The Top Ways to Support the Financial Wellness of Your Account Holders

In this era of uncertainty, 77% of Americans recently reported feeling anxious about their financial situation. Many account holders rely on their Financial Institution (FIs) as trusted advisors, and want them to proactively identify gaps in their financial wellness and offer them actionable steps for gaining firmer footing both in person and through their digital banking solution.

FIs should leverage data insights and targeted communications to become true partners in improving account holder financial wellness, which creates a virtuous cycle of improved satisfaction, retention and ultimately increased product revenue opportunities.

Financial Tools to Elevate the User Experience

Many account holders aren't sure where to begin when it comes to getting in tune with their finances. The first step to reaching optimal financial wellness is empowering them with education. The second step is providing readily accessible, easy-to-understand tools for account holders—and explaining the importance of regularly utilizing them.

• Centralized account aggregation. Enable account holders to aggregate all of their internal and external accounts within your digital banking app. This provides users with a comprehensive view of their financial picture while giving you insight into alternative banking relationships to better position yourself as their primary financial institution.
• Changes in credit score. The account holder's credit score is a big piece within any financial wellness check. This information is viewed to determine credit worthiness for loan approvals, rates, and terms, and it's necessary for account holders to understand those details and ensure it is accurate. Dramatic changes in this number may be an indication of stolen identity. By having access to the surface credit score and receiving real-time updates when it changes, account holders can stay on top of this important number. In addition to providing visibility into their credit scores, FIs need to offer account holders financial education articles and tools that give actionable advice on how to improve their credit score and guide them towards financial literacy.
• Customizable savings goals. Whether it's saving for a trip or a new car, each account holder will have different goals. By allowing account holders to identify specific goals and track their progress, they can increase control over their personal finances, and for most, this control increases satisfaction.
• Detailed transaction history. From spotting fraudulent charges to evaluating recurring charges for potential spending changes, account holders benefit by becoming familiar with their transaction data. Showcase a clear view of the account holder's spending habits so they can act on the information in ways that improves their financial wellness.

Proactiveness and Personalization Through Data

Personalization can be possible with the right analytic solutions and tools, and transaction data is the ultimate fuel to feed these tools to create actionable insights. Once FIs receive insights that contextualize the account holder's financial behavior, they can leverage additional opportunities to help them meet current and future goals. What does this approach look like?

• Precise automated messaging and personalized communications. Once account holders have inputted their goals and started tracking their financial wellness, FIs can add more value. Through data analytics of the account holder's behavior, FIs have a unique viewpoint to tailor communications for each specific account holder and suggest products that will help improve their financial health.
• Use segmented lists across all channels. Meet account holders where they are at—on your website, on the open internet, opening emails or mailers from you, at the teller and more. Through targeted audience lists based on account holder behaviors you can serve up important, engaging, relevant content and offers to each individual audience.
• Learn and adjust. Is the message not landing? Are account holders not showing interest in your current product offerings? High quality reporting tools should be utilized to give you a clear picture of the full cycle of each campaign, including attribution and ROI. And, once they do adopt a new product or service based on this targeted campaign strategy, make sure they're quickly and automatically removed from receiving further messaging about the same topic.

Data analytics helps do much more than surface opportunities for targeted content and offers. Insights derived from transaction data empowers FIs to provide the coaching and tips account holders need to improve their financial well-being. Plus, the data collected may provide an opportunity to go beyond individual account holder behavior and provide a 360-view of the entire ecosystem's financial health. These are valuable insights that deliver trends for FIs to build future business strategies.

Deploying tools that can anticipate future needs and educate account holders is important in any financial wellness education. Take Gulf Coast Educators Federal Credit Union (GCEFCU) as an example. They were able to tailor their data and focus on financial wellness for user education.

"Our goal is to be more than just a financial institution for our members; we want to be the first place they turn to when they need financial advice.… To build that trust by educating our members and giving them offers that are beneficial and pertinent to them," said Caylee Smith, Marketing Director at GCEFCU.