Discover Fortunes! Magnified Learning creates a new learning game aimed at sixth form students to excite them about a career in financial planning.
22 11 2011

This month at the Personal Finance Society (PFS) annual conference we helped launch a new game which we developed to help PFS members across the country reach out to the next generation to showcase career opportunities in the world of financial planning.

Prior to this, PFS members have mainly relied on providing information about their jobs through the customary ‘career talk’ at a school. The new board game allows members to work in pairs to facilitate a competitive learning activity within a convenient lesson.

When we interviewed experts from the sector about the key attributes of a successful financial planner, we were not surprised to hear that numeracy was not enough. They stressed that most important are the ‘softer’ skills of communication and listening and particularly the ability to empathise with and to solve problems for clients.

We have therefore designed a learning activity which places people at the heart of the process through combining actual case study facts and figures with the creation of five client characters spanning five working decades. Students compete in teams to practise the skills and competencies of financial planners as they attempt to correctly plan the portfolios of the five different characters introduced through short cartoons.

The pilots we ran for the prototype game recorded very high levels of enjoyment and engagement amongst the students:

• 100% enjoyed playing the game
• 97% would recommend the game to other sixth form students
• 100% found the game useful in helping them to understand what financial planners do
• 78% agreed that as a result of playing the game they were now more interested in a career in financial planning

The PFS is seeking to emulate the success of the Discover Risk board game Magnified Learning designed for the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). At the end of July 2011, Discover Risk delivered very positive impacts, with over 72% of 1,500 participants agreeing that they are now more interested in a career in the risk sector as a result of playing the game.
More information about the roll out of Discover Fortunes to schools will shortly be available at http://www.facebook.com/DiscoverFortunes