BankMobile to Crowdsource Ideas for Its Mobile App
What do millennials want? One new mobile bank — BankMobile — is about to find out.
Some big banks have already found out — and they haven’t liked what they’ve heard. An executive at a Top 20 bank related the following anecdote recently: The bank invited a group of millennials in to describe what they would like from their banking experience. After the millennials had their say and left, the bank officers turned to the IT department, who told them, “We can’t do any of those things they just described.”
The experience, the executive said, was “soul-crushing.”
BankMobile‘s chief strategy officer Luvleen Sidhu is not worried the same will happen to her bank, which is beta-testing a barebones mobile app targeting millennials this December, and will invite the first 5,000 customers to help decide which additional features to build out. BankMobile is a division of Customers Bank, which is based in Wyomissing in eastern Pennsylvania and holds assets of $6.5 billion. It was announced this summer, but the December beta will be the first time its doors open to customers.
Customers Bank has a built-in market for BankMobile, with 1.2 million student accounts offered in partnership financial education company HigherOne. “When students graduate, we tend to close 97% of the accounts,” Sidhu said. “Now we can offer BankMobile to graduates.”
Since about 80,000 students holding accounts with Customers Bank are due to graduate in December and January, it shouldn’t take long to find those first 5,000 customers.
Sidhu said that the bank would utilize social media, surveys and email to get ideas from its customers about how the bank should develop, and three main questions would be posed:
- How do you want apps to look?
- What features and transactions do you want?
- What kind of experience can the bank bring to those transactions, to contextualize them and add value?
So users can not only have their say on user experience and design, but even products. The barebones account will launch with no fees, higher savings rates, access to 55,000 fee-free ATMs, and access to a $5,000 line of credit.
Charging no fees is the central value proposition of the new bank to its target customers.Sidhu described the team as “disgusted” by the amount of fees being charged to a generation already overburdened with debt.
Millennials, she said, are looking for financial advice and a high-touch, high-tech experience. BankMobile, though it will strongly focus on mobile, will also offer the human touch. It will have financial consultants on call to help educate customers, as well as personal bankers to help solve problems.
“Banks have gotten a bad name with fees,” Sidhu said. “But we have to remember banks were created to help people reach their dreams.” BankMobile hopes millennials helping steer the ship will get banks back to where they are supposed to be.
