Finovate Presenters Focus on Savings
If the recession has taught us anything it is, in short, finance is messed up.
No surprise then that technology keeps emerging to try to halt the messiness. And yesterday in New York, 31 companies showed off what products they’ve got to improve finance at the annual Finovate conference, an event that lets financial and banking technology companies give seven-minute demos of their products to try to woo bankers and the press. If anything, the conference is certainly a throwback to sorority rush days. (Tame outwardly, but inwardly, competition is fierce.)
As unemployment skyrockets, presenters tried to tackle cash flow issues for consumers. Indeed, the prevailing theme of the conference was ways to save dough. Other common finance tool themes centered on personalization, targeting Gen Y and utilizing the community for the financial greater goods. (Mobile banking devices were hot, too).
Attendance seemed pretty strong, and the audience engaged. All the same, some of the attendees did have a few reservations about certain companies, one of them being practicality. In chatting with a few banks, they explained that consumers don’t want to spend time on their finances. They want the banking process quick and easy, which wouldn’t be the case with some of the products introduced. A few also questioned how easy and simple it really is using mobile payment devices.
Regardless of some criticism, interesting products did get plugged. Below are a few of the companies that caught my eye from the morning sessions.
SmartyPig, an online banking app, is capitalizing on the power of social media. When a user creates a financial goal and shares it with friends and family, SmartyPig will tweet progress updates or populate posts on Facebook, heralding how close he or she is getting to the goal. I’m not sure I’d opt-in to this function, or that my friends would care (minus my parents), but it is interesting to see how the financial tool is utilizing the social medium.
Credit.com, meanwhile, is trying to get Americans more in tune with their credit scores. Take its credit report card, which gives users letter grades on their credit, spelling out exactly what is going right and what’s going wrong. The report card breaks the score into additional credit categories, like payment histories, for a more thorough understanding of finances and actionable feedback. What I like most about the credit report card is it provides a state and national ranking of where the user stands in terms of credit score, much like SAT results.
TILE Financial is also using education to beef up financial literacy, specifically targeting the issues of assets shifting from one generation to the next. In an attempt to cater to Gen Y, TILE provides video casts, blogs and daily financial lingo definitions, among other features.
