Fitbit for Financial Health
3 Strategies to amplify customer growth with a new financial health strategy
For a long time, financial health strategies focused on education and literacy efforts focused on a client’s income level — often in a lecture-based format. This strategy is stale and outdated.
Forward-thinking financial institutions (FI) lean into a new definition of financial health — one navigated by a purposeful mindset that is behavior-driven, integrated and measurable.
This modern mindset requires a “Fitbit for Financial Health” — a digital platform that can serve all customers, regardless of their income level. This strategy digs deeper than personal financial statements and bases progress on much more than numbers moving up and down. People have been waiting for this to happen for years — and the time is now.
A Fitbit for Financial Health is a customer-centric, digital strategic plan, supported by user-friendly fintech tools. It is a fitness solution for the “new financial health” growth mindset. You meet your customers where they are in their budgets and revenue growth — with empathy — and equip them with tangible tools and knowledge to reach their goals. Partnering with your clients in their financial health results in more empowered, loyal customers — increasing the customer lifetime value (CLV) and driving your long-term growth.
Three savvy strategies will get your organization’s Fitbit fitness tool on track and the financial health mindset of your customers humming.
Shape an Integrated Health Strategy
Your Fitbit for Financial Health should include all aspects of health and wellness. Previously in the FI world, financial health was held in a separate wellness bucket than mental, emotional and physical health. Research continues to prove financial health affects all parts of your health.
Financial instability has the power to put them all types of health at risk, leading to a wide range of effects on the well-being of your customers, such as:
- Mental health: depression, anxiety and more
- Emotional health: strain on marriage and friendships, job loss and more
- Physical health: chronic illness, headaches and more
Financial stress is a silent epidemic that has long-ranging effects, so FIs must give it the attention it requires. Health and finances continually shift and evolve. To develop a comprehensive financial plan that works, intertwine all types of health into the strategy.
Like a doctor visit can help improve physical and mental health, an FI check-up can boost financial health. This personalized approach integrates how the customer feels about their finances so you can provide tools that makes sense with their wellness needs, where they are right now.
For example, if your customer wants to invest but reveals that the idea makes them feel intimidated and anxious, match them with a digital wealth management solution that humanizes finance. Tactics like this make investing a more inclusive and less stressful experience.
Employ a combination of behavioral finance and fintech solutions to show your customers how to improve spending and saving.
Implement Behavior-Driven, User-Friendly Technology
The Fitbit mindset leads FIs to act as a financial guide, rather than an advisor. Walk alongside your customers, leading them to better financial health rather than telling them how to do it.
Review transactional data patterns together, then analyze the data to interpret core motivations driving customer behaviors. Help them understand how their motivations lead to decisions and patterns in their transactions — and show them examples of how long-term behavior modifications can result in financial health gains with staying power.
Financial institutions can partner with fintechs like Nymbus to unlock new technologies, such as customer-friendly reporting models of spending patterns. These reports provide insightful data for FIs while simultaneously helping customers understand their own spending habits.
Then, put that knowledge to work by providing customized, actionable steps to help your customer move forward. For example, perhaps a customer wants an emergency fund but doesn’t want to manually add to it. Integrate technology to make saving over time easier. Help them set up a separate account for those funds, then connect their accounts with a robo-saving app that rounds up debit card transactions and sweeps spare change into the emergency fund. While the fund grows automatically, your customer makes progress on their savings goal.
Your job isn’t done once your customer is financially fit. Continue curating visualization strategies and setting goals to develop a customized plan, as their fitness partner. But don’t laminate that plan — it is a living and breathing document that will continue to change throughout your customer relationship life cycle. Whether you meet monthly, quarterly or annually — reassess progress and revise recommendations and implement new technology solutions, as needed.
Model a Measurable Financial Well-Being Spectrum
The historical way of thinking was that someone was either financially healthy or not — a monochromatic mindset. The Fitbit for Financial Health operates on a continuum, placing financial fitness on a prismatic “well-being spectrum” that includes measurable progress points — your customer’s fitness score.
Quantify components of financial health to create a Financial Fitness score. The score should include both objective and subjective “fitness” measurements. Include objective, quantitative measures such as credit score, debt to income (DTI), insurance coverage, emergency fund and more. Then include subjective, qualitative measures such as your customer’s feelings about current budget and spending, short-term and long-term goals and timeline, health concerns (financial, physical, mental and emotional) and so on.
Thinking about financial health as a pass/fail concept can be intimidating and discouraging for customers. Start the conversation with “here you are right now and here are actionable steps you can do to progress.” Customers are more likely to buy in and take action when they can see a trend that amplifies hope and eases qualms.
Help your customers get financially fit for today — and tomorrow. But it’s more than simply reporting a number. Knowing a financial fitness score is useless if you can’t articulate why that is their current score. It’s not possible to provide sound recommendations without understanding motivations and reactions driving your customer.
Tie in integrated health strategies and implement behavior-driven, user-friendly technologies. That all-encompassing mindset sets the stage for empowered financial fitness for your customers, unlocks fintech partnership opportunities and powers purpose-filled growth for your financial institution.
Ready to increase your fitness in “financial health” and a multitude of other fintech lingo? Get data-driven perspectives that dive into what is going on in fintech — and what current trends and terms mean for you. Download this free guide from Nymbus in partnership with Ron Shevlin and Cornerstone Adviosors.
