Speed and simplicity helped FinTechs establish themselves as alternatives to traditional financial institutions.
Those qualities carry less weight as competitive advantages when customers can find fast payments, digital account opening and polished mobile experiences across much of financial services.
Prashant Shah, vice president of product management at SoFi Tech Solutions, said the value proposition now begins with where the customer is and what the customer is trying to accomplish. A consumer might be at a point of sale or online making a purchase. In either case, the financial product has greater utility when it appears within the activity already underway instead of requiring the customer to leave that experience and enter a separate financial application.
Consumers “want to be able to solve the problem they have at the point of their need, rather than having a standalone app,” Shah said.
Faster transactions still count. A clean interface still counts. Yet neither guarantees that a company will own the customer relationship.
More Products Cannot Mean More Complexity
FinTechs that began with a narrow product have moved into broader combinations of banking, lending, payments and technology. Adding another financial service creates little customer value if each addition produces another disconnected experience.
“Growth should be more focused on making the customer experience more useful, not complicated,” Shah said. “As you expand the value prop, it should all gel together and seem cohesive to the customer.”
Achieving that simplicity requires work behind the screen. Account information, payment capabilities and risk controls must connect across a customer’s activities. Organizational structures that separate products internally should not force customers to reproduce the same divisions in their own financial lives.
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“The experience has to be designed across those journeys,” Shah said.
SoFi Tech Solutions endeavors to connect those interactions. Its consumer business operates financial products directly, while SoFi Tech Solutions Tech provides financial technology infrastructure to other companies. That operating experience gives the technology business exposure to the less visible requirements of running financial services, including payment networks, sponsor banks, program management and customer support, Shah said.
Winning the Customer Includes What Happens When Things Go Wrong
Customer experience is often measured by what happens when a transaction works. That confidence is also established when something fails or looks suspicious, Shah said.
At the point of sale, for example, consumers do not ordinarily consider the authorization systems processing a transaction in milliseconds. Infrastructure remains largely invisible until it produces a delay, an erroneous decline, a fraud problem or another disruption.
“The moment something goes wrong, the infrastructure ‘behind’ becomes the part of the customer experience,” Shah said.
Detecting suspicious activity is an operational function, but the way a provider responds directly affects the customer relationship. Shah described a system detecting suspicious activity and immediately contacting a customer by text to determine whether the transaction was legitimate. A potentially damaging episode can become evidence that the provider is paying attention and responding quickly.
“The advantage comes from reliability, fraud prevention and the operational performance,” Shah said.
Watch the full interview with Prashant Shah to learn more about:
- Why speed and digital access alone no longer provide FinTechs with the differentiation they once did.
- How financial providers can add products without forcing customers through disconnected experiences.
- Why reliability, fraud prevention and operational performance have become part of winning and retaining the customer.
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