Financial planning gets the video game treatment

Forget power bars and golden rings, property assets and funds are the new currency for gaming devotees

It doesn’t matter whether you know your Xbox from your PlayStation, or your Call of Duty from your World of Warcraft, because now gaming thumbs are twitching over a subject much closer to our hearts: financial planning.

Seven Investment Management already has its own app – and now it has hired video game developers, including programmers that previously worked on popular Nintendo titles such as Golden Eye and Donkey Kong, to come up with new ways of engaging millennials with financial planning.

Teaming up with Precious Blue Dot, they have created an app known as MyFuture. The idea is that clients can “play” with a host of different financial ideas to see what affect it has. It could be increasing their salary, reducing school fees or selling assets.

“We know that everyone has a number, that number being the amount of money they need to live the life they want in retirement,” said Verona Smith, head of platform at Seven Investment Management. “Finding the size of that number can be challenging, so the addition of My Future to our App 7IMagine is our way of helping people to understand their number.

“We hope that My Future is hugely successful in helping people understand the amount they need to enjoy the retirement lifestyle they have been working their entire lives to enjoy.”

The idea is that people can use the app as a gaming platform to work with their liabilities and assets and make judgements about when their money will run out. According to Ms Smith, clients will still look for financial advice – this is simply a way to make financial management more accessible to the masses.

“My Future is not dumbing down financial planning as it is not financial planning,” she said.

“We leave that to the financial planning profession. My Future aims to help people to understand why they may need to seek financial planning advice.”
 

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