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Riding the Wave of Financial Wellness Means Building Education, Community, and Trust

July 22, 2022|0 min read
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MX recently hosted a diverse group of fintech CEOs and founders at an exclusive Financial Wellness Forum to talk about shifts in the industry and what fintech needs to do in order to continue growing. 

According to Ali Ghoraishi, founder and CEO at Kaian, building a fintech is a lot like surfing. Most people think surfing means you have to catch a wave. In reality, you have to simply be prepared to ride the wave as it comes. 

“If we’re constantly chasing waves, we’re going to wear ourselves out. But if we prepare and remain patient, the wave will come to us and we can ride it in.” -Ali Ghoraishi, Kaian

One wave that is coming is the increasing importance of financial wellness. As we face record-high inflation, consumers are looking to their favorite financial apps and fintechs to more proactively support them with reaching their financial goals. 

MX CEO Shane Evans shared that truly improving financial wellness starts with creating a more connected ecosystem with access to data that we can use to better understand our customers and improve both experiences and outcomes. Here are a few key things that consumers need from fintechs to support financial wellness: 

Build in Education

“It’s [financial wellness] the most important part of your journey, but it’s also the most neglected.” —Ethan Taub, Goalry

According to Ethan, you can’t just show goals to a consumer. You have to make them actionable. Telling consumers what to do isn’t enough. There needs to be education built into solutions so that consumers can see what next steps they should take and then be able to take them. 

Understand the Community  

SUMA Wealth took a different approach to building its financial products for young adult Latinos. Beatriz Acevedo says social listening is key to truly understanding the target demographic and their unique needs. 

Understanding the community and building that emotional connection can make a difference in creating relatable and accessible financial products. In fact, SUMA planned to attract 150,000 community members within a year, but exceeded its goal in just three months.

Create and Grow Trust 

One key theme in every discussion was how to increase trust with consumers. MX’s own research shows that trust is one of the most important deciding factors for Gen Z and Millennials in choosing their financial provider.

Trust impacts acquisition, engagement, and overall experience. When you ask consumers to give up so much data they need to know they can 1) trust you with the data, 2) trust that you’ll do what you say you’re going to do with it. 

MX sees Open Finance as the foundation for enabling that connected ecosystem with the ability to access and act on financial data. Open Finance gives both consumers and financial providers better access, visibility, and control into who has access to financial data.

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