Animation & financial services are meant to be

When you think ‘animation’, you might immediately think of The Simpsons. It’s a fair association; The Simpsons is possibly the most famous and watched animated series of our time, after all.

But when you think ‘animated explainer video’, Homer and his dysfunctional family probably doesn’t get a look-in … doh! That’s because there’s a big difference between animation for cartoons and animation for business.

It doesn’t matter what industry you work in, you and your audience will get a lot out of an animated explainer video. “Even financial services?” we hear you ask. “We’re supposed to be straight and professional because we deal with money – sometimes lots of it. We’re not being paid to joke around.”

Animated video for financial services

Onepost is in the business of making businesses more approachable. And that’s the strongest benefit of animated explainer videos: to make businesses – even ones that are meant to be ‘straight and professional’ – seem friendly, approachable and unintimidating to the people they’re trying to work with.

But let’s be straight up: financial services can be a bit dry. Like, quite dry. There’s a lot of jargon. There are a lot of numbers. There’s a lot of general confusion – that’s why people come to you for help, after all.

While we specialise in making businesses appear friendly, companies that perform financial services are in the business of solving the average person’s financial problems. It could be anything from budgeting and getting out of debt, to banking, to applying for a mortgage, to accounting, to setting up a will, to investing, to … just about anything that involves money. To laymen, anything financial can be confusing, so the role of a financial adviser is to get rid of that confusion and help laymen make the best financial decisions they can.

Why financial services & animation are a match made in heaven

Take a moment to look at animated video. The purpose of an animated explainer video is to explain a possibly complicated concept in a clear, concise, engaging and entertaining way. It replaces confusion with clarity, boredom with personality; it takes unengaging or confusing concepts and transforms them into engaging and even entertaining messages.

When you put financial services alongside the concept of animated explainer videos, it’s immediately apparently why these two are a match made in heaven. Animation helps ‘dumb down’ complicated financial concepts to make it easy for people who blank out at the mere mention of percentage signs to understand that they’re actually very important. We all need to know how to manage our money, how to apply for a mortgage or how to start an investment portfolio, but we’re not all naturally inclined to understand exactly how to do it. Animated video humanises complicated concepts, thereby making people who get intimidated by the thought of it more relaxed.

Explainer videos help make finance easier to understand

A great explainer video in any industry combines the verbal and the visual to create clear and comprehensible communication. A great explainer video understands that their viewers might not know anything about their industry, so it explains concepts using language anyone could understand. It uses relatable examples plus recognisable figures and motifs, and features a friendly voiceover and music that makes the viewer feel relaxed. And by the time someone has finished watching it, they either know exactly how to do something or what their next step should be in order to be able to do that ‘something’.

Engage your clients with animation

Keen to give animation a go in your own financial services company? Drop the friendly Onepost Media Production a line today – we’d love to find out about your business and how we can help you reach your customers more effectively.