Commonwealth Bank is Australia's biggest bank, and it had a pretty savvy strategy called Dollarmites (yep, we all know it).
Background: Commonwealth Bank is Australia's biggest bank. But it didn't get to be so big just through sheer luck. In fact, it had a pretty savvy strategy called Dollarmites (yep, we all know it).
What happened: CBA went around to schools handing out little yellow envelopes. Kids were encouraged to drop a couple gold coins in there...and nek minnit they were a CBA customer. Voila!
What else: Currently there are around 175,000 school kids with CBA accounts via the Dollarmites program. All up its worth around $10 billion to the bank. But after calls from consumer advocates to get rid of the program, CBA's finally revealed it's getting cut.
💡CBA said it was teaching young Aussies and their families how to save, and how to keep those behaviours through adulthood. But ASIC, the corporate watchdog, actually found no evidence of any positive impact on financial literacy.
💡Instead, ASIC found a financial education program that was bringing in billions of dollars for a bank...🚩🚩🚩
💡ASIC reckons school banking programs were actually just customer acquisition tools in disguise. And now, pretty much all Aussie states have banned it.
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