We are listening about Fintech’s for several years already and how they are becoming a very serious player and a competition to the traditional banks. Their approach is focused on end users, giving them benefits from using financial applications and making their everyday activities much easier.
Users are used to finishing everything on their mobile phones, fast and with an experience that is customized to their own needs. This is even more important when we are talking about financial apps because not only users want to finish everything quickly, in just few steps, when it comes to dealing with their money they also want to be sure what they are doing and that money is going in the right direction. Confusion and strange errors are something that will turn them away from the app.
But what works for one user doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for others. Not even going through test with work groups, gathering feedback and implementing all the changes that you received as ideas will result in the best app. You still need to adjust to dynamics of today, constant changes of user behavior and expectations. And when we are talking about banks and financial apps we are still talking about large number of traditional users, some of them not that tech savvy. We should also not forget people with special needs, visually impaired for example.
Banks still have advantage to Fintech’s because people are mostly loyal to their bank, and having the large number of users puts them few steps ahead because they can leverage on that. Data banks have on users is huge and can be analyzed in proper way to provide best possible experience to every single user. Things to be considered can be users age, behavior when spending money, gathering information through surveys, behavior while using digital channels (number of visits, time spent during visit, functions that are used in the app) and many more.
Do banks use these data in a proper way and make the most out of it?
Banks are still not using this data to the full extent, they are boxed in with their traditional processes and responding to their customers needs reactively, waiting for an issue to arise to solve it. They are trying to move their business to digital but still keeping many rules that have been applied before. Banks need to become proactive game changers, especially when it comes to advanced end users.
Of course, there are some exceptions, banks that have leveraged on the advantages and made great results. Even from similar industries we can see huge impact segmentation can make. One example comes from case study of Vodafone in Kenya, they managed to grow total customer base by 11.8% in only a year even though it looked like they already hold majority of market and don’t have where to grow. They managed this by segmenting consumer customers into four major segments, with 16 sub-segments. Many banks also have made great results by only creating product offers based on criteria that is targeting each individual.
With our Banking-as-a-Service platform, Fintense, we are providing the banks possibility to create large number of segmentation groups that would group users with similar needs and give them the best possible experience. With our CMS like portal we can not only provide different layouts, design features and experience but can also provide real time changes without the need of publishing new versions to the Store. With Analytics module we are also able to help banks gather additional data on their customers behavior. Data that can later be used for constant improvements, further segmentations with adding another segment group after a certain time period, all that can be done dynamically and without necessarily making changes in the code.
Something like this would be very easy to achieve:
Group 1 (Common users) – having account transactions, payment overview and payment creation screen easily accessible as most common functions right after login.
Group 2 (Advanced users) – having additional options for transactions for PFM (personal finance management) with categorization, creating budgets and monthly overview of expenditure.
Group 3 (Pensioners) – less menu options in general, different design with larger font.
Digital banking market is very dynamic nowadays and it can already be too late to jump in on the train of the changes. Traditional banks have started transitioning to digital but need to become even faster and fight for each and every customer. Providing customers with unique experience, tailored by their own needs will definitely make end users feel happy and content with the service and they will be more than willing to recommend it to others.
With Fintense making personal experience for end users when using digital banking channels is just one of the advantages. We can help you with our vast expertise on your way of becoming a fully digital bank with making an impact and truly becoming an innovation leader on the market.
Raško Kordić
Technical Delivery Director
