The latest Forrester Tech Tide™ is out – and we’re in! In its Q3 tech digest, the market research giant takes a closer look at eighteen technologies that drive financial well-being programmes and help industry players create next-gen, next-level financial experiences for customers. In fact, W.UP’s personalisation platform has been included among the top financial wellness solutions in not one but two categories: budgeting and savings goals as well as personalised financial insights.

“Putting financial well-being at the core of their strategy is critical to financial services firms’ ability to win, serve, and retain customers,” Forrester senior analyst Aurelie L’Hostis writes in the newly published market intelligence report. Most banking customers would probably second this, considering that long-term financial stress has been proven to put a strain on all aspects of life, including mental and physical health, personal relationships and performance at work,EY says. The problem is that most tools that are supposed to help people better manage their finances severely underdeliver.

Customers didn’t exactly jump on the possibilities that the first personal financial management tools offered – or they did but then struggled to make sense of their money management app and quickly abandoned it. Or, worst of all, didn’t even know such a thing existed. So for the longest time, PFM tools have remained a lacklustre affair. But, according to Forrester, “better integration of budgeting and savings tools into digital banking, more accurate transaction data enrichment and automated spending categorisation based on machine learning have helped improve budgeting tools.”

On the other end of the financial wellness equation, the lack of actionable, high-quality data has also put a brake on innovation efforts. In 2020, it really shouldn’t. “Data integration helps banks merge account management system, CRM and card management system data together and also blend in other, less traditional data sources. Think geolocation data collected through mobile phones or information on how and how often people use various banking channels or other financial service providers,” explains W.UP’s Head of Product, Gellért Vinnai, in our new ebook. Giving datasets a thorough cleansing to make sure that all records are complete, correct, accurate and relevant should come next, he says.

This is crucial because without the right data to power it, no financial wellness application will deliver results for banks’ bottom lines – or value for their users. And value lies in the detailed insights that financial service providers could give customers not only about how they’re doing financially but also about how they could do much, much better. “Tech vendors are now increasingly using machine learning, predictive analytics and alerts to present customers with context-sensitive personalised insights that anticipate their needs, nudge them to take action and propel behavioural change,” writes L’Hostis in the Forrester report.

Real-time, easy-to-grasp information on what customers do with their money can have a transformative effect on how they view finances, financial products and financial service providers in general. Using nothing else than current account and transactional data, a personalisation platform like W.UP can show customers how much money they need for necessities like food, utility bills and loan repayments and how much they have to splurge on restaurant dinners or concert tickets. Or show detailed reports on their holiday spending and help them better budget for their next trip.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s say a bank suddenly detects regular purchases of baby products and nursery essentials from a customer who hasn’t shopped for such items before. A spending profile change like this can mean that they’ve recently had a child so they might be interested in a new savings account or life insurance policy for them. Predictive modelling can also tell banks if a customer’s increased spending is likely to cause them to go into the red before their next salary arrives so they can be offered a short-term loan to weather the shortfall well in advance.

“Being recognised by Forrester among financial wellness solutions is a huge milestone for us. Not only does it, in our opinion, underline our vision for the financial services industry but it also inspires us to continue seeking better and better ways for banks to turn data into smoother and smarter banking experiences,” says W.UP President Balázs Vinnai. He adds: “I think that in our brave new post-pandemic world, platforms like W.UP can be banks’ strongest allies in helping customers build better relationships with money and, at the end of the day, with banks themselves.”

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