Breezy

Part of

Finance

Financial Wellbeing of Chinese Graduates in the UK

MA 2024

Keywords

Finance Wellbeing, Chinese Graduates, Financial Tools, Networking, Community

Overview

Start from our own experience, take a look at that struggling time when you start your journey as a rookie in a different country... Lots of “unexpected” difficulties can make us overwhelmed. Chinese graduates working in London need to quickly learn how to manage their finances, savings, and investments. These challenges arise quickly and continuously, yet there are currently no specific products or strategies tailored for them within existing banking or financial institutions. Due to this, we wanted to take care of Chinese graduates to get over this vulnerable period.

Collaboration

A huge thank to Audrey @ WUZO, she gave us lots of support and different perspectives about the local market for Chinese in the UK and campaign suggestions.

No items found.

SECTION ONE SECTION TWO STATEMENT SECTION THREE SECTION FOUR

Our findings

We concluded two different main contexts which may affect Chinese graduates.

The first one is culture, language and life expense, they achieve their career goals with multiple and additional pressure. Such as external pressures from cultural to finance can interfere with their main task - getting a job, and the financial pressure could make a huge impact on Chinese graduates, not only living quality but also mental health.

Besides, if the Chinese graduates want to stay in the UK for long-term career development, they have to deal with the great risks of visa restriction and frozen job market, about 30% Chinese students couldn't transfer to Skilled Work Visa and had to go back to other places to work.

User research and personas

After interview, we defined their journey into 3 different stages, "Working without Skilled Work Visa", "Junior with Skilled Work Visa" and finally "Senior with Skilled Work Visa". Surprisingly, Chinese graduates will have different problems and goals even in short terms, they have to deal with this rapid change - the fear and anxiety towards unfamiliar languages and cultures, along with the uncertainty and hesitation during this rapid transition phase, prevent them from truly understanding and trusting banks, creating a gap between Chinese graduates and banks.

insights and visions for chinese graduates

For Chinese graduates, they have to deal with:

As our target audience have only just graduated, they are still relatively unfamiliar with the services and products offered by UK banks.
Chinese graduates don't really “trust and interest” local banks and their services, they just use them as a tool of their daily lives.
Due to cultural and linguistic gaps, Chinese students are often fearful of banking-related concepts and operations.
The needs of Chinese students change as they move through the different stages of their career paths in short times.

However, for the bank and financial organisations:

Banks/Financial Organisations play as the only stakeholder in the transition process with Chinese students, but are not doing their part to shift their needs.
Banks/Financial Organisations have not recognised the potential of Chinese students and have not set up specialised services or products.
Banks/Financial Organisations miss the opportunity to convert Chinese students into new customers at the beginning of their careers, but then reintroduce them as customers at great cost.

Throughout the different stages of financial knowledge needs of Chinese graduates , banks/financial organisations are the only stakeholders that can support the entire process.

So, we were wondering, how might we strengthen the relationship between banks/financial organisations and Chinese graduates, encouraging banks to support them through different phases with tailored educational content to help them get involve and achieve life goals?

"Breezy" Financial management tool

Breezy is a simple, easy-to-use financial management app that starts with Chinese graduates managing their finances in the UK and provides personalised, customised financial management services and tools to help them adapt to the process of moving from surviving to living, and achieving their life goals in the UK.

"life companion" plan

From college graduation to entering the workforce, and from career advancement to job transitions, we deeply know managing your finances can often feel overwhelming. Our Life Companion Program could provide comprehensive support to help Chinese graduates navigate every stage of your financial journey, helping you settle down in the UK and build organic, vibrant Chinese Community.

SPECIAL
THANKS

Thanks for all the interviewee and users who would like to get engage with our workshop and interview - your opinions and suggestions were really useful for our future directions and offered special perspectives to relate our users.

And a great thank to our tutor, Nicolas Rebolledo, your magical foresight armed us with solid foundation to discover this industry.

Team