Comments on: PFM: Platform For Customer Engagement

By: Betting on PFM « Banking Kismet

Betting on PFM « Banking Kismet — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 01:54:27 +0000

[...] so many articles about the benefits of PFM, you’d think you’d see more banks and credit unions jumping on the bandwagon. The big [...]

By: David Gerbino

David Gerbino — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:30:20 +0000

Ron,

you said “I’ve been an analyst for 11 of the past 13 years, and throughout that time I have done everything in my power to avoid making predictions. I’m a prescriptive kind of guy, not a predictive one.

So when I say that 2010 will be the year of PFM (personal financial management), you know that I believe it. Sure, social media and mobile (or as @jpunishill proposes to call it: Mocial) will garner more press and attention, but the smart bankers (and credit union execs), while experimenting with social media, will make serious investments in 2010 to build PFM capabilities.”

I say amen. I could not agree with you more.

It will be much easier to gain bottom line results from OFM (Online Financial Management) then it will from “mocial”.

@dmgerbino

By: Ron Shevlin

Ron Shevlin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:45:00 +0000

Tekfin: Most people (in the US, at least) are customers of multiple banks. Most people have one or two primary spending accounts: their checking account (debit card) and/or credit card). The promise of PFM is in helping consumers better manage their money. For most people, this means spending management, not asset management. Consumers shouldn’t need to link every account they have in order to reap benefits from PFM. My bet: If a customer gets value from PFM from linking just one or two accounts, then s/he will be less resistant to aggregating accounts on one FI site.

Regarding “independent advice”, you make a great point. But the advice (and offers) that a bank/CU provides shouldn’t be strictly limited to the financial accounts. BTW, there’s a pretty healthy percentage of third-party PFM site users who said they’d use their bank/CU’s PFM if it had one, and it was good.

By: CU Water Cooler » Blog Archive » CU Water Cooler 3/5

CU Water Cooler » Blog Archive » CU Water Cooler 3/5 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:34:18 +0000

[...] • PFM: Platform For Customer Engagement « Marketing Tea Party by Ron Shevlin [...]

By: Tekfin

Tekfin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:57:10 +0000

The question is also, if you are a customer of multiple banks, would you rather use an independent PFM (like Mint) that would have no connection to your financial services and would be able to propose you “independent” advice or would your trust your bank’s PFM to aggregate your financial data (with the issue of privacy)? I believe the first one creates additional value and challenges banks but I am not sure it is the trend for most people.
Also really looking forward to your webinar!

@FredericBaud. I really like your “vision”. It also matches with the fact that ultimately all those financial data belongs to me and not to the organization hosting them. External PFM on one side and Blippy on the other are really pushing for this. I can bring my financial info to the services I need, whether assets or purchase, independently of my financial services providers (bank, credit card, etc.)

By: FredericBaud

FredericBaud — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:53:47 +0000

Come on, Ron. Don’t you think that by the end of next year we’ll have completely implemented open standards that will let us exchange information or move accounts between different nodes in the cloud (that we may still be calling banks or fi-services) and that we’d need a consolidated view on this? OK, maybe not by the end of next year. But seems to me that the time between now and eventually has considerably shrinked over the past decades.

By: Ron Shevlin

Ron Shevlin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:35:51 +0000

@Tinfoiling: Thanks for agreeing, but I can assure that not everybody agrees with us. At the CUES CEO conference a few weeks ago, one CEO got up to say “nobody is asking for this”. I think I said “nobody ASKED for the iPod, either.”

So with all apologies for my snarky answer, the underlying message is that you’ve got to have a vision for how PFM can improve the FI-customer relationship.

@Jim: I don’t believe that the advice provide within the confines of the PFM has to be all-encompassing or rocket science — i.e., it could be simply “guidance” like Wesabe offers when it helps users compare AT&T to Verizon by displaying user ratings, average spend, etc.

In other instances, the “advice” could be: “this is too complicated, give one of our advisors a call.” The problem here, as I know too well, is that for many banks, the default message is “call us” or worse, “click here to apply”.

@Frederic: The thought of my “finances in the cloud” scares the you-know-what out of me.

By: FredericBaud

FredericBaud — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:05:57 +0000

I think we’ll soon also need an interface to manage an aggregated view of our finances in the cloud.

By: Jim Bruene

Jim Bruene — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:52:12 +0000

Ron….thanks for letting your readers know about the webinar. I’m in.

On your third point…do you think banks and CUs will be able to provide meaningful advice with this info? That’s not such as easy thing to pull off.

By: Tinfoiling

Tinfoiling — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:49:57 +0000

Couldn’t agree more.