Clever Kash Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2016

New Zealanders live in a mostly cashless society where we use cards, mobile phones or the Internet to pay for things. Whilst parents may not have cash to pay pocket money, the one thing they will have is their mobile phone. Because parents are less reliant on cash, children’s moneyboxes are collecting dust, not coins. At ASB we believe our cashless society has created an intangibility problem. It’s hard to teach children the value of money when they don’t see it any more. After failing to find a local or international solution, ASB’s Innovation Lab together with Marketing and Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand collaborated on an idea that would solve the intangibility problem, help children have fun learning the value of money and remove a pain point for parents. From this collaboration ASB’s Clever Kash was born. He’s a physical, digital moneybox in the shape of an adorable, toy elephant. Instead of holding money, he displays the child’s account balance by interacting with the ASB Mobile app. His tummy’s screen reflects the child’s bank account balance and shows the child’s progress towards their savings goal. For ASB, Clever Kash has been a step change towards behaving like a tech company and it has paid off. The prototype launch through PR, small scale customer testing and digital activity has already driven huge gains for ASB. Levels of interest were well above those predicted and Brand Sentiment reached its highest levels ever, during the course of the development of Clever Kash – we’re expecting big things from our imminent full launch.