Fifth Third Young Bankers Club® Makes Financial Education Fun
Maximillion Money® is the richest kid in America and he’s ready to take kids on a journey of financial education through the Fifth Third Bank Young Bankers Club®. Started in 2004, the Young Bankers Club® was designed by Fifth Third to help reach kids at an early age and teach them about money, budgeting and the importance of saving for the future. It was taught inside the classrooms of local schools by Fifth Third volunteers.
In 2022, Fifth Third took the program fully digital to enable teachers more flexibility in teaching the course and to engage kids with a gamified platform experience where they can level up as they learn. The digital program also enabled the Bank to scale the program and reach more elementary-aged kids. The interactive experience contains both instruction and assessment, with multiple opportunities and included interventions to ensure that students learn the material before progressing further. Young Bankers Club® also introduces social functionality, including a leaderboard and personalized avatars.
The Young Bankers Club® digital format features a comprehensive curriculum that meets national and state Common Core educational standards for fourth through sixth grades. The curriculum also meets Jump$tart and Council for Economic Education National Standards in K-12 Personal Financial Education.
Each lesson in the eight-unit curriculum, which is presented through a game, provides a unique, engaging approach to financial literacy that helps students apply their knowledge gradually as they work toward more complex scenarios. The program incorporates different facets of banking, while clearly identifying relevant math standards within each unit and outlining what students should know and how to use the information.
VMG Studios developed and programmed the educational, creative, and interactive elements of the reimagined Young Bankers Club® program. The digital learning platform, Tovuti LMS (Learning Management System) powers the curriculum and enables gamification, enrollment, tracking and reporting metrics of the students who participate in the virtual offering.
The most innovative feature in the digital format is the introduction of the 10-year-old character, Maximillion Money®, the president of Young Bankers Club® and the richest kid in America. Maximillion Money® guides the participants and his friends on a journey that takes them to the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. Mint, other financial industry landmarks and to a Fifth Third financial center. Students discover hidden clues, win rewards and badges, unlock avatars, level up to new adventures each week, take weekly trivia to test their knowledge and challenge themselves to be first on the class leaderboard.
