Financial independence with SmartPurse
Nominee
Case summary
Smartpurse.me is the unique personalised learning toolbox to make financial education accessible for women to increase their financial confidence.
Case description
What is SmartPurseSmartPurse is a money coaching and financial education company specialising in the unique needs of women’s financial lives. SmartPurse is a membership company that provides women with:
* An inclusive space where every money question is welcomed without judgement and women come together in meet-ups and events to learn from and support each other
* A team of trusted coaches and experts that helps them stay motivated and answers their personal questions through 1:1 and group coaching sessions
* A money learning toolbox with courses and a digital money school that helps women learn what they really need to know about money in a fun and practical way
WHY WAS SMARTPURSE CREATED?
Talking to thousands of women, we learned that there is no safe and welcoming space for women to discuss the money questions impacting their lives and to get practical help.
Women told us that despite everything that is out there, much of the information provided on money and finance is overwhelming and does not really provide the conclusive answers they need to do to take control of their financial future. As many as 4 out of 10 women told us that they don’t even know where to start with financial planning, and 6 out of 10 young women leave long-term financial responsibilities to their partners.
With a team of global thought leaders specialising in gender equality and finance, we set out to change that - to revolutionise the way women discuss and plan their money.
COMPANY DETAILS
* SmartPurse is a UK Ldt company founded in 2019
* Raised 500’000 £ funding from angel investors June 2020
* A team of 7 in CH, UK and Germany
* Proprietary custom-made Swiss technology
* Model: Freemium, B2B2E and B2B2C
* Expanding to CH Q4 2020
Case goals and results
GOALSWe inspire women from all over the world to build fulfilling and financially independent lives by answering their questions and giving them the motivation, knowledge and tools to take control of their financial future with confidence.
GOALS - HOW IS SMARTPURSE DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING OUT THERE?
* INDEPENDENT- No commercial purchase points, no strings attached.
* ALL IN ONE PLACE - The only complete solution with tools, coaches, courses, events, all in one single platform.
* PRACTICAL, ACTION-ORIENTED, PERSONALIZED - 16 steps based on money questions from real women, personalized learning incl. progress measurement.
* MOTIVATING – PEACE OF MIND - Encouraging, motivating, inviting, tracks progress, helps to get the financial stuff done.
* HELPING YOU SAVE MONEY - Helps to avoid mistakes and to fall victim to unfortunate situations and being taken advantage of.
RESULTS
SmartPurse helps women get to grips with money in 3 ways:
RESULTS - LEARN
You can never learn too early or too late how to be financially independent.
For our users who know exactly what they’d like to do, they can jump right into the topic of retirement, saving money or growing money. For those who first need to find out where they stand, we offer a little financial health check. Our 13 questions help users to find out what they feel and know about money. This survey will help them to see where they stand today and what steps they can take to become financially confident.
Furthermore, we designed a unique 16 level learning path, which is ideal for women who’d like to learn at their own pace. But for those who appreciate a community and some guidance we also have instructor-led courses. So there is learning material for each stage and individual preference.
RESULTS - NETWORK
SmartPurse believes in the power of sharing knowledge and supporting each other. That’s why we have put together a program of regular events, meet-ups, speeches and webinars.
RESULTS - COACH
A financial advisor can save their audience a lot of time and money, build their financial confidence and help them to invest successfully. The biggest challenge is to find the right person for them. This is why Smartpurse decided to build a unique “dating” service to help their audience find their trusted partner.
Challenges
The project was previously implemented with a first design and sample content in Wordpress. After the takeover by MD Systems, the examples were analysed and a concept for the administration and development of the content was developed. Based on the design, modular elements were developed for the implementation in Drupal and the visual identity was refined. For optimal consistency and to minimize complexity in implementation and administration, variants were consolidated as far as possible and automated rules for their application were defined.The functionality for tracking and visualizing a user's progress along the learning path was developed from scratch. The granularity of this functionality allows a single page to be divided into several individual steps. After interruption, the user can be returned to continue the path.
The modularity of Drupal and the well thought-out architecture of MD Systems lay the foundation for the planned ongoing expansion of the learning functions, provision of an advisor tailored to the personal profile, multilingualism and regionalization of content.
The implementation of automatic recurring settlement on credit cards for memberships proved to be difficult, as providers of payment solutions have recently made major technical changes due to changes in regulations (Strong Customer Authentication https://stripe.com/docs/strong-customer-authentication). Existing Drupal solutions must first be adapted. To simplify matters, it was decided that monthly memberships can be renewed through an accelerated checkout. Discounted annual subscriptions are also offered for long-term members.
Community contributions
DRUPAL CORE DISPLAYS INTERNAL USERNAMEThe processes around user registration using usernames or email are not always consistent in Drupal. Often, defining a separate username in addition to first and last name and email is also unnecessarily confusing for users, especially if you can also log in directly with email. Drupal basically allows an application to define how references to the user are displayed (with getDisplayName()). Work has continued on a solution (https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2629286), so that this instrument is respected consistently by Drupal and does not lead to inadvertent display of internal information.
H5P BLOCKS BACKGROUND PROCESSES
For interactive "Learning Nuggets" components from H5P (https://h5p.org/) are used. A bug (https://www.drupal.org/project/h5p/issues/3085464) was fixed that could cause all background processes (cron) to be blocked.
CAPTCHA BLOCKS INTEGRATION
After an update of reCAPTCHA (https://www.drupal.org/project/recaptcha) it was found that despite a successful test of the registration, no further registrations by users were made. It turned out that CAPTCHA blocked all following registrations by inadvertently caching the first test parameters. The solution completely deactivates the cache for forms with a CAPTCHA, but has not yet been included in the official release of the module.
Why should this case win the splash awards?
SmartPurse developed an all-in-one-place unique digital tool for financial education to help women become financially independent worldwide. With the help of Drupal technology we aspire to become the leading standard for financial education on broad scale globally.5 reasons why we should win this year's splash awards:
* Innovative use case of Drupal: we developed a unique blended learning system that supports both, innovative, interactive online learning through micro-modules (checklists, text, podcast, video, quizzes etc.) as well as the execution of hybrid learning methods (offline and webinar/online meeting based events and courses). In addition we have a matchmaking engine to match financial coaches with women.
* Validity of the business case, the solution and Drupal support to make it work: thanks to the efficiency gained in content authoring, translation and process management we can deliver financial education at 50% of costs compared to competitors in Switzerland and have a significant cost advantage globally, in a first step to 26 million women across Switzerland, Germany and the UK.
* Unique concept, UX and design: we take boring, financial content and turn it around into a fitness-like lifestyle product with personalized micro-moments of learning, games, quizzes and a distinct look and feel reflected in the UX and the visual design, which on top of all is fully diversity-balanced from the get-go.
* For-profit venture with strong social ripple effects: while we are a for-profit venture, the outcomes the solution provides has high societal relevance especially now with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on people's finances.
* Global vision of the system and community support: built with global scale in mind from the get-go, the system is suitable for multi-languages, multi-country use as well as being further developed functionality-wise.