11:FS Research Reports

Customers don’t want a bank. Redefine your market using Jobs to be Done thinking. Videos will open in a new browser window

It’s expensive, time-consuming and heavily regulated. It’s an industry that’s seen little change in hundreds of years and populated by those who are mostly resistant to that change. Furthermore, it remains an industry with an image problem – by and large customers don’t believe financial institutions of any type are working in their favour. So why launch a startup in the banking sector?

We say it a lot, because it’s true: digital banking is only 1% finished. We understand all too well that it can be easy to forget. This is an industry that we live and breathe, and is constantly growing and shifting. We see new products and services added to our Pulse platform every week, and explored by Sarah Kocianski in her research reports. Most recently she outlined some of the numerous, exciting, new digital money management (DMM) services which are now on the market.

People are managing their money using digital tools and services. As many as 70% of UK consumers now use a phone app to keep track of their money, according to Yolt. However, there are huge differences in the quality and value of what they are using, and the sheer volume and variety of offerings in this area is ever increasing. I’m going to help make sense of this picture for you, and outline what’s required for a best-in-class digital money manager.

Consider this scenario: you are a user with a task that needs completing via your financial platform of choice, and when you set out to achieve this core task you run into friction which either slows your progress or – worse still – prevents you from completing the task altogether.

Financial institutions (FIs) very rarely offer products and services that are truly tailored to the needs of Small- and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). Whether that’s bank accounts, access to credit, suitable payments products, insurance, capital management, or foreign exchange, most “SMB products” are either stripped down versions of corporate products, or overpriced versions of consumer ones.

Onboarding comprises of the processes by which a consumer or business becomes a customer. The term applies to the end-to-end journey, from a customer seeking insight into which product is right for them, through the application process, and onto the issuing of that product and the customer starting to use it.