Financial Education Reimagined: How Bankers Can Partner to Drive Real Financial Success

For most of my professional life, I’ve been intimately involved with banking—as a banker, a consultant, or an architect of banking technology. I know how the engine of a successful financial institution works, and I certainly know how to drive profitability. Having led departments from product operations to credit risk, I’ve been intimately familiar with the tools and data banks use to deliver their products, and I’ve watched the data science revolution transform the industry. But I also have a deep, personal appreciation for the challenges ordinary people face every day just trying to make the right financial decision.

Research and experience led me to a great realization: most people can achieve incredible success in personal finance and build long-term wealth, but sadly, the tools and help they truly need are missing.

Here is where the opportunity—and the challenge—lies for the banking community. Every bank, large or small, proudly supports its community through charitable giving. This commitment funds countless non-profits, many of which provide financial education. But here is the challenge of financial education: it is taught as it was many decades ago, during bygone eras, when information was scarce. That approach, often delivered as a series of siloed product explanations, is a strategy born of history, and it just does not work today. Our modern world, dominated by information abundance and Artificial Intelligence, is in desperate need of changing our financial education approach.

At Personal Finance Reimagined, we are leading a revolution approaching financial literacy as a decision-making problem. We invite you, the bankers and leaders who care deeply about your communities, to join us in adopting this new approach. It is time to move beyond charitable giving as the primary mode of engagement and partner to drive real, measurable, and sustainable financial success for all Americans.

The Habits of Shared Success

My banking leadership positions involved the oversight of charitable funds. Broadly, banks truly take their responsibility to the communities they work and serve very seriously, and their giving programs to fund financial education are born of the best intentions.

However, a core challenge is inherent in institutional habits: Banks inevitably structure financial education in line with how they are organized. This means the curriculum often becomes a series of siloed product overviews—checking accounts, online banking, credit cards, mortgages—presented in a way consistent with how profitable customers typically engage the bank. This is a natural institutional habit of success.

This product-first approach, or teaching finance as a knowledge acquisition challenge, simply fails in today’s world. Consumers do not need a banker to deliver information anymore. With a well-formed Gen AI prompt, a consumer can get more current, comprehensive information on financial products in under thirty seconds than existed on the planet fifty years ago. The difficulty is not in finding the information; the difficulty is in knowing how to evaluate it, prioritize it, and act on it. In other words, the challenge is no longer knowledge acquisition; it is data subtraction and decision-making.

Bankers often present information and then suggest, "Now, it is time for you to decide." But that information is no longer the difficult part. The true challenge is the decision itself. The opportunity for shared success—one benefiting both the bank and the community—lies not in the product information, but in teaching the universal framework for smart decision-making.

The Decision-Making Focus

The name of my company is Personal Finance Reimagined. The “reimagined” part is facing the financial literacy problem as a decision-making problem. This is crucial. The good news is, there is a consistent, repeatable decision process. It can be taught as a singular decision focus. In my class and seminars, we teach on topics near and dear to the heart of the learner. But under the topic is our true goal for practicing a consistent, repeatable decision process. Learners love the hands-on, simulation-based approach. They enjoy practicing to get rich!

We provide Gen AI-enabled technology. We teach Gen AI prompt engineering to source information. We provide my book, Making Choices, Making Money. We provide alternative learning resources like videos and podcasts for those learning better by hearing instead of reading. Our educational approach emphasizes simulation. We believe people learn best by doing.

Our partnerships with banks and financial services institutions are essential. There is absolutely a place for providing product information at the right point in the decision process. But in general, it is only after the learner has established a consistent, repeatable decision process. Banks and bankers are an important part of the confidence-enabling, education scaffolding process. The scaffold includes the learner's appreciation for a banker who took the time to share with them.

So, if you are a bank or financial services institution truly wanting to make a difference in financial education, please join us. We are part of reimagining how financial education is taught in our country. There is an important place for you. Join us in focusing on the learner’s decision-making process first. This is how we jointly deliver dramatically improved financial outcomes for all Americans.