The Ultimate to Paying Off Student Loans

August 15, 2023 admin No Comments

The South African Revenue Services (SARS) recently announced that it is now legal for its officials to hand over certain information of taxpayers to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), to ensure that former students who are now taxpayers cannot dodge their loan repayments. According to NSFAS, at the end of March 2015 the scheme recorded a loan book with a cumulative value of R21.6 billion, and a fair value of R6.1 billion.

Motshabi Nomvethe, Technical Marketing Specialist at PPS, says that it is no surprise that graduates face financial challenges when it comes to paying back their student loans. “There can be many reasons for this, but the most common reasons usually include the high cost of education, the general increase in the cost of living and poor management of personal finances due to the lack of financial education. It is important that graduates who do take student loans out are aware of the costs involved and make sure they are informed about how to structure a repayment plan.”

According to Nomvethe, loan repayments play a huge part in sustaining the future of schemes such as NSFAS which provide financial aid for thousands of other young people who wish to obtain a tertiary education. “People need to keep in mind that when they do not repay their student loans they are withholding the opportunity of tertiary education from someone else in dire need of financial aid.”

She provides the below tips for graduates who are currently paying off their student loans:

1. Begin by drawing up a budget as soon as you graduate and start earning a salary to incorporate loan

repayments into your monthly expenses.

2. Aim to pay off the loan as soon as possible.

3. Understand how the loan is structured and keep track of the loan by knowing the balance, the interest

charges and repayment status at all times.

4. Do not be tempted to spend money on luxury, trendy items before paying the loan debt.

5. If you haven’t found employment, contact your creditors and inform them of your current situation, so that

alternative repayment arrangements can be made.

6. Don’t incur more debt during this period, and advisably even after the student loan is paid off.

7. Stay in touch with the lender by informing them of any change of address or contact details, as some

lenders do penalise borrowers if they fail to keep them informed of their current situation.

8. Keep the end and mind and stay focused. The sooner you pay off the debt, the sooner you can be

financially free and plan for the life that you want to live.

9. When in doubt, seek the advice of a reputable financial adviser who will assist you with the entire process.

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Why Do I Need To Use Financial Consulting?

July 25, 2019 admin No Comments

The 5 Most Effective Marketing Strategies for Financial Services

Developing marketing strategies for financial services means considering a range of elements which include:

Your organization’s goals & objectives
Target markets
New & emerging markets
Your organization’s strengths & weaknesses
Resources available

However, no matter what your goals or the financial services you provide, effective financial marketing strategies can help you to focus on efforts so that you can better reach targets and goals.

The 5 Most Effective Marketing Strategies for Financial Services:

Customer Outreach
Self-Service and Digitization
Social Media
Automation and Big-Data
Digital Storytelling

These 5 financial services marketing strategies are a good place to start for many marketing strategies for banks and financial institutions.

1. Customer Outreach

Customer outreach is one of the oldest and simplest marketing strategies for banks and financial institutions to adopt. However, it’s also one of the most effective. Customer outreach is quite simply the concept of reaching out to customers to fill existing needs surrounding education, awareness, and help. This scales to a small organization in the form of free consultations and webinars and to larger ones in the form of financial education such as debt management programs or financial education in schools.

Why does it work? Customer outreach may seem like a largely philanthropic use of budget, but it works to build awareness, customer loyalty, and interest in products and services. A carefully formulated financial marketing strategy takes the services and features you are trying to sell and other marketing campaigns into consideration. For example, if you know that students are going back to school, you could focus customer outreach around programs for teaching college students to manage money on their own, towards saving for college, or budgeting to save up for a car. If you know your geographic area has a large percentage of seniors, you could create free financial education programs teaching seniors to use digital banking and about online security. These programs would, in turn, promote savings accounts, digital solutions, and even your bank through awareness and increased consumer trust.

2. Self-Service and Digitization

Where baby boomers and previous generations largely preferred to receive products through sales representatives who could advise them and set up personalized (or not) accounts for them, millennials and Generation Z often want to do everything themselves with as little contact with human representatives as possible. Setting up and promoting digitized financial products and customer service or experience portals that enable customers to sign up for services online, change products and services online, and view their information without going into a branch is an effective and increasingly necessary trend for financial organizations. However, it is not a marketing strategy that applies to every organization, as you may not sell products only services.

3. Social Media

81% of the United States population is on a social media account and many use social for up to 4-5 hours per day. Your smart and consistent use of one or more social media platforms is a valuable financial marketing strategy that you cannot afford to ignore. Millennials, Generation Z, and even Baby Boomers use social media platforms to connect with brands, learn from peers, and follow current events and news. Maintaining a steady presence on one or more sites with a strategy in place to offer value to followers will help you to build brand trust, create marketing opportunities, and grow your customer base.

Many financial and banking organizations use social media to connect with consumers for the purpose of building trust. For example, by showing that real people work at banks and in financial services, showcasing customers and success stories, and delivering customer service. For example, financial organizations can typically cut the cost of customer service by over 70% by switching from phone to social media. A good social media marketing strategy requires smart use of storytelling, content, and creative humor as well as consistency and the willingness to offer value for the customer rather than the bank. However, it is well worth the effort in terms of building trust, awareness, and relationships with consumers in their space.

4. Automation and Big Data

Most financial organizations have more data than they know what to do with, but that is quickly changing. Today, customer experience platforms and automation tools make it easier than ever to utilize and apply data as part of your marketing strategy for financial services. For example, big data can tell you who is saving up for a big purchase and most likely to need pre-approval for a loan, big data can help you identify and offer services before or after they are needed, it can help you to target specific customers for additional customer service or digital financial education, and can help you to cut down on needed customer service.

5. Digital Storytelling

Storytelling is still one of the most effective marketing mediums, whether on social media, video, ads, or cross-channel platforms extending into the real world. Here, your marketing strategy should encompass telling a story that captures interest and evokes emotion to interest, excite, and move the viewer. Here, your goal is to create relatable and shareable content which can educate, entertain, or help the reader in some way – and hopefully manage all three at once. For example, Allstate’s award-winning “Worth Telling” digital storytelling marketing campaign focuses on telling the story of 3-8 customers who are making a difference. Allstate not only promotes what their customers are doing, building trust by sharing real people and stories, but also dries interest across all marketing channels, builds customer relationships, and creates a human factor while promoting the products and services discussed in the videos.

No matter what your financial organization does, digital media opens up a wide range of creative marketing ideas, tactics and strategies you can take. However, you shouldn’t focus on just one or try to incorporate everything. Instead, create a single, broader financial marketing strategy so that each element adds to and builds on the rest, adding value to your organization.