The U.S. Hispanic population is the country's largest minority group and it's growing fast. But surprisingly few financial institutions have adapted their digital products and services to speak their language.
Pew Research Center reported that the U.S. Hispanic population reached 62.5 million in 2021, up 19% from 2010. Hispanics accounted for 52% of the U.S.'s population growth in that same period, which Pew found to be a greater share than any other racial or ethnic group. Almost one in five people in the U.S. spoke
"It is a missing part when you think [about the fact] that there is a large segment in the market and no one is targeting it very efficiently," said Rutger van Faassen, head of market strategy at financial services consulting firm Curinos.
Holly Frindell, chief program officer for the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB), has seen some
Outreach is important because "Newcomers to the U.S. may either have unfamiliarity with the U.S. financial system or distrust of financial institutions in general," said Frindell.
But efforts made by traditional financial institutions tend to be piecemeal.
"I've seen a lot of [places] that have an information page in Spanish, but once you go to the actual product or try to log into your account, it's in English," said Sharon García, director of communications at NALCAB.
Earlier this year, canvassers visited branches in five California counties to ask about account options. Some 37% of those who spoke Spanish were unable to talk to a banker, compared with 15% of English speakers, according to a report by the Roosevelt Institute.
The painstaking process of duplicating banking services and features in English and Spanish requires both a technical lift that goes beyond mounting a Google Translate button in the corner of the screen, and human intervention to navigate complexities such as legal terminology and reconciling nuances in different dialects. It also requires hiring customer support staff who can speak the language.
The complexities were driven home when the creators of Dora Financial, a digital banking app
"At USAlliance [the credit union that originally conceived of Dora], we aspired to have a Spanish offering. But when you start to think about the complexity of that project, it's quite overwhelming," said Kristi Kenworthy, the managing director of Dora and previously the assistant vice president of e-commerce at USAlliance. "You have a myriad of products and services. Layer on top of that all the extra things like car warranties, life insurance and free monthly credit scores. Then think about all the delivery channels that a traditional credit union has: online banking, mobile banking, branches, ATMs, the call center, fraud departments. Think of all the people generating emails on your behalf."
The planning process involved mapping out every user experience and user journey the team behind Dora could think of, from the ways users might contact customer service to the vendors who produce their monthly statements, to
Dora will automatically launch in Spanish if the user's smartphone settings are oriented to Spanish when they download the app. If not, the app will prompt the user to choose their preferred language. Currently, 20% of Dora users opt for Spanish.
"There are a lot of moving pieces," said Kenworthy. "You have to build everything twice." That trickled all the way down to out-of-office messages. When Kenworthy was on vacation and a colleague received her English-language auto response, they realized that should be bilingual as well.
Another financial services provider making a similar effort is Square. In September 2022, Square, a unit of Block, announced that its entire ecosystem of software, hardware and payment solutions for merchants would be available in Spanish as well as English. This includes tools for commerce, banking and loans, staff services such as payroll and customer engagement. The initiative had begun in pieces
"It was not just the right thing to do in a country where Spanish is so widely spoken, but it makes a lot of good business sense," said Jerónimo Anaya Ortiz, the Spanish language communications lead at Square. He points to data from the Small Business Administration that one in four new businesses is Hispanic-owned. The businesses that might benefit the most are themselves somewhat bilingual — say, a restaurant where the front-of-house runs in English while the back-of-house staff primarily speak Spanish.
One challenge was finding what Anaya Ortiz describes as ES-US Spanish, or a "neutral" form of Spanish that does not contain cultural terminology or terms that are specific to a region or country.
"It goes beyond just translating," he said. "With Spanish there are a lot of nuances. The beauty of the American Hispanic community is it's a melting pot."
The project involved translating all content related to more than 30 individual products, as well as thousands of web pages, blog posts, business resources and testimonials, to Spanish. The company hired dedicated Spanish-speaking employees across teams such as customer success, communications, sales and account management. Square's globalization team led the technical effort of translating all necessary materials into U.S. Spanish; it has also led translations of Square products and services into Catalan in Spain and French in Canada.
"Their job is to ensure that our offerings are not only translated into the desired language, but also use culturally competent language to ensure we are locally relevant," said Rodrigo Martinez, international payment operations manager at Square.
In April 2022, the $682 billion-asset bank debuted a Spanish version of its voice-enabled Smart Assistant in its mobile app, or Asistente Inteligente de U.S. Bank. The mobile app had already been translated into Spanish, so the bank wanted a consistent bilingual experience and to reinforce a broader commitment to accessibility.
About six months prior to its launch, "We attempted to do some quick and dirty tech solutions and some initial proof of concept," said Richard Weeks, head of conversational experiences at U.S. Bank.
But when native Spanish speakers on staff pointed out misinterpretations and blends of formal and informal responses in some scripts, "We quickly identified that it wasn't going to be good enough," Weeks said.
The project team, which included the user experience group, developers, the business resource group and more, included native Spanish speakers. The bank uses automated speech recognition software already available on devices to initially convert speech into text. It also deployed "our own internal secret sauce to understand the customer's preference and ensure the information we are presenting back has been fully vetted by our translation protocols internally and is thoroughly reviewed by our Spanish compliance department to ensure accuracy and consistency, and that it matches the same information we provide within English," said Weeks.
He has noticed that many English speakers use one- to two-word search terms, while Spanish-speaking customers tend to speak in fuller sentences, "which is very helpful when trying to provide an accurate answer," he said. More than 40% of U.S. Bank's Spanish-preferring customers have used the virtual assistant.
Anecdotally, "our Spanish-speaking customers are thrilled," said Weeks.
Online banking is also available in both languages at U.S. Bank. The company says it is expanding its Spanish-language presence on the U.S. Bank website, with some product pages to be available in Spanish by the end of the year.
Frindell finds that one of the most effective forms of outreach for financial services in these communities is word-of-mouth.
"If you've got a good product and it's meeting the needs of the community, they will talk it up," she said. "The biggest thing is not feeling like an afterthought."
