Invesco
- Invesco QQQ is launching a video game to teach college students "how not to suck at money."
- The 90-minute game takes players through nine modules that cover a range of topics.
- "This isn't your parents' boring brochure and PowerPoint," said Invesco's Emily Pachuta.
Remember that stuffy finance 101 class you took? No? Me neither.
But what if, instead, that finance class was a video game, and your teacher was a blue cartoon mascot, and your class notes were kept in a virtual playbook?
Would you play along?
A "yes" answer may lead you to a new financial education game by Invesco QQQ that wants to teach college students and athletes alike "how not to suck at money."
"This isn't your parents' boring brochure and PowerPoint," said Emily Pachuta, Invesco's chief marketing and analytics officer for the Americas.
The 90-minute game takes players through nine modules that cover a range of topics, such as saving for emergencies, building credit, paying off debt, and investing. The game is aiming to teach players "foundational knowledge" and instill confidence, Pachuta told Insider.
It also seeks to help college athletes who just got the green light from the National Collegiate Athletic Association to monetize their name, image, and likeness. Athletes being able to profit from their brand is a great opportunity, Pachuta said, so they need to have a "solid financial understanding."
Invesco, a $1 trillion asset manager, said it found nine in 10 college students hadn't taken a non-credit course about managing their finances, even though a majority of them wanted to learn more. Pachuta said the firm wants to fill that "white space."
Data from Fidelity show Gen-Zers often turn to social media influencers on TikTok or Instagram for financial advice, which comes with an array of both good and, well, deplorable ideas.
But Pachuta said Invesco QQQ's game brings "a huge amount of credibility to the table" and added that Brian Levitt, Invesco's global market strategist, created the game's curriculum.
Millennial and Gen-Z investors have become a more prominent group in financial markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They're known for teetering between meme stocks - companies hyped on social media - to cryptocurrencies and even meme coins.
When asked whether the video game's players would learn about what's often considered speculative investments, Pachuta said, "You don't want to have someone jump to crypto or digital assets before they actually understand what's a stock and how is a company valued to get a stock price."
"You can't jump to the '201' information before you've gotten the '101,'" she said. The game, she added, will continue adding modules as the firm gets feedback.