Pandemic and The Increasing Awareness of Financial Planning

Life pressures and current economic conditions have influenced people to start planning their financial decisions. Starting from using emergency funds to cutting expenses.

As a digital financial planning platform, Halofina decided it is the right time to educate the public, aiming to increase financial literacy in the country. DailySocial invited Halofina's Founder & CEO, Adjie Wicaksana in the #SelasaStartup session the first week of August 2020.

Efforts to increase awareness

OJK recorded the percentage of Indonesian people's financial literacy in 2019 experienced a significant increase of 38%. This number is certainly an achievement compared to the previous 3 years at only 29%. Even though it has increased, Adjie said this number is quite far behind other neighboring countries with a fairly good amount of financial literacy among the community, around 70% and above.

What is quite a challenge, is not only the large size of Indonesia's population compared to other neighboring countries, but also a trust issues among the public, related to digital financial products.

"Therefore, the productive age is shown as an ideal target market for a digital financial planning platform. Halofina offers products and services, in this case financial planning," Adjie said.

Even though it's mainly focused on millennials, adjusting the phase that is ultimately faced by this productive age can increase the number of users who are most familiar with technology or better known as tech-savvy.

"We see that productive age is the largest segment that has been frequently exposed and accustomed to digital products and technological innovations. This has become the focus of Halofina," Adjie said.

Reducing barrier entry

The main obstacle for most fintech services to offer their products lies in the barrier entry. From lack of trust to product safety and risk factors, which ultimately makes it difficult for fintech platforms in general to acquire users.

"Therefore, it is important for the platform to provide important and legitimate evidence from regulators. As our platform becomes the first listed in the Financial Services Authority's (OJK Sandbox) Digital Financial Innovation, Digital Financial Planner category," said Adjie.

Apart from regulatory and legality issues, the platform must also have relevant and on-demand products by the community. In this case, creating a 'relatable' product becomes important. In Halofina, financial planning products are what we've tried to offer.

"In early July we launched the consulting feature. The main feature is similar to the ones offered by the healthtech platforms, which is consulting with doctors online. However, in Halofina we provide certified financial planners for users to conduct consultations related to investment and financial planning," said Adjie .

Pandemic and financial planning

In the time of a pandemic, there was a lot of negative news that circulating the daily routine, it was enough to influence most people's views and decisions. Previously, most millennials don't really care about their financial management and financial planning, today, Adjie said there has been a significant increase in the community to pay attention to their financial management.

Starting from using the right emergency fund to managing their financial flow. Adjie also mentioned that this opportunity was what Halofina tried to utilize as a relevant platform. Not only on social media accounts and platforms, Halofina tries to provide the right and required education, aiming to increase awareness of the importance of financial management and planning in everyday life.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian