fintechs can give modern investors what they want by helping them build daily habits and empowering them to make more informed trades, all while increasing user engagement and brand loyalty. 

What is community?

A community is a group of people with shared interests that support and learn from one another. They often have their own specific vision which unites the community under a common goal and follow a unique set of guidelines. For example, eToro is both an investment app  and also a social network of over 30 million users. 

A successful community is a self-perpetuating one, in that it'd keep going if its original organizers left. It’s one where community members step up, lead and teach each other. But sustaining an engaged community doesn’t happen by itself. It takes a serious effort spanning strategy, content creation, and community management. 

Why should fintechs care about community-led learning?

Community is a modern way to learn a new skill. LinkedIn research found that 86% of learning and development experts believe learning is more engaging when people do it together. 

Modern retail investors want to learn how to make more informed financial decisions. Getting advice from a peer or seeing someone you relate to execute a trade serves as an empowering catalyst for action. For example, at Finimize 92% of our members consult their peers before making any investment decision. Meanwhile, eToro’s users have the opportunity to follow and copy each other's investment profiles and receive recognition as an investor by showcasing their established portfolio, sharing tips and documenting their investment journey. 

By facilitating discussions and encouraging users to share their own experiences, communities create a flywheel of engagement, education and action – the perfect environment for modern investors who learn by watching and doing. 

Daily habits built around educational content and peer-to-peer discussion are of equal benefit to fintechs, as they bolster product engagement and brand loyalty. IG, for example, found that their customers made 33% more trades after engaging with their educational content. And report from EY found that customers with financial education are twice as likely to stay with their provider and that over half (56%) of consumers equipped with financial education became relationship customers.

How do you build an engaged community?

Through online forums, social media, chat functions and in-person meet ups, modern investors learn by having conversations with peers and sharing their experiences. However, creating and maintaining an active community takes intentional effort.

Start with educational content 

Education done the right way, doesn't feel time consuming. It’s effortless, interesting and rewarding. 

To do this, you will need to understand your users and the questions they need answers to. Spend time understanding your audience, gathering data and mapping out their learning journey.

Once you have established their needs, build a library of content answering their questions. This might look like a dedicated educational hub such as Moneybox’s “Moneybox Academy” or an A-Zs of financial terminology like Robinhood’s glossary.

Provide information in multiple engaging formats, as people learn differently and it takes time for new learnings to sink in. After years of creating content for modern retail investors at Finimizie this looks like snappy breakdowns of financial news, expert-informed, actionable digests of timely investing topics or clear how-to guides that can be read or listened to in minutes. 

Foster peer-to-peer engagement

To encourage user interaction, establish the community's purpose and guidelines. Members need to have a clear understanding of why the community exists and how to operate within it. 

Then create space for discussions and problem solving. This could be a Slack or Discord channel, a chat group or an online or in-person event. Use Q&A sessions and polls to help start conversations. Each year Finimize enables 300 to 500 member-hosted community-centric meetups, which were attended by more than 100,000 investors in 2022. 

Finally, make a concerted effort to meet people where they are. This means finding the right channel and formats for your users, not what’s most convenient for your team.

How to nurture an educational community with Finimize

Financial content requires a special blend of expertise to get right. It needs to be both in-depth and simple, adhere to regulatory constraints, be produced consistently and at pace to keep up with market trends, all while being engaging and specific enough for the customer to feel like the content is speaking directly to them.

Meanwhile, nurturing an engaged investor community requires a dedicated strategy with a dedicated community manager, regular opportunities for members to get involved, all shared across multiple channels, with multiple touch points to meet people where they are. 

Building and maintaining a buzzing investment community is commitment, but it doesn’t have to be hard if you leverage Finimize.

With Finimize Promote you can access our extensive community of over a million modern investors. You can do this through our 500 community events held annually all over the world, our social media channels reaching more than 400,000, or by our 850,000 newsletter subscribers, which has an over 50% open rate.  

Finimize Select allows you to pull from our extensive content library as and when you need it. Or you can let our team of experts help you craft your own bespoke selection and content strategy with our Finimize Custom offering.