As technology evolves rapidly, we can observe a shift to live and work better than yesterday. High customer experience and interactive user engagement are prioritized heavily. Anything complicated has become arduous. Finance is one such industry where people are reluctant to spend more time understanding the fundamentals. On the other hand, fintech is the emerging industry that concentrates highly on customer benefits, and gamification in fintech increases human engagement activity by transforming learning into an immersive customer experience through gaming. To know more about it, in another episode of Digital Success Dialogue, we invited Kanak Kr Jain, a Volatility Coach, International Speaker, Trainer, and Author, in addition to being a Certified Financial Planner. Besides his own immediate field of expertise as the Founder-of a very successful SSL Academy and Volatility Games, Kanak is also a creator of a game on personal finance called The Volatility Game – Play & Grow Rich. He also authored his Second Best Selling Book, “Behave Your Finance,” based on Vikram Betaal Stories.
Staying precise in financial planning is always a rationale but attending the seminar on the same is tiresome for an aspiring financial planner and strategist. Huge datasets, long lectures, various charts, and formulas demotivate the future planner to plan systematically as they lack understanding of the fundamentals. Gamification in fintech overcomes the challenge by redefining financial fundamentals by explaining them in a fun and interesting way. Gamification has made people respond in a better way than rewarding them for systematic planning.
Ideation
For the last 21 years, Kanak was in the finance sector, constantly dealing with investors and financial advisors. “Due to the extensive use of formulas, figures, calculations, it becomes boring for both financial and non-financial people to attend the seminars and thus to make it interesting, I created my first game – Volatility.” Kanak further added, “once it was created, I started using it in my workshops. Instead of showing the numbers in the usual way, I presented them the simplified concept of managing wealth in an interesting way to the fund manager. My whole idea of creating the product was based as per the need.”
With the software development partners’ help, Kanak shaped up his dream and idea and launched 18 such games by overcoming the technical challenges.
Capitalise Games on Financial Instruments
So each of the games caters to each of the different instruments of the factor market and how to capitalize on those instruments.
“Simplify the concept”- Kanak stressed, and gamification did that. Among the various games built, the game on “Debt Market” helped many. As we know, people have accelerated their investments in government and other money market bonds; the frequent queries asked during the workshops are “Where to invest? When to invest? And the risks associated with it.”
Kanak understood the underlying difficulty in comprehending the fundamentals among people. Thus, simplifying the concepts through a gamified way and investing in a particular instrument, and then finally enabling them to judge whether it is right or wrong is the whole idea behind building each game. Kanak talked about empowering the fund managers and decision-makers with the precise judging power.
“These financial games help you in forecasting the cheaper market so that you can take advantage of it and invest and again when the market is expensive, the forecasting decision helps you in coming out of it quickly” Kanak further added on the advantages of some of the games on fundamental analysis.
Popularity of Gamification
It is very uncertain about defining the user base of the financial apps, and the popularity of the same dwindles. Less than 2 percent of the Indian population invests in equity. Out of Rs. 100, 55 is going to the fixed deposit. Then comes PPF, LIC, and all and NSE bond, which covers almost 98 percent of the personal investment. However, in the USA, 78 percent of the money is invested in mutual funds. Indian Citizens find it difficult to break the stereotype.
Kanak believes, “There are various investors from small to big. Everyone needs to understand finance basics for financial planning and the ‘fee element’ deters people from hiring a consultant to understand the fundamentals. Gamification in fintech is lowering the barrier and acting as a motivator to work towards personal financial planning. It has also added the essence of competitiveness among the people through the concept of the leaderboard.”
Gamification is providing food to both the hemisphere of a brain. Logical and emotional. In a workshop, talking only about numbers will make it monotonous. Gamification transforms it, and the learning becomes easy, and retention capability increases if done interestingly. It further helps you understand the purpose of the tools used to create plans for investment and savings.
Gamification is primarily customer-centricity
Gamified workshops are created for customers to provide them with an overall idea. For instance, the prediction is based on clues or any historical dataset. Kanak created a game named ‘Technical Analysis,’ consisting of lots of charts and figures, which provides the users with clues or signals based on the historical dataset before any unprecedented event. The signal before the event relaxes the user and helps him in his decision-making process. The game focuses on leveraging the financial tools to make the user future-ready by minimizing the risk.
Final Take Away
Gamification in fintech is becoming popular as it continues to feed customers with a highly interactive and immersive experience. Gamification came into the picture because the financial literacy among the people was remarkably low, and motivating users to use various digital channels to avail financial services was another objective of boosting gamification. Banks and other financial institutions are deploying gamification to increase the user base for mobile and internet banking. Gamification is being used across many industries, but in fintech, it is used the most to provide a next-level non-stereotype and interesting customer experience to the users where you experience every stage of the process through a gamified way. Further, the propound growth of gamification also imparts better customer insights to the service providers.
