How a new educational online community is redefining digital banking

By Gaia Lamperti

In recent times, social media have become real catalysts for information sharing around the financial services ecosystem. From savings hacks to investment advice and financial products reviews, it is not difficult to find content directly targeted to consumers and aiming to spread “financial literacy”. But does it really?

Way too often the content shared is not approved or certified by any recognised authority and not even necessarily based on extensive knowledge of the market. Social media’s democratic nature makes it accessible for everyone to share financial advice and precisely for this, they can help to spread disinformation and mislead the online community.

11Onze, Catalonia’s first and largest digital bank and FinTech community, came up with an idea to tackle the issue. The company launched a platform that combines social networking with a learning management system (LMS) where it is uploading educational content in a video format.

Built in less than 5 months, La Plaça, 11Onze’s personal social network (PSN) and learning portal, is founded on the pillars of community, education, and trust, and has attracted more than 10,000 members in less than six months, doubling its original target.

“Our goal was to create a new category of social network, a safe and vibrant online community focused on finance and FinTech,” Chairman of 11Onze James Sené said in an interview with IBS Intelligence. Much of the new traffic has been attributed to younger audiences such as Gen Z, who are more inclined to engage with entertaining, video-based content, and who reward these types of digital experiences with strong customer loyalty.

The platform has been created with the Catalan community in mind, but is “completely universal and exportable,” as Sené said. “The idea is to empower the communities that have common values around financial literacy and banking products.”

Coming from the Spanish word “square”, the place where people normally get together, and powered by WP Engine‘s Agency Partner WONDR, La Plaça exceeds performance and compliance benchmarks and provides users with personalized, interactive, and blockchain-connected content across 3 languages.

“And one of the key reasons why 11Onze chose WP Engine was really around the speed to market,” Fabio Torlini, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of WP Engine explained to IBS Intelligence. “The other key element was personalization to empower the visitors to the website to actually have a unique experience something which we provided through APIs and the plugin available in the market.”

In addition to connecting the users, the personal social media platform has also amplified 11Onze’s employees and is making it easier to maintain the personal client relationships that traditional banking models were centred around during the experience of digital banking. “We want people to understand the type of financial products they use, the services they are acquiring, and how they can actually benefit from them instead of being dependent on them,” Sené added. “They should exchange ideas and knowledge, is not just about the financial products but about financial wellbeing.”

While FinTechs and banks are already used influencers to spread their messaging, “but it’s often a remarkable personality from the entertainment industry and they don’t have a deep understanding of the products,” Senè explained. “The way we’re doing it is, first of all, by a safe and secure space where people can exchange ideas, and secondly we have a team of 35 agents who are certified to assess, inform and advise on financial matters.”

To date, 11Onze has uploaded more than 700 online posts on La Plaça and has seen record engagement rates across social media platforms including Facebook (299.9%), YouTube (133%), Twitter (88%) and Instagram (95%).

While the average engagement rate for a neobank or FinTech platform is around 55%, 11Onze’s digital engagement metrics are paving the way for the company’s expansion into other parts of Europe.