Money Management Institute

Challenge

Offering New Development Opportunities to More Finance Professionals

Established in 1997, the Money Management Institute (MMI) is the industry association for financial services firms, advancing wealth managers, asset managers and solution provider firms. With over 200 member companies representing 95% of the managed advisory assets in the United States, MMI aims to foster professional relationships, share experiences and expand the industry’s influence through advocacy and education.

Dedicated to providing its members with innovative education and professional development opportunities, MMI has offered a Leadership Pathway program for more than a decade. The hybrid program runs for 24 months and is designed for mid-level professionals with 5–10 years of experience who are ready to step into higher leadership roles within their organizations.

Building on this success and with a commitment to fostering the next generation of leaders in financial services, MMI decided to develop similar programs tailored to meet the needs of professionals at various career stages and open its world-class, formal academic education programs to non-members.

To do this, MMI is guided by the vision of building a learning ecosystem that offers an exceptional learning experience and scaling its growing impact in the sector.

Solution

Immersive Learning Ecosystem

To bring its vision to life, MMI selected D2L Brightspace in 2020 to launch the MMI Learning Hub.

We needed a learning platform that could go beyond a traditional learning management system and create a personalized learning ecosystem. Brightspace was flexible enough to support extensive customization for different audiences and powerful enough to effectively manage a growing portfolio of professional development programs—all while enhancing the learner experience.

Sandra Sowah​​​​, first vice president, learning experience design and technology manager, MM

The Learning Hub provides an individualized experience for participants within different programs while maintaining consistency and collaboration within and across cohorts.

“Brightspace’s intuitive navigation, easy content access, and interactive multimedia learning experiences across a wide range of devices are foundational elements of delivering a seamlessly unified and responsive user experience,” comments Sowah. “The Learning Hub also gives learners access to relevant conferences and event replays, creating a centralized ecosystem for MMI and its learners.”

While the platform makes content easily accessible to users, it also keeps that content secure. MMI has created robust IT policies within Brightspace to determine which aspects of the learning experience a learner is authorized to access, based on their program and year of intake.

“Because we work with academic partners, we needed a platform that would integrate smoothly with their content and branding while safeguarding intellectual property from both sides,” explains Sowah. “In addition, many of our learners are from different firms, making it essential to protect their sensitive information.”

The Learning Hub was recently recognized by Brandon Hall Group for Excellence in Technology. It was awarded the Silver Medal for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology. In the prior year, the Executive IQ Learning Hub received the Gold Medal for Best Advance in Learning Management Technology for External Training.

Personalized Learning Experience

As part of its expanded professional development strategy, MMI concurrently offers two other programs apart from Leadership Pathway designed to meet the learning needs of professionals at distinct stages of their careers. Qualified applicants pay a one-time fee to cover the entire program.

The Executive IQ® by Money Management Institute program is developed in collaboration with University of Virginia Darden Executive Education and PwC. A 12-month hybrid initiative, the program is designed for leaders with more than 10 years of experience, and aims to help them develop skills in innovation, digital transformation and data analytics, as well as improve their leadership effectiveness. Executive IQ has also been awarded nine prestigious Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards.

“The learners in the Executive IQ program are more advanced in their careers,” says Sowah. “Therefore, they have a lot less time for learning, so we need to make content quick and easy for them to access.”

Understanding the unique needs of this demographic, MMI intentionally designed a low-friction learning experience. It created a paper-backed user interface, PDF-based modules, content requiring minimal clicks, and direct hyperlinks to essential content, reducing the need for complex navigation.

MMI also turned to the opposite end of the experience spectrum: early-career professionals. Working with the Executive Education team at the New York University Stern School of Business, MMI developed the MMI Academy—a three-week hybrid program for professionals with less than five years of experience in financial services.

As this was the first time that MMI had delivered such a short-term, intensive program, it was important that the Academy was configured with automatic content releases to support a continuous, real-time learning experience for a more tech-savvy audience.

Refreshing Leadership Pathway

At the same time, MMI used the transition to Brightspace as an opportunity to refresh its existing Leadership Pathway program.

“The Leadership Pathway program has evolved significantly over its history,” reflects Sowah. “In 2022, we implemented a policy shift to transform it from a community-based program into a formal learning journey keeping it in line with our Executive IQ and new Academy programs and ensuring that future leaders are equipped with a comprehensive set of leadership skills and tools.”

Embracing Data-Driven Learning

To meet its goal of creating feedback loops to continuously improve the learning process, MMI leveraged Brightspace’s data hub. The MMI team tracks individual progress, completion rates and assessment scores.

By adopting a data-driven approach to learning and continuously reflecting on learner feedback, MMI can not only meet the diverse needs of its audience more effectively, but also identify potential clients, sponsors and stakeholders within the financial services industry more easily.

Result

Raising Engagement Levels

With the Learning Hub fully functional, MMI is positioned to offer innovative professional development experiences to a wider audience than ever before.

“The way Brightspace is designed to create a fully immersive learning environment has been key to the success of the Learning Hub,” says Sowah. “Brightspace’s integration with third-party apps like Calendly, Vimeo, and Zoom helps ensure an uninterrupted learning experience so that the entire learning journey, from start to finish, takes place within the Brightspace ecosystem.”

MMI also leverages communication tools in D2L Brightspace to keep learners engaged and informed throughout their learning journey.

“Using Release Conditions and particular built-in widget tools in Brightspace, we can execute email campaigns, similar to a customer relationship management system,” says Sowah. “We provide regular updates about course progress, highlight important announcements and provide assignment reminders to keep learners on track.”

With a closely integrated learning ecosystem and clear and consistent communication, MMI’s professional development opportunities are generating high learner engagement rates. Using the Brightspace analytics tooling, MMI tracks how long users spend in the Learning Hub per module to assess engagement. So far, the Executive IQ program has seen tremendous success: Engagement rates range from 95% to as high as 99% per cohort.

After transforming the Leadership Pathway program, MMI also saw a significant increase in learner engagement rates for that program—rising from 46% to 87%. The MMI Academy results are similarly encouraging, with engagement for the first two cohorts reaching 99%.

Staying at the Forefront of Innovation

The feedback collected from participants of the Executive IQ program has been overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the success of MMI’s personalized learning strategy. A majority of the learners agree that the program provides an effective learning experience and would recommend the program to a colleague.

By establishing the centralized Learning Hub and strategically customizing the Brightspace platform, MMI can achieve its goal of fostering lifelong learning in the financial services industry. Professionals at every level can learn critical skills from leading institutions, connect with peers and earn career-boosting certifications.

With Brightspace, we have not only met the specific needs of each professional development program, but we have also created a versatile platform that engages across our full member ecosystem. We are excited to remain at the forefront of modern educational solutions with D2L.

Sandra Sowah​​​​, first vice president, learning experience design and technology manager, MMI