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Digital Money Management

Leveraging Employees for a Successful Digital Money Management Launch

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First Citizens BancShares Inc. is the financial holding company for First Citizens Bank. First Citizens Bank provides a broad range of financial services to individuals, businesses, professionals and the medical community through more than 560 branch offices in 19 states, digital banking, ATMs and telephone banking.

The Challenge

One of First Citizenss primary objectives is to help its customers achieve their financial goals. And an important part of that is being financially strong. The bank evaluated many tools to help achieve that goal and ultimately launched an all-new set of personal financial management tools (powered by MX) that would help its customers live better financial lives and improve their business.

The Solution

After getting buy-in from the First Citizens Bank management team and their commitment to help promote the product, the banks marketing team executed a multi-faceted, coordinated marketing campaign to launch Manage My Money.

We knew that simply telling our employees and customers, Its important to manage your money – use these tools would not have had the impact we wanted. Our employees are busy, and their time is valuable. We wanted to create something that would catch their eye and deliver a fun and engaging way to learn how these tools can help them and their customers manage and improve their financial health.

Lee Chalk

Vice President Consumer Digital Program Manager at First Citizens Bank

Prior to customer availability, the bank decided to roll out an internal launch to its 5,000+ employees to create excitement, awareness and, ultimately, help improve customer adoption and engagement. This way employees would have the opportunity to use it themselves, create their own value stories for how it helps them manage their money, and then use that highly personal experience to become advocates for their customers.

“We decided that the way to get them excited about our new tools for managing money was to make the launch fun – which is what we did.” — Angela English, Senior Vice President, Manager of Integrated Communications, First Citizens Bank

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Keys to First Citizenss Success

  • “Teaser” story on the internal website from a First Citizens executive sponsor to generate excitement before the launch
  • “Launch” story on the internal website from another First Citizens executive to kick off the campaign
  • Scavenger hunt: A fun game involving green, yellow and red inflatable beach balls representing “bubble budgets” that were hidden across headquarters and main buildings; employees were encouraged to take“selfies” when they found the beach balls (the most creative photos received prizes)
  • Headquarters / main location signage: Banners and digital displays throughout high foot traffic areas, including breakrooms, elevators and hallways, displaying budget bubbles, spending categorization, net worth, and external accounts
  • Games: A “Mad Lib”-style, fill-in-the-blank word game that allowed employees to get creative around the available tools and the value they saw in them (the best entries were featured in an internal website story)
  • Employee survey: A survey was sent to all bank employees, inviting them to share their personal stories about the tools, or identify any challenges or issues prior to the customer launch
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Ultimately, the themed launch was the right decision, because it appealed to all generations and succeeded in getting employees personally excited about managing their money with fun, engaging and relatable activities.

The response to the launch, both internally and externally, was so overwhelmingly positive – as the word spread to employees family members and others – that First Citizens Bank is now motivated more than ever to roll out additional MX tools that can help customers manage their money and take control of their financial lives.

“We wanted to create something that would catch their eye and deliver a fun and engaging way to learn how these tools can help them and their customers manage and improve their financial health.” Lee Chalk, Vice President at First Citizens Bank

Results

First Citizens Bank launched MXs digital money management (DMM) tools to its employees. Called “Manage My Money,” the banks internal launch included Single Sign-On (SSO), Insight & Target (I&T) and mobile app integration. Within the first four days of the launch, 919 employees had registered and 252 added at least one external account.

The bank launched Manage My Money to external customers a few months later, and 125,000 customers (representing 27% of First Citizens Banks total customer base) signed up within the first three months.

Key Benefits

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employees registered within first four days of internal launch, with at least one external account added by 252 employees

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customers signed up with Manage My Money within the first 3 months, representing 27% of First Citizens Bank’s total customer base

About MX Digital Money Management

MX simplifies personal financial management (PFM) for consumers from connecting all of their accounts in one place, to best-in-class digital money management capabilities, to proactive, personalized financial insights.

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About MX Account Aggregation

MXs account aggregation solutions enable consumers to easily connect and view all of their financial accounts in one place — and give financial providers full visibility into consumer financial data to better meet their needs.

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