Dear Aisha, The Bank Wanted You First

Dear Aisha,

You are three. You cannot read this yet. I am writing it for the girl you will be with money of your own and someone already asking where to keep it. In front of me is a magazine page from December 1992. Its title is "Malaysian Banks Target Children". Most of it could have been written this year.

Every bank it names is conventional, and every one of them wanted children.

They gave their accounts names a child would like: Savers' Gang, Kelab Kancil, Mega Junior, Smart Young Savers. One bank sponsored a weekly children's programme on television. It took young savers on outdoor trips and showed them round its offices.

A senior manager at one of these banks was open about the reason: "If children start with us they tend to show loyalty in later life and open adult accounts." Parents, he added, often open an account for themselves once they have opened one for the child.

So they wanted you, and through you, they wanted me.

The gifts were aimed at parents as well. Mothers were told not to "waste their money on flowers and toys" and to give a passbook as a present instead. Some banks offered books and magazines, and the reporter wrote that they went "for the parents jugulars".

Every gift came with a string. One bank sent its children's magazine only to accounts holding at least 500, which, the article says, "discourages withdrawals". Another gave "a series of three books for every 200 kept in their accounts for at least a month".

It worked. At that second bank, money paid into children's accounts grew by 22 per cent in a year, while its ordinary savings accounts grew by 12.

Today the gift arrives on a phone. In June 2026, Barclays agreed to buy the UK business of GoHenry, a money app for children as young as six. Ben Danner, an analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, said: "I expect some cross-selling to occur into Barclays as the child accounts reach maturity." That is the 1992 manager's sentence in newer words.

A bank can wait for a child to grow up because adults seldom leave. When the UK competition authority studied current accounts in 2016, only 3 per cent of customers had moved to another bank in the previous year. More than a third had stayed with the same bank for over twenty years. There is little research that follows a child's first account into adult life. The banks act on the habit anyway.

Here in Malaysia, junior accounts now offer bonus profit and apps for parents. In recent years some have run prize draws in which a bigger balance earns more entries.

What waits after childhood is harder. Malaysians aged 30 and below made RM5.4 billion of buy now, pay later purchases, 37.9 per cent of all such transactions in the country, according to figures the Ministry of Finance gave Parliament in October 2026. Between 2020 and early 2025, 5,272 Malaysians under 34 were declared bankrupt. Personal loans were behind 46.4 per cent of all bankruptcy cases in 2024.

The first lesson a bank teaches a child is to keep money with it. The first lesson the market teaches a young adult is to spend money she does not have yet.

Islamic banks should compete for children too. Those of us who work in Islamic finance, me included, talk far more about the contract than about the child whose name is on it.

Still, the banks of 1992 understood something. They gave children books.

A 2013 report from the University of Cambridge, written for the UK Money Advice Service, found that by the age of seven "several basic concepts relating broadly to later 'finance' behaviours will typically have developed." It also found that teaching young children money facts directly is "likely to be ineffectual". Children learn by watching: "modelling of behaviours by adults is a powerful means of supporting learning in children." The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said much the same in 2016. Children, it wrote, "develop financial attitudes, habits, and norms by observing and interacting with parents and caregivers."

So the lesson you take from me will be what I do, not what I say.

That is harder now than it was in 1992. A child then could watch notes counted at the counter and see the passbook updated. A child today watches a parent tap a phone, and the money leaves without a sound. A story can show a child what she cannot see: where money goes, whom it helps, what a loan costs.

The banks were right to give children books. The books came with a minimum balance.

Children's books that teach money from an Islamic view are still few.

Maybe I should write you one, before you grow up and before the banks find you. A story about a girl who earns her first money the ḥalal way, saves it with sabr, and learns how far one honesty can travel. She might even share your name.

If I do, I hope you will read it with me.

In 1992, a bank promised a child three books for every $200 she left with it. If I write you one, it will come with no balance required.

Ya Allah, keep Aisha's rizq ḥalal and her heart content with it.

Your father

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the blog writer and his affiliations and are for informational purposes only.

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