4 minute read
LINK TO... NEWS: SpendAble
Bringing choice and control to budgeting
With the goal of making finances accessible, SpendAble is shaking up banking and budgeting, as Danielle Kutchel found out.
SpendAble is a financial independence tool that allows people to budget their money for specific expenses and goals. It was partly inspired by the experiences of its founders, who previously operated a NDIS service provider and understood that people with disability often face financial risk.
Determined to reduce the financial risk and make understanding money easier for people with disability, the SpendAble team built a system that would enable smart budgeting, spending and saving and promote financial literacy. Spendable allows participants to allocate money to particular expense categories, check their balance and select a budget to stick to.
“The idea was to just remove that arithmetic and maths… and make it very behaviour-driven” CEO Reece Miller said.
“We knew there was a vulnerable participant problem that banks just weren’t going to solve.”
But the plan is not to rival the banks.
“The banking environment is quite massive. We’re very niche. We’re trying to prove that this group of people has spending power, and they deserve respect.”
Uncomplicated banking
Miller says SpendAble also makes it easier for participants to do their banking – they don’t have to constantly make time to duck into a branch, or call a 1800 number. And in an era in which bank branches are closing or restricting services and trading hours, this is a boon for SpendAble’s participants.
He describes SpendAble as being like having several envelopes for different expenses, with money placed into each one, but in this case, the envelopes are digital.
Accessibility has been built into SpendAble from the ground up, which Miller contrasts to other bank apps which he said can be complex.
The first step in building SpendAble was to determine the minimal amount of information that needed to be provided to people, “essentially, we’re trying to get as close to easy read in an app as possible,” he said.
It’s highly visual, with red and green colouring used to show a person whether they’ve got money, and the amount clearly featured on the screen. Icons act as signposts for functions. Big buttons ensure everything is easy to find. The team also made sure to minimise the number of clicks needed to find information, so necessary details aren’t buried.
The team was guided by the lived experience of some of SpendAble’s staff with disability and that lived experience of disability has proved to be extremely important when it comes to building the product, he said.
“The biggest thing it gives you is empathy. You have to go into it with empathy and you have to understand your clients’ lives a little bit too.”
Understanding that users of SpendAble would be extremely busy, and that financial management may not be top of mind, helped the team understand better what they needed to make and how to solve the problem.
“People just want time and simplicity. That was our big learning, Miller said.
They also needed to work out how people with different disabilities would use the product. Spendable CFO Chris Kessaris has muscular dystrophy, and Miller said the way he uses SpendAble is different to the way that other testers use it. He can see a future in which they create different apps that are tailored to different types of disability.
He’s also keenly aware that inaccessibility in banking is an issue not just in Australia, but around the world.
“Banks are historically extremely poor on accessibility, vulnerable participants get defrauded, financially abused, or end up with negative financial wellbeing.”
SpendAble hopes to fix that before possibly moving into other financial products in future.
And so far, the community is embracing the new banking tool. Miller said many had found it “lifechanging”, with SpendAble giving them choice and control over their finances. They’ve also had a positive response from trustees and guardians, who are allowing those under their care to have more responsibility now that they have SpendAble in their lives. For busy parents, SpendAble takes care of budget education for children as they grow older.
“We see people that would spend their whole wage in the first three days of getting it. And now, because they’ve segmented out their different budgets, they’re planning ahead. They’re starting to smooth their expenses out. And it’s way less stress when they get to that end of the week or end of the fortnight or end of the month, then they’re not going without food or medication,” he said.
