Understanding Financial Health

The Canadian Financial Health Index study is Canada’s most comprehensive independent investigation into consumer financial health, and the role financial institutions can play to improve the financial well-being of Canadians.

Download parts 1, 2 and 3 of our White Paper and survey highlights here:

Our 2017 Canadian Financial Health Index study, with over 5,200 respondents, provides deep insights and benchmark measures around the financial well-being and resilience of Canadians and key consumer segments.

The Canadian Financial Health Index study provides comprehensive, baseline insights around the attitudes, behaviors, stressors, events and social support that influence consumer financial health and resilience – going far beyond traditional financial health indicators such as income, credit score, age and education.

Additionally, our research provides a view on how traditional ‘pillars’ of financial products and services can support consumer financial health and resilience in new ways, in the areas of:

  • Daily Financial Management
  • Borrowing and Debt Management
  • Saving, Planning & Investing
  • Protection against unforeseen events

The Canadian Financial Health Index study explores consumer perceptions around the role and performance of Financial Institutions – including major banks and credit unions – in terms of helping customers improve their financial wellness. It also provides data insights linked to the business case for FIs to invest in their customers’ financial health and resilience.

Please contact us if you’re interested in learning more about our 2017 Canadian Financial Health Index study or how we may be able to support your organization in the area of consumer financial health research and strategy development.

Financial Health Index

What gets measured gets done. Financial Institutions, and other organizations, can lever our financial health indicators, data insights and financial health framework to provide normative benchmarks around consumer financial health and resilience.

This can complement and enrich other measurements, indices, customer insights programs or scorecard metrics - such as net promoter scores or share of wallet metrics.

Our Financial Health Index data and insights provide a benchmark in the evaluation of your customers’ financial health and resilience, and includes national, regional and segment-specific benchmarks, gap and opportunity insights.

Leveraging our proprietary framework and data from the Canadian Financial Health Index study, will develop a proprietary composite measure of financial wellness over the coming year, so stay tuned. It is expected that the Financial Health Index [FHI] will reflect aspects and indicators of consumers’:

  • Personal financial health;
  • Financial stress; and
  • Financial resilience.

Our vision is that the FHI will ultimately help financial services organizations and other entities measure consumer financial stress and resilience. Through the lens of financial health and resilience, the FHI will enable customer experience innovation, enhanced credit delivery and improved customer relationship management for individual consumers and key segments.