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Project Overview
Conquering ‘checkingyourbankbalanceaphobia’
Balance checking. To the onlooker, it might seem a simple enough process – a few clicks. But in reality, the road to the statement can be paved with any number of obstacles – fear, cold sweats, and of course, it’s-one-week-before-paycheck-I’m-pretty-sure-it-should-be-fine denial. It means that few people really understand what’s going on in their bank account.
This is checkingyourbankbalanceaphobia and in 2014, Santander decided enough was enough. It was time to put a stop to intimidating streams of meaningless numbers appearing on-screen and replace them with personalised information that actually makes sense. SmartBank was born.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Tom Rothenberg, SVP, Clients & Growth (Monitise Create)
Adam Clarke, Senior Strategist (Monitise Create)
Brad Dyson, Head of Delivery (Monitise Create)
George Mayou, Design Director (Monitise Create)
Adam Scrase, Head of Technology (Monitise Create)
Project Brief
SmartBank is all about seeing money from the consumer perspective – where banks see just a long list of incomings and outgoings, users might see they’re spending four times what they thought they were at Topshop. And in seeing that upfront, they can fix it (if they want to). By receiving individualised information about their spending, consumers are empowered to make better decisions. One Twitter user realised the frequency of her trips to McDonald’s – although we can’t be sure whether she cut back on the Big Macs.
With SmartBank, Santander wanted to throw out perceptions of what banking ‘should be’ and create something for people who’ve never heard of a paper ledger. In offering a new mobile banking service that pioneers personalisation, it sought to deliver value-add that would help drive engagement and loyalty from its existing customers, as well as attract new ones.
Project Need
Mobile banking is like email on your phone: convenient, functional. Santander and global Mobile Money provider Monitise designed SmartBank to be like having a map on your phone; it completely changes the way you digest and interact with your data – helping checkingyourbankbalanceaphobia sufferers get back on track.
It tells you when money has gone in, shows spending at different shops, and where you shop most often. You can see whether you’re doing better or worse this month - all with the very same logon you use across Santander. SmartBank’s slick and bright design makes it easy to understand things like:
• How much you spent on clothes last month
• The largest spend on your credit card was H&M
• That your bills are all due next week
• Most of your outgoings are by card (not cash, like you thought…)
• That the first week after paycheck sees the bulk of your outgoings…
In doing this, SmartBank gives consumers insights that they might never have come to by themselves – helping them make better decisions and change their behaviours if they need to.
User Experience
The app’s cognitive design and user experience are specially geared to help users better understand their spending. For example, one of the key messages the app seeks to convey is that smaller expenditures – like a cup of coffee on the way into work – can add up and make a significant impact on the bottom line. To reinforce this, transactions smaller than the customer’s normal spend are identified in a specific colour, helping them see just how many times they’re making these transactions – most likely, more than they thought they were. This colour-coding is based on an individual user’s behaviour, demonstrating the app’s personalised service.
The app’s graphics are carefully differentiated using a combination of vertical and horizontal layouts, with shapes like circles indicating totals so that the customer gets better and better at understanding the app’s information with each use – and without any effort on their part.
SmartBank does all this in a distinctly different way to mobile banking services that have gone before it. In its tone, colours, shapes and animations it seeks to convey an impression of ‘friendliness’ that sits in contrast to the more formal experiences of traditional mobile banking.
Project Marketing
SmartBank was designed to be a perfect fit for students and young professionals, for whom digital is key and ‘checkingyourbankbalanceaphobia’ is an epidemic. No surprise, seeing as according to Santander research, students on a three-year university degree course now face costs of over £54,000. SmartBank has been a hit at university branches.
Overall, strong mobile services are key for an increasing number of bank customers. AlixPartners cite nearly half of consumers switch banks based on an institution’s mobile banking services. By seeing their spending in a way that’s useful and valuable for them, with more visibility of other Santander products, customers are less likely to switch banks. And by better understanding a user’s spending habits, the bank can also have more informed conversations with them, give them better advice or point them to more useful Santander products.
Following the launch of the app, marketing campaigns (including one aptly themed: ‘checkingyourbankbalanceaphobia’) were implemented via branches, email and social media, helping drive app downloads and subsequent consumer engagement.
Project Privacy
For financial applications, privacy and security is a key concern. Monitise Create and Santander ensured that no confidential information is stored locally, and that data communication is sent and received securely over SSL encryption.
Tags
FinTech
Fintech is radically changing how we live as society and how we do business professionally. We're looking for great apps that are disrupting sectors such as mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, financial management.
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