Project Overview
Acorns is a new mobile app that invests spare change from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio of ETFs. A team of financial experts automatically diversifies the customer’s holdings using funds from the world’s largest fund managers: Blackrock, SPDR, & Russell. In addition to connecting with almost any bank account or credit card to invest spare change, customers can deposit or withdraw any amount at any time with no commissions or minimum balances. Acorns makes it easy to get started anytime, anywhere, with any amount of money.
Organisation
Team
George Lucas is the CEO of Acorns Grow Australia. He has over 27 years’ experience in the investment banking and fund management industry specialising in developing, managing and structuring financial products. George was previously a director of two listed investment trusts, the Chief Investment Officer of Mariner Financial, the head of the London equity derivative trading and structuring department for First Chicago and the head trader of equity derivatives with Citibank in the United Kingdom. George is currently the Managing Director of Instreet Investment, setting the strategy, in conjunction with the board, and developing and structuring the financial products. As well as managing Acorns and Instreet, George is a regular presenter at finance industry forums and on Sky Business.
Jeffrey Cruttenden co-founded Acorns to simplify investing and connect it to everyday life. An investor throughout his high school and college career, Jeff noticed that many of his peers that had an interest in investing either couldn't come up with a lump sum to meet minimum balance requirements or were discouraged by expensive commissions and investment choices. In his capacity at Acorns, Jeff brings his background in equity research and financial mathematics to oversee and set up the portfolio game rules, application design, payments and aggregation solutions, as well as the development and structure of the investment company subsidiaries. Jeff received his BA in Mathematics magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Lewis & Clark College.
David Keegan leads the design team at Acorns and has over 10 years of experience in designing and developing applications for a wide array of industries such as feature films, video games, medical technology, and now mobile and web applications.
Project Brief
Acorns brings investing to the masses. Great consideration was taken to make registration as streamlined as possible and to present just enough information to the user about their account to educate them about investing without overwhelming them with data. This is exemplified in the portfolio screen where we give the user a glimpse into their projected future returns with Acorns. We used modern gestural interactions to bring life to the commonly static and boring graphs found in most investment programs. By allowing the user to manipulate multiple axis of data to experiment with different monthly contributions and projected returns for a portfolio allocation we attempted to bring understanding and enlightenment to our users. This simplified view into a user’s projected returns required numerous custom drawn controls and billions of simulation calculations.
Registration was another area of intense iteration and refinement. Both from a technology and UI/UX standpoint to make the process as streamlined as possible to give the user the absolutely best signup experience possible. During registration the user is creating their investment account, which requires everything from bank login credentials, a full personal information profile, financial goals, and their tax file number. Numerous rounds of user testing was used to craft the registration process and remove all hurtles that arose. The conversion results have astonished even us. It’s a rare thing to have users reach out on social media about how good a registration process is, but numerous users have done just that!
Project Need
Just 1 in 8 young Australians feel like they are in a good savings position. Many have the desire to start investing but are waiting to accumulate a lump sum before they start, and missing out on years of compounding, or they believe they can’t afford to take money out of their pay check, or can’t quite muster the discipline to invest often enough to make a difference. But by breaking the investment process into little pieces and finding creative ways to funnel money into an investment account, more people can invest more often and worry less.
Acorns removes all the friction from the process of investing, whether the customer has never invested or they've traded every day. With no minimum account balance, a person can get started no matter how much they have ready to set aside. Acorns will help them automatically build wealth without changing their everyday behaviours, and individuals who want to invest more quickly can set up automatic recurring deposits of any size. By removing the confusing parts of investing like stock symbols, order types, margin accounts, or derivatives, customers can transact entirely in cash while Acorns takes care of the complicated bits. For an entire year’s worth of management at Acorns, customers pay less than traditional firms charge for just two trades.
User Experience
Customers get started with Acorns in minutes using only a few pieces of information. After creating an account, a customer selects their bank, enters their online login credentials, and answers their bank's security questions. This connects the account's credit and debit cards to the Acorns system, and allows the user to make deposits or withdraw to and from the associated funding account. After a few short questions about identity and financial health, Acorns can verify the customer's identity. The customer receives a choice of 5 portfolios complete with interactive estimated future value calculator, portfolio breakdown, and detailed information about portfolio holdings. A customer can then choose a portfolio that suits their investment strategy. Then they can make their first investments!
Customers can choose to automate their experience or return to monitor their spending and investing closely. On any given day, customers will see their new spending transactions, the total round-ups they've saved to date, the performance of their portfolio including individual funds, and any dividends or account credits and rebates they may have received. With both manual and automatic options, it's easy for customers to control their investments and saving habits. They can withdraw any amount at any time with no penalties, so funds are available and highly liquid. Acorns built a fully functioning financial institution and platform. The emphasis has always been on simplicity, ease of use, economy, and beauty.
Project Marketing
Our marketing campaign began with an announcement of the partnership between Instreet Investments Limited and Acorns Grow, Inc. to bring the app to Australia. To maintain momentum, we developed a research paper looking at the savings habits of Australians, revealing the majority of young Australians are struggling to save. The research documented behavioural and social changes related to wealth and finance, while introducing Acorns as an alternative to tried and tested methods of investment.
We identified the most influential technology and finance journalists and created a steady flow of media coverage which linked to the Acorns business strategy. We took the Acorns story to mainstream media by building stories that most Australians can identify with - the struggle of not being able to adequately save for the future. When the app was launched, we brought Acorns’ director of international strategy to Australia for media engagements. As well as using Acorns talent, we worked with independent technology and finance experts who endorsed the app and how it removes traditional barriers to investment. This approach saw our campaign generate over 200 pieces of media coverage with highlights including Chanel 7, Sky News, ABC News, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Australian Financial Review and Mashable. The campaign supported the successful launch of Acorns by delivering a huge number of app downloads. When the app was officially launched it achieved 50,000 downloads in just three weeks, a goal which was expected to take over six months.
Project Privacy
Acorns is committed to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and security of any personal information about Acorns customers. Acorns stresses its privacy and security standards to guard against identity theft and provide security for personal information. Acorns regularly re-evaluates its privacy and security policies and adapts them as necessary to deal with new challenges. Simply put, Acorns does not and will not sell or rent personal information to anyone, for any reason, at any time. When customers enter sensitive information, such as a credit card number financial information, on Acorns forms, Acorns encrypts the transmission of that information. Acorns follows generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to Acorns, both during transmission and once Acorns receives it.
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