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Profiles of IFIE Members' Financial and Investor Education Programs
The Bond Market Foundation
Financial and Investor Education Program Profile:
The Bond Market Foundation is a charitable and educational 501 c 3 organization and partner of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The Foundation's mission is to harness the time, resources, member attention and expertise of the bond markets to address the challenges ahead for society. The Foundation's work is focused on three areas: 1. Financial education for targeted, commercially less well served audiences—women; young people (ages 18-34); Spanish speaking Americans; people facing financial decision making related to unexpected changes such as loss of a spouse, job or sudden disability; anyone who needs basic, accessible information on personal finance concepts—including confidence-, motivation-, knowledge- and skill-building—in order to begin to save and then to invest. 2. Enhancing media coverage of personal finance topics, particularly for targeted audiences. 3. Support for the value of non-proprietary research in the financial markets (particularly the fixed income markets).
The Foundation also has a State Treasurer Gateway Partnership Initiative Network with electronic resources for US residents in partnership with the NAST Foundation. These State Treasurer sites can be found through the NAST Web site www.nast.net.
The Bond Market Foundation provides information in other formats than electronic. The overview is described on www.tomorrowsmoney.org/section.cfm/media/about and in Spanish on www.ahorrando.org/section.cfm/prensa/acerca.
In partnership with Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the Bond Market Foundation manages www.investinginbonds.com, an investor education website for bond market and fixed income investors—from beginners, to experienced equity investors who are new to bonds, to sophisticated bond investors.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) www.sifma.org mission is to champion policies and practices that benefit investors and issuers, expand and perfect global capital markets, and foster the development of new products and services. Fundamental to achieving this mission is earning, inspiring and upholding the public’s trust in the industry and the markets. SIFMA also provides investor education; industry education and research in electronic and print. This information is described at the following links:
What Works Particularly Well and Why:
The Bond Market Foundation
Four highlights:
- The audience research based Web sites of the Foundation contain information in a tone and framework that empower target audiences. Media, sites visitors and people who work with the target audiences have praised the tone, accessibility, encouragement, usability and clarity of the content on the Foundation's sites.
- The Foundation's www.ahorrando.org is widely used for its content, culturally appropriate but regionally neutral Spanish, and sensitivity to audience. The Foundation is committed to doing all its work bi-lingually and research suggests that this is the best way to serve Spanish speakers in an empowerment context. One partner also asked for content translated into French to serve their audiences and the Foundation accommodated them.
- The Foundation has a Web based strategy that delivers on the ground training and outreach efforts as well. For example, the Foundation partners with the National Association of State Treasurers Foundation to work with U.S. State Treasurers on Web based content, e-newsletters, money conferences and outreach financial and investor literacy and education events for adults and training in their states. The Foundation partnered with the American Red Cross—September 11 Recovery Program—training all the family support specialists in some of the key financial issues and decision making related to experiencing unwanted changes such as death of spouse, loss of a job, etc.
- In partnership with IFIE Founding Member Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), investors can access real time price data for free on municipal and corporate bonds providing price transparency for the first time to the general public on the fixed income investor education site www.investinginbonds.com. Investors can also research information related to the pricing data.
How We Learn About Our Audiences' Investor Education Needs:
- Focus groups with target audiences
- Surveys
- On line polling and surveys (in 2006)
- Educational events with Foundation partners
- Training of community intermediaries
- Analysis of sites' usage data, i.e. traffic including for partnership sites
- Response to emails and calls and letters from users and partners describing challenges they want to address with Foundation assistance
- Consulting with others in the personal finance field from corporations, public sector, non profit organizations, foundations, academics, market research
- Experience with partners or in alliances where other organizations are also working with Foundation target audiences
- Feedback from Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association members and partners globally
- Traffic analysis, usability studies and usage studies
Tools We Use in Our Investor Education Programs:
Financial and investor literacy www.tomorrowsmoney.org suite of sites:
- Asset allocator tool
- Savings calculator and monthly email reminder for those who sign up
- Retirement and college savings calculators
- Budgeting tools/forms
- Survey/polling tools
- Other charts in text to help people figure out where they are in a particular area (credit card debt, etc)
- Information for people training/helping others on the sites
Investinginbonds.com site (in partnership with SIFMA):
- Indices and economic indicator data charted by bond market for Municipal, Government/Treasury, Corporate and MBS/ABS markets
- A ? icon that explains the data and why it is important to understand on every data chart on the site
- A See Data icon at the bottom of each chart that gives the user the data behind the chart
- Real time price data for both municipal bonds and corporate bonds
- Analytics that help people use the bond price data
- Calculators
- Tax information charts related to municipal bonds
Different Delivery and Marketing Strategies to Reach Our Audiences, Educate and Help Them Use Our Materials:
The Bond Market Foundation works through community intermediaries and partners; reviews metatagging of sites for search engine optimization; sends out monthly emails of what is new on the sites; has training/briefing content protocols for helping target audiences learn what is on, and use, the sites; works with media that reach the audiences.
- Sends out What's New monthly emails to visitors who sign up
- Sends out monthly reminders on savings goals to visitors who sign up
- Sends out monthly e-newsletter to State Treasurer Partnership network and other partners regarding new content on the site and information/research behind it, outreach ideas, and information on initiatives undertaken by partners related to financial literacy and education
- Attends Foundation partner events such as Money Conferences
- Holds small group seminars/discussions
- Does outreach and training with partners for target audiences
- Customizes collateral material for partners to reach targeted audiences
- Works with Education and Outreach Committee of Board of Directors to identify key partners and constituencies and talk with targeted and segmented media about initiatives
- Hyperlinking strategies and meta tagging efforts
- Sign up for what's new on site
- Has an on-line Press Office to alert media to issues and information
- Acknowledges different learning styles and strategies
- The Bond Market Foundation uses research, market research, focus groups, visitor feedback, partner feedback, expert feedback and WebTrend site traffic analysis to learn what challenges target audiences face and then looks for different ways to get the information across—partnering with people who have book based materials and providing website information as well, picking different kinds of format for information—calculators, survey tools, quickly absorbed information, longer more comprehensive information. We believe that people need to see, hear and revisit information and that they need confidence-, knowledge- and motivation- building types of information configured in a way that makes people comfortable, allows people to get the information they need quickly or to browse. We also try to demystify financial concepts and processes as well as empower people with knowledge and tools so they can take action.
- The information is usually designed in different formats and frameworks to accommodate the ways different audiences learn and the sequence in which they want to see information and the framework in which they want to learn to trust the information. We try to keep the information in chunks that can be absorbed in short amounts of time, we use research that guides us on communication, reading levels, we have our material reviewed for reading levels and ease as well as accuracy and relevance of content. Finally, we are aware that different audiences have different perspectives and needs in the area of basic personal finance information and so we also look to making sure we cover those trust areas.
- No advertising is allowed on the site and privacy is strictly protected.
The Bond Market Foundation and SIFMA remind various distribution partners about the existence of www.investinginbonds.com and the availability of free realtime price data for individual investors, which is a unique feature on the site. Print Investor Guides can be ordered and used by member firms in working with individual investors through SIFMA.
Other Outreach by SIFMA:
- Collateral investor guides for various types of bonds that can be used by member firms or directly by consumers
- Media Office talks about www.investinginbonds.com with press and media contacts
- Efforts acknowledge different learning styles and strategies
- www.investinginbonds.com has information for investors who prefer text (in the Learn More part of the site) and information for investors who prefer data (Market at a Glance pages). Information has additional "help" functions associated with it.
- SIFMA has both electronic and print formatted information
- No advertising is allowed on the site and privacy is strictly protected
How We Measure the Impact of Our Investor Education Programs:
The Bond Market Foundation:
- Analyzes website traffic data for all sites, including partnership sites
- Does feedback forms at on the ground events
- Solicits feedback from website users and site users at events, trainings, etc.
- Solicits feedback from partners
- Asks experts for reviews of certain sections, strategies
- Conducts occasional surveys
- Has a Board Education and Outreach Committee and has an annual review of audience impact with the full Foundation board
This information is used to:
- Add information and tools to the content and tools on the sites
- Adjust/refine trainings, content presentations, site design
- Add to the arsenal of products available to investors through Foundation work such as additional brochures, trainings, events, Web sites, etc.
- Share relevant findings with partners so that they too can refine and strengthen their efforts to provide investor education to their constituencies/audiences
- Give benchmarks for improvement that can be reviewed and evaluated by the Foundation Board of Directors in setting priorities, strategies, etc.
For the investinginbonds.com site:
- Analyzes website traffic data and usage patterns
- Solicits feedback from website users
- Solicits feedback from donor firms and other partners
This information is used to:
- Add or adjust content and data feeds on the site
- Build out areas of content and data presentation that are highly used
- Refine content presentation, site design
- Help inform requests for donations for content
- Add calculators or other tools
- Strengthen usability for different targeted audiences
Other Investor Education Initiatives:
- The Bond Market Foundation provides investor alerts or warnings about potential problems for investors to watch out for in the financial services arena.
- The Bond Market Foundation provides information about financial services intermediaries.
- The Bond Market Foundation together with Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association provide research on investor education programs or policies.
- SIFMA focuses more on information related to the markets from institutional feedback that will impact investors. Research is posted on the Association's site (www.sifma.org/research/research.html) and sometimes, where relevant, on the www.investinginbonds.com site.
- The Foundation tends to focus on investor/consumer based information and shares the results on its websites as well as with partners. The work of the Foundation is research-based, focused on the needs of the target audiences.
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