Bank of New Zealand’s mission is to help people be good with money, so they can do great things with it. This mission is translated in to everything BNZ does in order to achieve their purpose of enabling a higher achieving New Zealand.

However until this year, that wasn’t completely true of BNZ’s community programme, Closed for Good. One day a year, all BNZ branches and offices are closed for the day while over 2,400 staff volunteer in their community. Until 2018, only 10% of projects within the programme focused on financial education.

The bigger opportunity was right in front of the bank. Closed for Good is BNZ’s platform for staff to have a positive effect in the community beyond just customers. Closed for Good could be used for staff to truly live the brand’s mission.

So BNZ embarked on a large scale recruitment campaign to involve staff and local organisations in reaching those in the community that would benefit most from improved financial know-how. They then went on to develop specially designed and interactive tools to teach the knowledge, skills and attitude to be good with money and therefore do great things with it.

They set out to help three key groups with individual financial needs and created bespoke digital tools to help teach them financial know-how. They looked to help young children learn the difference between needs and wants, prepare teenagers for the financial realities of adulthood, and educate seniors to spot and avoid scams.

On August 8th, 2,491 BNZ staff spent the day out in their communities using the tools developed to help over 15,000 New Zealanders learning financial know-how. What’s more, staff participation increased from 58% to over 70%, and there was an overall positive sentiment from staff involved.