Why Chase decided to drop digital-banking app Finn

JPMorgan Chase 's millennial-friendly digital banking app Finn is shutting down, just one year after it rolled out nationally. In an email to customers, the bank stated that Finn customers will see their accounts automatically moved to Chase Secure Checking and Chase Savings accounts on August 10, when the app will be permanently shut down. The bank will integrate some of Finn's popular money management features into the core Chase banking app. According to Chase, the decision to shut down Finn was based on a conclusion that a separate brand wasn't necessary to meet younger customers' needs, including money management tools. In addition, Finn's customers were largely drawn from Chase's existing customer base, with half of Finn's customers having another Chase account. "Millennial customers don't need a separate brand or experience," a Chase spokesperson said in an email to Bank Innovation. "We know the Chase brand is among the most popular banks for millennials, so we're leaning in on that." A message on Finn's site explains the changes that will unfold following Finn's shutdown. It notes that Finn customers will have monthly account fees waived upon being transferred to a Chase account (it didn't say whether this was permanent). Upon transferring to Chase, customers can access Chase ATMs without fees, but they won't be able to access non-Chase "partner ATMs" without paying a fee (fee-free partner ATM access was part of the Finn by Chase service offering). The company also plans to fold Finn's autosave personal finance management rules into Chase's banking app, along with other capabilities they've yet to announce. Finn was launched as a pilot in the St. Louis area in 2017, and its nationwide rollout in June 2018 was predicated on offering younger customers a fresh, personal approach to banking in an easy-to-navigate mobile interface. Finn offered customers a series of novel features that were designed to meet younger customers' expectations, including the ability to add emojis to represent how they felt about expenses and a nickname feature, which reportedly appealed to some transgender customers. Industry watchers say Finn's demise may have been due to the inability to attract enough customers (a finding supported by recent research from CB Insights) and a realization that Chase's core banking app already addressed most of what customers wanted. "Their success in attracting customers was probably below their expectation," said Aite Group research director David Albertazzi. "At the same time, I think there's an overlap of services with what the Chase Mobile app can offer." Using a digital sub-brand like Finn as an experiment offered opportunities to test new features while minimizing risks, he added. Others argue that Chase's decision to retire Finn is evidence that banks' mobile solutions already serve a broad swath of the population and adding resources to a new brand that cannibalizes a bank's core customer base detracts from the focus of making the core mobile experience better. "There is a consistent misperception in the market that, somehow today, mobile banking capabilities don't address millennial needs," said Ron Shevlin, research director at Cornerstone Advisors. From a challenger bank perspective, Chase's decision to drop Finn is evidence that incumbent banks are realizing that attractive user interfaces aren't enough to attract a mass of new users. To Stuart Sopp, CEO of digital banking platform Current, which is geared at Generation Z customers, Finn's exit from the marketplace represents how big banks aren't addressing younger customers' core pain points. "What we're experiencing now is these large incumbents who have looked at fintech competitors, like Current, Chime, Aspiration, Revolut and such, and what they're seeing is, 'Oh, it's just brand, and it just looks nicer'," Sopp said. "What they're not really getting is the reason and cause of why [challenger banks] are able to grow. We're solving real world problems, [and] they're not seeing the hard work that goes into differentiating and growing the business in a new kind of way."

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Why Chase decided to drop digital-banking app Finn

Guaranty Bank & Trust uses account-switching tool to promote new branches

Australian point-of-sale lender Afterpay guns for U.S. market

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