Is PFM the Gateway to Healthier Banking Relationships?

CHANDLER, Ariz.– For banks, personal finance management (PFM) tools hold the promise of deepened customer relationships. Or does it?

“Banks will know customers much more intimately,” said Mark Schwanhausser, senior analyst covering multi-channel financial services at Javelin Strategy & Research, during a lively panel at this week’s Net.Finance conference. “[Banks] can start conversations well before [customers] come into the branch. … PFM can redefine what personal banking is about. Branch banking is reactive; while PFM can help you become proactive.”

Beyond gleaning more data, PFM offerings also help banks achieve a “friendlier” consumer face.

“PFM could help them with this personality,” Schwanhausser said.

But before banks can deepen their customer relationships from PFM deployments, customers must first know the functionality exists. To date, adoption of bank-provided PFM has been limited. Schwanhausser’s data, for one, shows that an average bank’s PFM usage rate tracks no higher than single figures, which he credits to the tool’s poor visibility.

“PFM needs to come out of the tab and become part of the interface of online and mobile,” argued Schwanhausser.

He fully expects this will happen soon.

Still, there are many challenges in growing PFM services at banks, including improving the ease of categorizing transactions. And without simplicity, customers won’t use the technology.

“PFM is complicated,” said Schwanhausser. “What we need to do is reform the ACH system so there’s better reporting. ….That will take a long time.”

Though categorization remains an issue, what might surprise bankers is that account aggregation is not critical to greater consumer adoption of PFM, two banker panelists argued. For example, though BMO Bank of Montreal, which uses Strands Finance for its PFM service, will fold in aggregation into its PFM services at “some point,” nothing of the sort is on its product roadmap yet, said Dan Dickinson, online and mobile banking exec, during the panel.

Even so, he said “there’s value in the tools we offer upfront.”

Wells Fargo’s PFM Product Management Manager Billy Robins, meanwhile, is less sold on whether consumers are “screaming” for aggregation functionality, pointing to how even Mint.com only boasts a few million active users.

Plus, Wells made a go of PFM aggregation in the early 2000s, an effort that “failed miserably,”  Robins said. Though that failure could be attributed to outside factors, he said consumers get squeamish about handing over their passwords in order to aggregate their other accounts.

With or without aggregation, all three panelists identified PFM as an opportunity for banks, especially when the functionality merges with mobile technology.

“PFM will be everywhere,” said Schwanhausser. “It won’t be just a place to go to do transactions.”

Dickinson, meanwhile, views the functionality as helping online banking services grow up from simply serving as a place to do transactions to become the place for consumers to manage their money.

“A lot of day-to-day spend is disconnected from [a consumer’s] long-term investments – we’re trying to use PFM for this,” Dickinson said.