Today’s financial applications
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From a Millennial perspective

In a study about customer experience conducted in 2016 by Katherine Lemon and Peter Verhoef, they stated that ”a seamless experience across channels through channel integration will create a stronger customer experience.” As our society is more and more driven by technology, our everyday busy life is interconnected with different applications. Therefore, convenient, all-in-one and customer-friendly solutions are highly needed in order to save time and personal resources. This is what Millennials want from their financial application. We at Bankify have talked with over 3 million Millennials and we want to share with you their opinion on what today’s financial application should look like. We’ve added some comments from Millennials regarding the different things they look in a financial application throughout the text.

Validation and verification from others

Besides their own experience, Millennials value their peers’ recommendations. This raises one simple question: What are the things in a financial application that would make it more recommendable to others? Engagement, trustworthiness and modernity. These three factors are more relevant day by day as Millennials are becoming more independent with their financial decisions. Believe it or not, according to Forbes (2019), about a fifth of key banking decision-makers consider banks that have a mobile app to be “truly digital”. This one of the reasons why financial institutions need to be more convincing, because Millennials want validation in order to believe the application to match their expectations. 
“A friend, that invests money. Or Idk, watching something. No Idk, maybe just talking to a friend and they recommend.”
Student
24
“Maybe if I would hear it from my friends if they got money from it. Then maybe I should too.”
Student
21

Easy to start, even easier to execute

Millennials are quite responsible about saving for the future, even though just starting can already be very unmotivating. They have saving goals, but the current process of putting money in the bank after payday creates more uncertainty in a world that is already filled with it. This is where engagement plays a big role. Personalized financial applications that encourage you to save throughout the month in order to reach your saving goals are the answer. This way, Millennials are more invested in the saving process, but still have the same amount of time to do other things, and can experience a more purposeful banking experience.
“It would be nice if it’s more graphical. Some cool graphs and stuff. I guess it would also be nice to see how your bank account progress. A graph that shows for a long period of time, how your balance goes.”
Conscript
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Up to the current day standards

While every other aspect of a Millennial’s life is centered around connectivity and social aspects, banking apps are still stuck to its old ways. Gaming apps for example have been doing this for many years. Games such as Clash of Clans or Minecraft are having over 100 million players together every month, which only indicates how popular these social games are. Thus, financial applications should emphasize these social aspects, which there are many in the banking business. What banks need to realize, is that the services that a bank offers should and can be integrated online with the help of a financial application. Millennials don’t want to go themselves to a physical bank. Heck, these days they don’t even rely on needing to have a bank for financial help. Financial applications should be made with these facts in mind, in order to be modern, and most importantly, trusted by Millennials.