Many banks now provide online calculators that perform a similar range of services for their customers. The great advantage of Sorted is its independence. Because it does not have a commercial motive, visitors to Sorted have more trust in the information it provides, and feel secure storing their financial data on the site.
Sorted also provides access to free information booklets on topics ranging from goal setting and budgeting to retirement planning – and around 100,000 of these are posted out annually. In addition, as part of the Retirement Commissioner’s community outreach strategy, Sorted provides downloadable teaching tools for schools and community groups. More recently, four programmes have been developed for Whanau, Community, Workplace, and Pasifika, and Commission facilitators trained to deliver them.
Schools are a big focus for the Commission. The Programme for International Student Assessment 2014 report compared 15-year-olds from OECD countries. While New Zealand had 19 per cent of students scoring at the highest level for financial literacy compared to the OECD average of 10 per cent, the report revealed a major gap between students with higher socio-economic status who tended to perform better, while disadvantaged students did a lot worse. The Commission deliberately engages with students and their parents in low-income areas.
Another strand of the Commission’s strategy is Money Week, an annual public exercise to encourage a cultural shift to make it easier to talk about money. First launched in 2012 through the Sorted portal, Money Week has growing support from businesses, local and national government, academic institutions and community organisations. In the third quarter of each year, a range of free events and activities including budgeting sessions, investing workshops, and school competitions, are offered throughout the country, and promoted through the Commission’s Money Week sites.
Engagement in Money Week has increased each year. In 2014, 330 events were registered, and just over 1m people were reached on social media. These statistics almost doubled this year to 642 activities and events, and over 2m engaged through social media. The key messages for Money Week 2015 were: financial capability is an important life skill, financial fitness is important for individuals, families and communities, and stress about money reduces employees’ productivity.
Despite all the changes, the essential purpose of Sorted remains the same: to assist people to improve their financial capability. This is more than financial literacy: it is knowledge put into action, behavioural change. And Sorted user numbers keep climbing: almost doubling between 2012 and 2015 to 1,557,845 sessions.
