Providing Personal Financial Advice Strategies through ...

[Pages:4]EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Providing Personal Financial Advice Strategies through Account Holder Tools

November 2018

Overview Financial institutions (FIs) and other financial services providers are increasingly leveraging technology to help advance account holders' personal savings goals. These transformational strategies can help consumers prepare for emergencies and build their futures with confidence, while also educating them about overall financial security. Q2 is committed to bringing financial wellness to account holders through a Personal Financial Advice (PFA) strategy, which includes offerings such as Q2 GoalsTM, a goal-based savings solution. Context Teresa Bobadilla, Consumer Banking Product Owner at Q2, describes the reasons why people are failing to save, discusses Q2's PFA strategy, and highlights Q2 Goals, a solution for promoting savings and providing personal financial advice. As an advocate of PFA and goal-based savings, Q2 is focused on shifting FIs' transactional relationships with their account holders into one where the institution becomes a trusted partner and advisor.

Executive Summary: Providing Personal Financial Advice Strategies through Account Holder Tools

Key Takeaways

A 2017 Bankrate survey found that an emergency of just $500 would financially derail over 57 percent of Americans. A major factor contributing to this statistic is that consumers don't receive all the relevant pieces of information they need at key points in their financial journey.

Many financial technology vendors offer "niche slices of financial wellness" that result in fragmented, non-holistic approaches to savings and other financial needs. Making matters worse, many of these technologies require significant time and maintenance on the part of the end user.

We're really focused on redefining your interaction with your digital users, going beyond the traditional transaction-based interactions of their historical spending habits, and moving to positioning you as a trusted advisor and financial partner with your users.

-- Teresa Bobadilla, Consumer Banking Product Owner at Q2

As part of its PFA strategy, Q2 is developing solutions that present a 360-degree "go-to" view of account holders' finances, combining various niche savings solutions into one comprehensive solution. Contextual PFM (CPFMTM), the first phase of the PFA strategy, focuses on account aggregation (which pulls in information about

accounts held at other institutions), categorization cleansing of transaction data, and data visualization that helps users interpret their current and historical finances.

Q2 is now delivering on the second phase of its PFA strategy with Q2 Goals. By encouraging account holders to save proactively, this product helps them break the cycle of non-saving and debt. Q2 Goals empowers them to look ahead at future needs and formulate a plan to meet specific goals.

Q2 Goals delivers benefits to account holders and financial institutions alike. While account holders can keep their goals top of mind, the tool promotes healthy financial skills and provides quick access to saved funds. For FIs, the tool stimulates account holder financial health and customer loyalty, increases deposits, and provides clear insight into account holders' financial intentions.

Technical details

The architecture of Q2 Goals consists of centrally located code that permits for loading at the login and is limited to the feature set relevant to the user. The Home page provides a comprehensive interface with options to select saving goals that are customizable and designed to suit users' needs from 24 different goal categories including education, vacation, home repair, auto, entertainment, and emergency fund.

Once a user has established a goal, they are prompted to create a plan to achieve the goal by authorizing ongoing funding via internal transfers. Tracking on the page emphasizes progress towards

Copyright ? 2018, Q2 Software, Inc.

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Executive Summary: Providing Personal Financial Advice Strategies through Account Holder Tools

the goal, with indicators of how the user is achieving the set goal. Additional details are available by clicking through Account Details where the user can view the goal balance, transactions in and out of the account, as well as advice on how to catch up if they fall behind.

There are two options for withdrawing funds earmarked for a goal. In the case of an emergency, it is critical the users have access to their funds on-demand. To this end, users may withdraw funds at any time via the existing internal transfer feature to a traditional savings or checking account from which they can access the funds. By visiting the Details tab of Account Details, users can transfer the entirety of the goal balance and close the goal (ideally once they've achieved their target balance amount). The user may simply select the account to which they want the funds directed and the funds are made immediately available via internal transfer.

While Q2 Goals works well when partnered with CPFM, it can also stand on its own. CPFM primarily focuses on the historical view of the consumer's finances, and Q2 Goals captures the users desired savings goals. Together, these two products allow the FI to determine product offerings that support the user and positions the FI to become a trusted financial partner and advisor, thus deepening their longterm relationship.

We want users to react and behave differently in response to these accounts rather than a typical savings account. We want them to change behavior.

-- Teresa Bobadilla, Consumer Banking Product Owner at Q2

Copyright ? 2018, Q2 Software, Inc.

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Executive Summary: Providing Personal Financial Advice Strategies through Account Holder Tools

Biography

Teresa Bobadilla

Product Owner, Q2

Teresa Bobadilla has 23 years of experience in software development, including more than seven in the field of financial literacy. In her four years working on Q2's Consumer Wellness program, she has led the Contextual PFM, Q2 Goals, and the Centrix Dispute Tracking System (CentrixDTSTM) initiatives. As a product owner, her responsibilities include generating and collecting ideas from various sources, guiding the direction of her product lines, working with her teams on the execution of plans, conducting user research, internal and external training efforts, as well as providing sales and marketing support. She holds a bachelor's degree in graphic design from Iowa State University, with a minor in Spanish.

For more information on Q2, go to or call (833) 444-3469.

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