The Engagement Effect: How Stronger Engagement Drives Stronger Financial Wellness

It may seem obvious that consumers who engage more deeply with financial wellness tools experience better financial outcomes. Consumers that understand their finances, receive actionable insights, and track progress toward goals should naturally make better decisions, right? And, stronger financial health for consumers translates to stronger, lasting growth for the financial providers that serve them. 

However, in practice, engagement is not always given the weight it deserves by financial providers seeking to drive tangible outcomes for their business and customers. Engagement is often treated as a vanity metric rather than a primary driver of financial health and deposit growth. But, MX data shows engagement directly translates into higher account balances and more opened accounts. 

Consumers who actively engage with financial wellness tools consistently demonstrate stronger financial behaviors than those who remain unengaged or disengage over time. These behaviors translate into tangible outcomes, including healthier deposit balances, deeper account relationships, and measurable business growth.

Understanding Engagement Over Time

MX’s latest analysis looks at aggregated and anonymized data of more than 30 million consumers during a 24-month period to identify where consumers were in their engagement journey and how that behavior has evolved over time. Our data looks at consumers in three distinct engagement patterns:

• Always low or no engagement: Consumers who engaged two or fewer times with their financial provider’s digital tools in any rolling 3-month window.
• Previous high engagement: Consumers who started in a "higher engagement" state of three or more digital engagement activities in the first 3-month window or prior to the 24 months covered by this analysis.
• Transitioned to high engagement: Consumers who transitioned from low engagement to high engagement during a 3-month window in the past 24 months.

Consumers who transitioned to higher engagement during this time period consistently outpaced their low engagement or previously engaged peers. 

How Engagement Fuels Deposit Growth and Loan Balances

MX’s research shows a clear correlation between increased engagement and increased account deposit balances. Those who transitioned to higher engagement in the past 24 months saw a 1.8x greater change in total average balances for checking and savings accounts compared to users with consistently low or no engagement. 

Consumers who transitioned to higher engagement also saw a 3.9x greater increase in loan accounts compared to those with consistently low or no engagement.  

In addition, engagement appears to support consistency and resilience. Up to 54% of consumers who transitioned to higher engagement saw a positive change in their deposit balance — the highest rate of positive movement across all engagement groups. And, average balances rose by as much as $1,600 per user during this time period. 

How Engagement Deepens Relationships Beyond Balances

Engagement impacts not just how much money users hold, but how many accounts they hold with a financial institution. During the 24-month analysis window, accounts per user for those who transitioned to higher engagement increased by 14 percentage points, compared to only 8 to 10 percentage points for those with consistently low or no engagement. 

At the same time, more than 1 in 5 consumers (21.5%) in this group had more accounts 12 months later, compared to those with low engagement. 

Community Banks Leading the Charge

Finally, we took a look at how patterns differ across different types of financial institutions. For community banks and credit unions that emphasize relationships and engagement, data shows that their strategy works. 

Among consumers who transitioned to higher engagement during the past 24 months, increases were highest among community banks and credit unions.

These differences suggest that engagement is especially powerful when paired with personalization and relationship-based banking models. Personalized financial wellness tools foster stronger relationships, trust, and loyalty. 

What This Means for Financial Providers

Engagement is clearly not a vanity metric. It is a leading indicator of financial health, customer loyalty, and measurable growth. Financial providers that want to build engagement and outcomes should focus on four core principles:

Make Financial Data Meaningful

Consumers engage when insights are timely, relevant, and connected to their financial reality. Raw transaction data alone is not enough. Consumers need context and clarity to take action. When consumers log in to your digital experience, they want data that’s insightful and understandable — with the least amount of effort required on their part. Transaction data should be cleansed and classified into simple, understandable descriptions, making it easy for consumers to identify, organize, and act on their financial data.

Design for Sustained Engagement

Financial wellness is an ongoing journey, not a single interaction. Tools that evolve with a consumer’s financial life can help turn engagement into a habit rather than a novelty. Focus on embedded experiences that place insights and opportunities in the flow-of-life tasks or habits that consumers have already adopted.

Build Trust and Loyalty from Day 1 

The first days of a new banking relationship can have lasting impacts on consumer engagement and loyalty. Banks and credit unions who are able to create a valuable onboarding experience that emphasizes connectivity, personalization, ease, and convenience will reap the benefits. 

Repeat

By delivering insights in a predictable and repeatable manner — and if the information is valuable and actionable, financial wellness tools can create lasting engagement, healthier financial habits, and fuel long-term growth. If the insights don’t do this, consumers will get in the habit of ignoring instead of engaging.

The Engagement Dividend

MX data confirms a simple but powerful truth: stronger engagement drives stronger outcomes. Consumers who engage with MX’s financial wellness tools grow balances faster, hold more accounts, and are more likely to build lasting financial relationships. For financial institutions, this creates a virtuous cycle where customer success fuels institutional success.