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Truliant FCU in North Carolina is giving away iPads to promote the use of their online personal financial management (PFM) tool, FinanceWorks. Truliant members who sign up to use FinanceWorks between July 6 and September 29 are automatically entered to win money and/or iPads. FinanceWorks is free for Truliant members.
Each week, Truliant will award $100 to a member, and each month an iPad2 will be awarded.
A visual of how to sign up for FinanceWorks is below.
The Intuit 2020 Report, The Future of Financial Services, predicts that in the next 10 years Gen Y will transition from young carefree spenders to an important part of the financial services customer segment. By 2020, a majority of this group will be in their early to mid-thirties and learning to manage money as adults, with families and mortgages.
Gen Y, also known as the digital generation, is a tech-savvy group of individuals who were brought up using mobile technologies, Facebook and email. Javelin Strategy & Research recently released a report, Gen Y: How to Engage and Service the New Mobile Generation, which outlines how to reach the mobile generation as financial members and customers.
Some of the key findings include:
For more Gen Y statistics, Credit Union Times has a slideshow here.
Are your Gen Y customers and members using mobile solutions more frequently than Gen X and Baby Boomers? Do you see a high demand in PFM functionality from Gen Y’ers? Let us know in the comments section below.
Earlier this month, we hosted a poll and asked our readers, “What one technological feature do your customers ask for the most?” With the myriad of technological features available, we wanted to determine what customers and members are interested in, whether it is mobile banking, remote deposit capture, P2P payments or more.
The results: financial management capabilities, which include budgeting, goal-setting and the ability to see spending/payments all in one place, and remote deposit capture ranked the highest, each claiming 22 percent of the votes. Below is a full breakdown of the results:
To delve into the poll results, Webster Bank, which has more than 180 offices throughout Southern New England and Westchester County, New York, weighed in with additional input from their customers.
Greg Jacobi, Senior Vice President, eBanking, said their customers most often inquire about mobile banking and remote deposit capture for consumers. Webster Bank currently offers mobile Web capabilities, but with the surge of smartphones, users are eager for a mobile app. They have also seen an uptick in their remote deposit capture application for businesses. Greg noted that, “business customers that use remote deposit capture get a tremendous amount of value out of it.” Although it cuts down on bank branch visits, remote deposit capture lets consumers make a deposit on their terms.
Greg adds, “to be honest, we have noticed a trend that customers are not asking (as much) about the marquee features you have in your poll. Across the industry, they want their existing online banking to be better. The basics of online banking have not been reconsidered for quite a while. One path people are taking to get there is PFM. We love the innovation happening around PFM. But, I do not think the average customer is asking for it as a separate offering. They want the benefits of PFM; being able to categorize their transactions, set goals, search better and get useful visualizations of their data integrated into what they already have.”
Are your customers and members asking for the same technological features? Let us know in the comments section below or Tweet @bankingdotcom.
As consumers increasingly look to find ways to budget and manage finances, financial institutions are looking to provide easy access to financial management tools and information. With a recent announcement, Intuit introduced tighter integration between its personal financial management software, FinanceWorks, and financial institutions’ web sites.
In an American Banker article, Celent’s Jacob Jegher noted online banking is moving toward a ‘dashboard’-like experience, that goes beyond a static display of information. The article also profiled Beneficial Mutual Bancorp Inc. of Philadelphia, which has 140,000 online banking customers using the ‘dashboard’-like experience:
“It is very straightforward and transparent, and the ease of use is the most important,” said Denise Kassekert, executive vice president of relationship banking for the $4.7 billion-asset Beneficial.”
Furthermore, Forrester analyst Emmett Higdon supported the shift, noting one of the common features of modern website redesigns is a reduction in the number of clicks that consumers must make for common items like bill payments, viewing statements or setting up alerts.
The article noted that with the tighter integration, Intuit also introduced merchant-funded rewards, presenting a huge opportunity for financial institutions, according to Ron Shevlin of Aite Group LLC. The rewards link consumers’ debit card purchases from merchants with deals and money-saving opportunities.
Are your personal financial management tools hidden behind a tab? How many clicks does it take your customers to navigate through your site? Let us know about your “site-stickiness” in the comments below!
In all the frenzy of this past Holiday season, you may have overlooked Apryl Motley’s piece on “Smarter Service” in the December 2010 Independent Banker; it’s definitely worth a read. Consumers today expect more from their community banks than ever before, and they want a lot of added value in the services they get. Motley stresses that a multichannel approach to user-driven technology (many of which a bank already deploys across its many operations) can help retain and cross-sell customers.
She emphasizes four key channels of customer engagement as prime examples: integrated voice recognition systems (IVRs); ATMs; microsites; and online personal financial management tools – and Motley stresses that the bank needs to better integrate and coordinate these services to enhance the customer experience. For example:
Presenting a Stronger Voice: Believe it or not, voice is still among the most powerful channels. With the integration of IVRs, telephone banking systems and core banking systems, customers can make deposits at the ATM and then call to verify those deposits.
Personalized ATM Service: Along with valuable information, what customers want most are high levels of speed and service, and they don’t want to sacrifice one to get the other. Smarter technology is enabling ATMs to “listen” to a bank’s customers.
Making the Most of Microsites: Stand-alone microsites (like Savehardspendsmart.com, launched by $11B Umpqua Bank in Roseberg, OR) are mini-websites that provide targeted interactive news and resources on a particular topic, product or service – customers want to rely on their bank as a trusted resource for important information.
Show Them Their Money: The ability to give customers insights about their finances without them having to do much work is driving customer adoption of online personal financial management tools; some banks are revisiting the integration of online banking and PFM applications so that customers have to log in only once to get access to a “hub for managing their accounts.”
What are you doing to coordinate your channels of customer engagement? We’d like to hear.
Provident Credit Union Prepares for 2011
Despite the economic challenges of 2010, Provident CU’s CEO Wayne Bunker details the credit union’s preparation for 2011 by adding a variety of e-services, Website improvements and personal financial management in the form of FinanceWorks.
Remote check deposits and financial seminars top Bunker’s list of added convenience for the Provident CU customer in the new year.
Read the full message from the CEO here.
How has your financial institution prepared for a bright 2011? Leave us a comment below.
Celent Banking Blog recently posted an article about a new startup, Payoff.com. The site, which “makes money management fun,” targets users by blending games with finances. For an introduction to the service, watch the video below.
Payoff.com from Payoff.com on Vimeo.
Celent’s Jacob Jegher believes the service provokes interest with its “fun and games,” but once you delve into the site, the components are confusing. One of Jegher’s main concerns is security. After the recent mishaps with Blippy and Rudder, Jegher believes Payoff.com does not have enough security for the depth of information it asks its users to provide.
Jegher writes,
“Is financial planning a game? Certainly not. Can it be fun? Absolutely, but there has to be some knowledge transfer and education involved. Firms that will be successful in the PFM space have to find simple ways of providing financial education to their customers. This is especially important for younger users as they are at a stage in their lives where financial literacy is crucial.”
What are your thoughts on combining games with financial planning? Let us know in the comments section below.
