Kudos to TD & Moven

But what now for long term customer engagement?

TD Bank and Moven should be congratulated on making a smart and necessary move. By integrating useful personal financial management tools into a new companion app called MySpend, TD is meeting a deep-seated customer need:

“We used to see people checking their balance at the beginning of the day. Now we’re seeing people checking their spending meter, and that’s pretty interesting.”

We see this as the first big shift in the changing banking landscape: the move from transaction revenue to engagement revenue. What TD and Moven are doing with their spend meter (“red for bad, green for good”) is significant.

MySpend is encouraging customers to refrain from overspending, and therefore potentially eroding transaction revenue.

The short term benefit? Customers are less likely to end up in financial stress, and will therefore cost less to service. And the long term benefit? They’re more likely to stay with the bank because they’ve developed a more tangible, beneficial financial partnership.

While none of this is new, it’s so refreshing to see this approach being embraced by a leader like TD.

Challenges ahead

We are going to be watching TD very closely to see how it addresses the issues that we at Onefill, our clients, and our partners are grappling with.

1. What now for TD’s engagement?

Is MySpend just a cool little toy, or is it part of a wider strategy to truly and fundamentally change the bank-customer relationship? Moving forward, for example, will TD be willing to make automatic offers or discounts to those customers who maintain a ‘good’ status over a lengthy period. Would TD even offer to improve a customer’s home loan arrangement if they demonstrably maintain and improve their financial health?

2. How will TD and Moven solve the usability of the service?

While we applaud TD and Moven for making such dynamic personal financial information readily available to the customer, MySpend still requires ‘second screening’. That is, a customer reviews a purchase on one screen and needs to log back into their banking app to check their green/red status. Sure, some diehard enthusiasts will change their behaviour this way. It is a large assumption, however, that the majority of customers will embrace a product that is neither seamless nor contextual.

That’s why Onefill surfaces Moven style PFM tools during the online shopping experience. Valuable personal financial information is surfaced in context, removing the need for second screening. The impact of the transaction is also shown before a transaction takes place. We believe this will not only increase uptake, but continue to challenge the traditional bank-customer engagement model.

The future is now, and we see more solutions like Moven and Onefill changing the way banks engage with their customers.