Video games may soon be part of your banking experience.
Banks in Switzerland, including UBS (UBS), are designing video games in an effort to attract a younger generation of clients. The games involve puzzles and virtual reality simulations to help users visualize complex investment portfolios, according to Reuters.
As family wealth passes down to the next generation, investment firms are looking for creative ways to court younger customers, who are increasingly shunning big banks. A three-year study conducted by Scratch/Viacom Media Networks reports that one-third of Millennials believe they won’t need a bank at all, while 71% would rather go to the dentist than listen to what banks are saying.
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Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli is skeptical that using video games will attract younger clients.
“I think we may look back and say this was a ridiculously patronizing way of treating younger people,” he says. “They play a lot of video games, they grew up with them, therefore that's the only way that they can have information presented to them."
UBS is not alone, notes Santoli. Fidelity (FNF) recently created StockCity, which turns a user's portfolio into a city with buildings representing investments. However, Santoli doesn't think these games will gain much traction.
"There was another effort in the early 2000s, a service for supposedly Gen Xers that was called 'Stock Invaders' that looked like the Space Invaders game," he says. "I don't think that's really going to be what these firms are going to be gaining and losing business on.”
In addition to UBS's technology research lab in Zurich, the bank opened a lab in London and plans to expand to Singapore later this year. Santoli thinks UBS's push into technology comes from a sense of frustration of not knowing how to address the younger market.
"I don't know if this is the answer," he says. "Older customers, the core customers for wealth management, a lot of them don't even want video on their company website. They want a white paper, whereas younger people don't respond as well to that."
