BofA Debuts Digital Financial Coach

Bank of America is gearing up to launch Life Plan, a digital portal that helps customers achieve financial goals, this fall.

According to a report in CNBC, citing David Tyrie, the head of advanced solutions and digital banking at Bank of America, the aim is to help customers through all the different stages of their lives such as purchasing a home, saving for college or preparing for retirement. Keeping a customer with the bank through their lifetime is the goal of most financial institutions, and Bank of America is hoping this is the way to do it.

“The holy grail in financial services is maintaining a lifelong relationship with somebody,” Tyrie said in the report. “But candidly, the thing that we’ve struggled with as an industry is trust. Life Plan is really about building trust and giving you that feeling that we are acting in your best interest.”

The mobile app and website will be broken down into family, finances, work, health, home, leisure and giving, providing users with the ability to come up with plans for all the aspects of their lives. Users choose their priorities and the app will provide personalized suggestions to meet the goals. Take a customer who is gearing up to become a homeowner. The digital tool could suggest ways to save for the down payment or how to increase the customer’s credit score. The app will also point users toward more information on buying a home. The idea is to provide customers advice when they need it, according to the report.

Bank of America will first roll out Life Plan to customers who have a deposit account with the bank, but it could offer it to customers of its other products down the road. Data from outside investments are pulled into the account so the app has a complete picture of the customer’s financial state. Bank of America is melding human advice with the new digital tool. Customers can make appointments at physical branches and at Merrill Lynch wealth management offices. Those offices, the news outlet noted, will house financial advisers that are tech-focused.