Hi—Fi: The Financially Sound System

What is Hi—Fi?

Launched on Oct 30, 2023, Hi—Fi is our take on the future of money management. It combines both a regular check-in to see how you’re feeling about your money with a simple, automated system focused on helping you move easily between pay days, confident your bills are sorted, savings goals on track, and you have a clear picture of what you have left to spend on the good life.

Hi—Fi assembles a collection of great Up features — Pay Day, Upcoming, Spendable Balance, and Pay Splits, bringing them together into a simple, cohesive system, guiding you through the set up of each component.

Despite its simplicity, Hi—Fi offers great flexibility. It allows you to start with the most straightforward budgeting system, clearly separating your “needs” from your “wants”, while allowing you to dial it up to a far more intricate envelope-style system should you desire.

Hi—Fi is likely the first of its kind and in our mind represents a step change in what customers can expect from digital banking — a fundamental shift from a set of tools to a fully fledged money system.

Why did we build Hi—Fi?

We’re serious about improving our customers financial wellbeing, and despite the amazing feedback we get each day telling us we’re doing a good job, we felt we needed a more scientific way to measure whether we’re really helping Upsiders and if so, by how much.

Our solution was to develop our own financial wellbeing score, based on prior research in the space—by asking Upsiders a short set of questions around their relationship with money — how they feel about their finances, the ease (or difficulty) with which they meet their everyday commitments, their resilience in the face of unexpected expenses and their trajectory towards financial security.

We worked hard to not only create a meaningful survey, but to make it engaging and ensure Upsiders really thought about the questions and their answers, rather than just tapping through it absent-mindedly. To that end we’ve used music and a “headphones on” experience to transport people to a place of deeper reflection.

With this score (or quantified approach) we’ll be able to better understand how Upsiders progress their financial capabilities over time and measure the impact we’re able to make.

As we were developing the survey we were thinking through the best way to then help Upsiders maintain or improve their score over time. We soon realised there was an amazing opportunity to go beyond written hints, tips and nudges and explore a more visual approach…

The System

It’s no great secret that money has an engagement problem. Across the country the majority of people don’t like to think about money, let alone talk about it. For half a decade we’ve been working to solve for this, developing engaging experiences to reconnect people to their spending and finances. And Hi—Fi is no exception.

In setting up Hi—Fi you’ll not only build a money management system, but also an audio/visual one. This visual representation of your system is something that’s unique and personal to you. It can also act as a financial recipe to inspire and educate others.

We’re hopeful this approach can help us reach a far broader audience. We’d love to see every Upsider proudly build and share their unique approach to money management.

Who is Hi—Fi for?

We’ve seen some early feedback from customers along the lines of “Hi—Fi is OK, but I’m doing this stuff already”. Far from being discouraging, we see this as hugely positive. But we’re also aware that this feedback does not represent the majority of us.

There are (of course) Upsiders who’ve been doing great with money without needing Hi—Fi to guide them to that place. Our sights are set, however, on the majority of customers (and Australians for that matter) who struggle to either take an interest in getting more deliberate with money, or who begin a system (perhaps one they’ve read in a book) but find it too difficult to stick with it.

We see Hi—Fi as an opportunity to bring a simple and sustainable money system to the vast majority of Australians who’ve either failed to get interest, or stay interested, in a system to manage their money.

Getting Australians to a place where their bills are sorted, they’ve identified and are working towards savings goals, and they’re able to truly understand how much remains for enjoying life would be a huge improvement for many.

Where to from here?

With the core of Hi—Fi built, we’re keen to see how Upsiders take to it. We’ll be updating the survey regularly to keep it relevant and interesting and throw in a few surprises along the way.

Over time we’ll also be looking to build a bigger picture of your finances, so please let us know if there are things you’d like to see in Hi—Fi.