Retail
06/17/2020

The Illusive Hunt for Revenue

Fintel.pngThe operating environment for banks is becoming increasingly inhospitable. Rising credit costs and falling interest rates threaten to squeeze profitability in a vice grip unless banks find new revenue sources.

This is why Bank Director’s second annual Experience FinXTech event and awards, hosted virtually at the beginning of May, highlighted fintech companies that are helping banks grow their top lines.

The event brought together bankers and technologists for demonstrations and conversations about the present and future of banking.

As a part of the event, Bank Director crowned fintech winners in seven categories, including Best Solution for Customer Experience, Best Solution for Loan Growth and Best Solution for Revenue Growth.

Fintel Connect won the final category: Best Solution for Revenue Growth.

The Canada-based company amplifies a bank’s marketing campaigns by leveraging an affiliate network of publishers and social influencers, as we explain on our FinXTech Connect platform, which profiles hundreds of tried-and-true technology companies serving the banking industry.

A selling point is that, instead of paying for clicks or impressions, customers of Fintel Connect only pay once a lead converts into an actual customer.

Canada’s EQ Bank has been working with Fintel Connect for years, using it to manage media affiliates – bloggers, interest rate aggregators, etc. EQ attributes the service with boosting customer acquisition “fairly substantially,” with between 5% and 10% of EQ’s new customers now coming through it.

Nest Egg was a runner-up in the category of Best Solution for Revenue Growth. The Philadelphia-based company enables banks to offer high-quality, fully digital investment services in order to increase customer affinity.

OceanFirst Financial Corp., a $10.5 billion bank based in Red Bank, New Jersey, liked Nest Egg so much that it invested in the company.

OceanFirst has recommended Nest Egg’s semi-automated money management tool to retail clients for about a year, with assets under management growing from $0 to $43 million over that time. The service is already cash flow positive for OceanFirst.

The last finalist for this category was Flybits, a fintech company based in Toronto.

Mastercard has been working with Flybits for a year now. They’re still in the early stages of implementing its product, which helps provide contextualized offers to end users of their cards for the purpose of driving usage.

The trajectory has been a positive one for Mastercard, leaving the company optimistic that working with Flybits will help their clients – mainly banks – increase card usage and associated fee income.

One reason Mastercard chose to work with Flybits is because of the way it deals with data. All data is tokenized, with Flybits only selectively accessing the data it needs. There are any number of ways for banks to grow revenue. These are three of the best, according to experienced panel of judges convened to choose the winners at Bank Director’s 2020 Experience FinXTech.

WRITTEN BY

John Maxfield

Freelancer

John Maxfield is a freelance writer for Bank Director magazine. He was previously the senior banking specialist at The Motley Fool. He regularly writes for Bank Director magazine and BankDirector.com. His work has been syndicated widely to national publications including USA Today, Time and Business Insider, and he’s been a regular guest on CNBC. John has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Lewis & Clark College and a juris doctorate from Southern Methodist University. He’s a licensed attorney in the State of Oregon.