NOW your kids can be their very own superhero – Earth Hero. The best way to teach your kids about saving money and the environment is by teaching them how to bank with real-time gratification and highly interactive content.
Hong Leong Bank (HLB) today introduced a new initiative – Earth Hero – that encourages children to be environmentally conscious while practicing good money habits.
This new digital forward banking initiative that combines financial and environmental literacy leverages on the HLB Pocket Connect, a first-in-market interactive and personalised banking platform launched in August this year.
Earth Hero is a result of HLB’s effort in expanding its sustainability initiatives in community investment with the promotion of financial inclusion and literacy through the bank’s products and services, according to its group managing director and CEO Domenic Fuda.
“We are cognisant of our role as a financial institution in creating and sustaining a vibrant ecosystem of communities and the environment,” he pointed out.
“We are very proud to be the first bank in Malaysia and the region to steer the younger generation towards being financially savvy and environmentally conscious through our HLB Pocket Connect mobile banking platform.”
Fuda further noted that there has been good traction in the uptake of this app and view such platform as a good opportunity to gamify financial education with tangible rewards that benefits the environment with the guidance of parents and in partnership with an eco-social enterprise.
Under Earth Hero, the HLB Pocket Connect app has embedded a new fun and engaging “Task” section that is linked to an eco-friendly mission aimed at reforestation in Borneo.
Every task completed will earn the child the opportunity to plant virtual trees, and for every 20 virtual trees achieved by tasks completed, HLB will in turn plant one tree on behalf of the child. The child will even receive a certificate with GPS coordinates of the real tree planted in their name.
For the tree planting aspect, the HLB is partnering social enterprise Animal Projects & Environmental Education Sdn Bhd (APE Malaysia) in a reforestation project in Borneo with a target to plant 2,500 trees.
General manager of Personal Financial Services for Deposits & Digital of Hong Leong Bank, Galvin Yeo, shared that children are truly native digital and technology users; likely to be more interested to learn through an interactive mobile platform that has engaging activities and tasks with a gamification aspect to it.
The steps to be an Earth Hero are simple. Firstly, open a 3-in-1 junior account, then download the HLB Pocket Connect App and complete tasks to grow virtual and eventually real trees. – Dec 8, 2020
