From 100 years of financial education to learning through digital banking

Swedbank’s commitment to financial education extends beyond Lyckoslanten.

Through its Ung ekonomi initiative, Swedbank provides free personal-finance education to schools, sports clubs and associations across Sweden and says it reaches around 100,000 children and young people every year. Topics include saving, credit, paying bills and financial fraud.

That commitment is rooted even further back in Swedbank’s history. The bank traces its origins to Sweden’s first savings bank, founded in 1820 around the idea that people should be able to build their own finances and improve their circumstances. Today, Swedbank has around seven million private customers and describes itself as the bank with the largest customer base in Sweden.

The Gimi partnership brings this educational heritage into an environment that is increasingly central to how young people experience money: mobile banking.

Making financial education part of everyday money decisions

As cash becomes less relevant in children’s everyday lives, learning about money increasingly means learning about digital money.

Gimi is designed around the idea that financial education becomes more meaningful when children can connect learning to their own financial behaviour.

By connecting a child’s real bank account, families can use everyday activities such as receiving pocket money, completing chores, spending and saving as opportunities to learn.

For Swedbank, this adds another digital layer to its existing work in financial education. For Gimi, it represents an important step towards its ambition to make financial education a natural part of youth banking.