Millennials, born after 1980, will have to save more of their earnings, and over a longer period of time, than their parents.
Yet new research — by millennials, of millennials — finds that financial services providers are not connecting with this generation.
A study released Monday by BNY Mellon and a team of undergraduates from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford involved 1,178 millennials in seven key markets: the U.S., Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, the Netherlands and the U.K.
In particular, millennials in the study were adamant that they did not want financial institutions to contact them through social media, calling this "silly," "pally" or "creepy."
Forty percent preferred to receive information through a website or email, 23% through face-to-face or in-branch contact and 18% through telephone contact, compared with less than 1% of respondents who were amenable to being reached via social media.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents believed that they had not seen financial products targeted specifically to millennials.
What would such products look like?
Seventy-three percent said they would save more if they were rewarded in some way, and 51% said they would do so if their money were not completely locked away.
The researchers recommended that providers investigate ways in which pension products could be structured to deliver limited early access to some portion of the funds held within them — linked, for example, to making a deposit for a home — and lobby governments to facilitate them.
