Georg Ludviksson, Meniga’s CEO and co-founder, Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, Meniga’s CTO and co-founder and Andrew Harper, Head of Rewards Partnerships were interviewed at the recent Money 20/20 Europe conference which took place in Amsterdam last June. A lot of ground was covered in the interviews and you can watch them all below.
Outstanding stuff
Three things stood out: Georg’s advice to banks about focusing on customer needs for their digital banks, Andrew’s insights into how open banking can be an opportunity for banks, retailers and most importantly, deliver value to regular people and Ásgeir’s discussion of Meniga’s move to the cloud.
Think people, not technology
According to Georg, there is a lot of focus on technology at industry events such as Money 20/20. However, regular people are only interested in using digital banking services that provide value and are delightful to use.
“Everything we do revolves around using data to create better customer experiences and new value-added services in digital banking“
Staying on message
Over the past decade Meniga’s message to banks been unchanged. To stay relevant and close to customers banks must evolve their digital services into being a financial coach which helps people become more smarter customers. Rather than attempting to transform financial habits all at once, Georg advises that banks take a gradual approach with people they are engaging with.
“We have been on this journey to help people understand, manage and make the most of their money … it has evolved more into easy byte-sized simple nudges and insights and helping people to understand their money in a day to day setting.”
This has been inspired by fitness apps such as Fitbit and Strava.
“They help you to take steps every day, use the stairs but not the elevator. The same principles apply in personal finance.
Instead of saving for a down payment for an apartment all at once, just adopt slightly healthier habits, think about your spending, be aware of it, maybe focus on one simple area to cut back. So these simple nudges make it easy and seamless to the user”
“And it is a strong business case. Banks get money from it, we share revenue with banks. It is not software we sell them, it is a value-added service that we bring into the digital bank and share revenue with them.
This is a part of a broader trend that banks are evolving into more than a place to do banking … they are helping people to be a smarter consumer, spend less or spend smarter. “
The full interview with Georg
Open Banking enables Transaction-Driven Marketing
Andrew Harper, Head of Rewards Partnerships points out that since its founding in 2009 been focused on helping banks to increase their customer engagement.
“We are a market leader in Europe in personal finance management so essentially allowing banks to be financial coaches for their customers.
All of this is allowing banks to innovate on top of their data. A natural extension of this is looking at other ways we can help banks leverage this transaction account data and of them is this rewards platform.”
Data-driven and mutually beneficial ecosystem
The Meniga Rewards platform for Transaction-Driven Marketing brings together three stakeholders: banks, retailers, and customers in a data-driven and mutually beneficial ecosystem. This is enabled by Open Bankings the scale is required so that the platform reaches its full potential. Meniga is developing a multibank Rewards Platform in the Nordics with the major banks in the region.
“So this is a real use case for banks in the open banking environment, to realize that this is a new business model we can create, as a bank we have to open up our data but we can also leverage GDPR and the spirit of open banking, we can be combining our forces and actually delivering something meaningful”
“It is really seamless and frictionless, it is the next level of where these loyalty programs need to get to.”
The full interview with Andrew
Clean consolidated data is key to digital apps
Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, CTO and co-founder of Meniga focused on how Meniga’s platform simplifies the digital infrastructure of banks. It sits between banking systems and online digital channels. Accounts and transactions are consolidated and enriched.
That means that transactions are mapped to merchants and categorized. From this data business modules are built. This functionality can include budgeting, goal setting, cash flow projections. It also enables the bank to analyse their customer base and discover new customer segments or find opportunities for new products.
“This consolidation is the biggest part of integrating our solution and it is usually straightforward. We are very experienced in integrating with different banking infrastructure”
Meniga’s CTO is excited about Meniga moves to the cloud. This is means that while banks continue to control and own their data, the Meniga cluster is operated by Meniga staff which is experienced in operating it.
“This allows the bank to move even faster without thinking about updates or the maintenance of the solution.”