Financial Wellness Post COVID: A Purpose Driven Customer Engagement Model

Using open banking and digital technologies to offer purpose-driven offerings

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the salaried class and small businesses, which in turn has impacted retail banks. To deal with post COVID realities, banks must build on open banking and/or platform banking as well as digital technologies to develop offerings that meet the purpose or intent – such as achieving financial wellness or buying a home – that drives customers. Ensuring financial wellness will require banks to interact with customers both before and after a significant financial event and offer contextual assistance, advice, and education. In addition, financial literacy has emerged as a focus area, especially among the younger generation as they strive to become independent and achieve financial stability.

Given contextual assistance and advisory as well as financial education are key pillars of financial wellness, banks must design digital offerings, which will require them to:

• Develop a flexible digital architecture

• Adopt API frameworks and microservice architecture

• Build a purpose-driven engagement model centered on financial wellness