Guard your bills, then prosper daily: fresh narratives that propel more business

8 min readNov 9, 2016

altMBA Prompt: for an organization or individual, do an ABN (asset, boundary, narrative) analysis, together with recommendations of how each of the three should be considered, altered or re-imagined to help the organization or individual reach their goals.

Today I would like to study the rebranding process one of my favorite app: Prosper Daily, rebranded this March with a new logo and incremental functionality from its original release as the BillGuard app.

The reason I picked this app for my review is not only the great features it makes available to US consumers; it is also the fact that it has taken pre-existing assets and expanded the narrative by enriching it from previously imposed self-imposed boundaries. It is a story that fits the prompt, and allow us to see how products, services and communities can deliver a greater user experience when the original boundaries are revisited. A fresh narrative then emerges and it is told to a community that is ready to embrace it, primarily because it creates benefits that are adjacent to the existing ones.

organization’s goals

The stated goals of Prosper, the company that owns ProperDaily, are:

“At Prosper, our mission is to give people access to products and services that help them advance their financial well being. This includes both personal loans as well as personal financial management products that help people track, manage and protect their money.”

There’s an explicit mention to two key elements above (highlights are mine):

personal loans
personal financial management products

The word personal appears on both mentions, most likely to signify the US consumer operating smartphones. So we start to understand WHO this organization is trying to help. The offerings (WHAT) appear to be centered around these two elements: loans and financial management products. BillGuard app was originally centered around the later piece; it was a financial management tool that covered expenditure and identity management:

early assets that determined BillGuard’s success

BillGuard, a five-star app with 1.6 million Android and iOS registered users by March 2016. In terms of performance, it had already flagged over $70 million in unauthorized charges since its inception in 2010; in terms of recognition, it won almost every industry award in its category: was being named one of the top banking innovations of all time by Online Banking Report and a Best App of 2014 by Google.

It deserves these noteworthy accolades, primarily for successfully getting users to trust their financial information to an app that delivered privacy as much as financial control via a simple interface and a delightful user experience. US consumers gained a new level of expenditure control that banks and credit card companies didn’t (and still don’t) provide; and it did so with an intuitive interface that prompts the user to approve each individual expenditure in their banking accounts or credit cards by clicking and (mostly) swiping:

This is the main burden put on the user: approve or signal transactions for follow up. I note: unlike tax preparation apps, this is a very light burden to users. Things are further simplified by:

making the actions intuitive: right swipe, to approve; left swipe, to signal that individual transactions
gamified that interaction with colors: green, to signal approval; red, to signal unauthorized; orange, to activate”help me understand” functionality; and grey, to follow up later on those transactions)

Once the user is done with the swiping, the app automatically categorizes each expenditure, and provides analytics for overall and category expenditure, comparing with baseline from previous months:

early boundaries that determined success… and stalled growth

Despite the kudos and awards for the user experience and for user growth, the original boundary for BillGuard was to ease the expenditure verification process, and to address a couple of the primary budgeting needs at a consumer level: how much did I spend? how does that compare to previous months?

Period.

BillGuard was a hit app within a niche. As most tech startups, it was probably looking to expand quickly its user base, app usage, attract fresh rounds of venture capital or consider merger and acquisition (M&A) movements. One of the strategies to do that organically (i.e., without acquiring other companies) is to expand functionality to cover adjacent use-cases that constituted benefits for the pool of existing users… and BillGuard accomplished that by adding features that covered identity management by partnering with Experian.

In other words, the same user that was delighted in having expenditure controls via BillGuard could now ensure that their identity was protected, much like the credit card companies have been doing for the last decade or so.

BillGuard was still one very tied to the features exploited by credit card companies, ultimately doomed to be perceived as redundant or commoditized in the near future, potentially devoiding the app of its cutting edge and ultimately, its value.

a new narrative

Even though BillGuard’s founding narrative was to empower consumers to control, protect and do more with their money, BillGuard was still one very tied to the features exploited by credit card companies, ultimately doomed to be perceived as redundant or commoditized in the near future, potentially devoiding the app of its cutting edge and ultimately, its value.

One use-case adjacency down… what are the other ones in the Financial Service that BillGuard could cover?

credit management, like offering score and analysis (positive and negative factors), upsell service to improve or repair scores
budget management, using the intuitive interface of the original app to allow users to set budget goals and pro-actively manage those goals before the limits are met
financial loans, via specialized institutions
auto, home and health insurance, a giant billionaire business in the US economy
shopping tools such as rewards programs or access to entertainment, travel, events

Each of these expansions could range from medium to hard to implement, require new levels of compliance to stringent financial and data regulations, and a few question marks for management: will users be interested in those? how would the new business translate into user base or company valuation?

Unclear. That’s a dilemma that many successful apps or software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies face right after the first signs of success are felt.

In September 2015, Prosper acquired BillGuard for $30 million dollars. Notice the expanded narrative adopted by ProsperDaily app after the accquisition:

“Our goal is to create a new type of personal finance app. We plan to use Prosper’s marketplace innovations in lending and investing to introduce new capabilities in the app that we think will be very meaningful to all of our users.”

unleash power: message new narrative to users via fresh features that provide compelling benefits

Notice how that reference of personal finance app could easily summarize the 5 use-cases I mentioned above. Also, notice the focus on new type of app and new capabilities (all highlights on the quote mine).

This company seems to pursue an experience that financial institutions failed to (or simply couldn’t) build because they operate within the limits of their own companies. It seems like sound business strategy that will shake the financial industry, so set (and profitably comfortable) in its ways.

No wonder Prosper is one of the select Israeli companies to achieve the status of unicorn at a $2B valuation in 2015.

Success next will be to execute the narrative at the user level: implement new features, helping current users realize those benefits, use the app more often and spread the word. New users will come onboard, and hopefully rejoice at the range of problems that the app could solve for them.

A few suggestions that I as an outsider I would like to offer:

add “share” functionality so users can share download link via SMS, email and social media
boost trust by developing credible claims around privacy. To make it more visible, include logos of institutions that verify privacy and encryption in the services provided by the app. Develop similar claims around testimonials and performance: as an user, it was not clear to me that they help recover $70 million in transactions
simplify the upsell selection and checkout process. Make the upsell options easily accessible, easily assimilated by a chain of progressive benefits and packaged in a way that feels natural to acquire incremental services
partner with insurance, events, travel and entertainment companies to provide offers based on analytics of user’s expenditure. Example: if user is spending money on car dealerships, suggest insurance services; if user has a pattern of expenditures in the “Fun” category, suggest incremental purchases like movie theater, concerts or novelty experiences in the area
position financial loans (provided by the parent company, Prosper) based on user projected financial needs. Compare regular purchases with income information and determine if a small loan would be required to make through the month
help users create and navigate budget scenarios, using analytics and best practices from the industry
help users liquidate debit by either showing a conversion path to more affordable loans, or by creating favorable budget scenarios that users can track and manage

I sent this analysis to ProsperDaily leadership team via Twitter:

Here are some of the responses and comments I received:

Brilliant write up Andre! You indeed uncovered a lot of our thinking behind this rebrand and expansion of our mandate.
– Raphael Ouzan, BillGuard founder

plus a couple of retweets from Aron Vermut (@vermooti), CEO of ProsperMarketplace, and Kunal Kaul (@original_kk), plus their corporate account @ProsperLoans.

If you enjoyed this article, please help out your friends with a 💙 or a share. Feel free to follow me too. It fuels my focus to write more of it, thanks!

Andre Piazza is a Product / Strategy leader. I believes in building intelligent products, activating powerful messages in the marketplace and creating memorable user experiences. Connect with me on LinkedIn or say hi on Twitter.

Originally posted at altMBA blogs on March 2016.

References:

ProsperDaily website
App location: IoS app, Android app
ProsperDaily rebranding on Product Hunt