Inuit’s online personal finance website, Mint, is now officially available to financial institutions as well as individuals. Announced in April, the move will allow organizations to incorporate Mint content and links on their online banking sites, offering a look at personalized financial charts and mobile money-tracking services.
Intuit acquired the Mint website in 2009 and grew it into a finance website that offers multiple online features for individuals. Users create an account, join the community and upload their budgets and spending information for web-based financial planning.
There are also apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android versions so that customers can record and check transactions immediately. The Mint blog and extra features also offer advice on how to save money and plan wisely.
These features have prompted bankers to request that they be able to incorporate Mint into their online and mobile offerings, Intuit says in the press release. With the latest solution, institutions will be able to incorporate services in their online banking home pages instead of attempting to create digital material themselves or forcing users to bounce back and forth between Mint.com and their banking websites.
For example, when a change is made in any of more than 19,000 compatible financial accounts, Mint will pick up that information, use it to create viewer-friendly charts and then port those charts back into the bank website to help users understand their finances while managing transactions. Another type of integration will deliver Mint’s on-the-go tracking features, showing viewers exactly what impact their spending will have on their accounts before they make a real-time decision. Depending on account activity, Mint may also offer online banking users free actionable advice on saving money and product or service offerings, still within the framework of the online banking site.
More than 12 million people have used Mint.com to save money — users have already saved more than $30 billion by using the site, said Greg Wright, vice president of Intuit’s product management, in the press release. Now, by blending Mint with their digital banking home pages, financial institutions can help more people save and further deepen those banking relationships through the service.
The integration of such third-party content provides banks with a new strategic field: cross-selling. Through this, banks note customers’ digital behavior, then suggest additional products. David Siegel, a web expert for the financial sector, gave an example to banking tech solutions company Perficient: “A web login and review of accounts might require a chat session with an agent. The chat session might evolve into an immediate VoIP phone call or additional email, and the customer might continue to examine their accounts online.”
These moves also indicate bigger changes afoot in how banks do business, and the kind of talent they need. Siegel believes new projects will be split between “technologists,” who will manage the transition to digital services and data migration, and “the business side,” or the bank team who will examine customer data.
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