The news: According to a recent survey by money management and safety app Greenlight, financial literacy is a top concern among US families. While this type of education is in high demand, 47% of financial institutions (FIs) don’t offer it at all, per the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

How we got here: Building educational offerings that work with digital and mobile banking apps demands budget and resource allocation that many FIs, especially smaller ones, may not have. Additionally, some may find it challenging to quantify the direct ROI for such educational initiatives, leading them to prioritize other areas.

A potential solution: Third-party solutions are becoming more readily available, allowing FIs to offer such solutions for a fraction of the time and cost of building them in-house. For example, Greenlight recently announced its partnership with Q2’s digital banking platform, which will allow FIs to offer Greenlight’s tools to their customers. These include:

• Financial literacy tools that teach kids and teens to earn, save, spend wisely, and give.
• Tools for parents to monitor transactions, automate allowances, and control their children’s spending.
• Curriculum-based gamified educational content like the financial literacy game “Level Up.”

Greenlight isn’t alone in offering embedded solutions to banks. BusyKid also offers banks co-branded financial literacy resources.

Our take: Offering solutions that help young families can help build stronger relationships with parents and their kids (who are likely to bank where their parents do). While it’s difficult to quantify the ROI of offering these solutions, the benefits of improved customer loyalty and young customer acquisition can help set up an FI for long-term success.