New Year’s resolutions
Many will be dealing with the financial and emotional impact of the festive season well into January and beyond. It takes an average of 4 months for people to get their finances into shape after Christmas.
As we step into the new year, financial goals are on British people’s mind, with one third (31%) resolving to get their finances in order in 2024 - reducing debt or spending and saving more.
Mental well-being is also a significant focus for resolutions. Approximately one quarter (24%) of people said they wanted to reduce stress levels, while an equal proportion (22%) are committed to enhancing their emotional well-being.
But, turning resolutions into actionable, achievable steps can be challenging without proper guidance and tools.
How can you help your customers achieve their financial goals?
Open Finance technology offers firms an opportunity to revolutionise how consumers interact with their finances. Financial wellness begins with providing someone with a holistic picture of their entire financial world - income, expenditure, debts, savings, investments, pensions, properties and more - and making it easily accessible.
Personal financial management solutions can be embedded within apps, like yours, that people already use regularly. You can help consumers take control with tools like:
Budgets, analysis & forecasting: Give your customers an understanding of how much money is coming in, and where it’s going out, making getting the foundations of financial resilience in place as intuitive and as easy as possible.
Personal Debt Manager: Help your customers to eliminate the debt they may have built up over Christmas through a suite of features packaged up into our Personal Debt Manager - including Balance Alerts, Spend Analysis and Regular Payments.
Nudges: Encourage users to take specific actions through tailored nudges based on their personal circumstances - for example; if your customer has spent £100 less than their budget on groceries in a month, you can nudge them to move that £100 into their savings account.
Embedded Credit Scores: Make credit more tangible by allowing your customers to see their credit score alongside their day-to-day finances, encouraging them to improve it or think twice before taking on more debt.
Benefits Calculator: A simple, easy to use calculator to help your users identify what extra income they may be entitled to, and guide them through application based on their income and situation - from state benefits, to charitable grants and more.
Emergency Cash Builder: Help your customers build a rainy day fund for whatever life throws at them - a broken boiler, the car needing a repair, or even their Christmas present budget - boost their financial resilience and reduce stress and anxiety.
Savings Goals: Like Emergency Cash Builder, but for the long term - you can help your customers achieve their savings goals and resilience for life’s bigger moments; a wedding, their first house or that dream summer holiday.
Smarter savings habits to last a lifetime - made easy
Open Finance can help people embed saving habits that truly stick in innovative and simple ways. Bespoke nudges can encourage someone to move their money the day they are paid. Variable Recurring Payments mean people can round up their purchases to the nearest pound and move that change automatically into a savings account.
Impulse spending can even be converted to impulse saving with an unplanned treat being accompanied by a self-imposed rule to sweep the same amount into an ISA or a pension.
The adequacy of pension saving can even be forecasted and nudges made to help towards a better outcome, referencing current expenditure and in-retirement lifestyle.
Increased potential
Helping people achieve financial wellness doesn’t just benefit the individual. Savings capacity depends upon people having available money. At Moneyhub, we call this available money Potential. It’s the money left after non-discretionary spend is subtracted from income.
Once someone is on top of their day-to-day finances and has built up a rainy day fund to fall back on, their saving, investing or borrowing potential is increased. And, if it’s your brand that helped them get there, you’ll be front of mind when they’re in the market for new products.
Moving into the New Year, financial goals are a hot topic. Consumers are seeking ways to engage with, understand and improve their financial health and will be turning to technology to help them.
In light of the rising cost of living and the introduction of Consumer Duty, it’s imperative that firms focus on their customers’ financial needs and wellbeing through 2024. Personal Financial Management solutions offer firms and consumers alike a viable, intuitive and proven way to do this.