SavvyMoney CEO Explores the Future of Credit Engagement

Jim Marous (00:12):

Welcome to another episode of Banking Transformed, the podcast that dives deep into the trends, innovations, and strategies shaping the future of banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous.

Jim Marous (00:23):

JB Orecchia, president, and CEO of SavvyMoney joins me today on the Banking Transformed Podcast. SavvyMoney is a leading provider of personalized credit education, scores, reports, and monitoring solutions.

Jim Marous (00:37):

JB has over 35 years of experience driving innovation in financial services with a deep expertise in credit, data and technology.

Jim Marous (00:46):

In this episode, we explore SavvyMoney's product roadmap, the convergence of credit education and personalization, the vital role of data in technology and modern banking, and the state of fintech and banking collaborations.

Jim Marous (01:01):

We also discussed how generative AI is set to revolutionize credit solutions and the financial wellbeing across the entire banking ecosystem.

Jim Marous (01:11):

SavvyMoney operates on a business model focused on empowering consumers to make informed financial decisions. By offering actionable insights into credit management, debt reduction and an overall financial health, SavvyMoney helps consumers improve their financial wellbeing, while also assisting financial institutions in engaging and retaining customers.

Jim Marous (01:33):

So, before we dig into what's happening to SavvyMoney, JB, can you share a little bit about your extensive career in financial services?

JB Orecchia (01:42):

Yeah, thanks Jim. Great question. I think it has shaped kind of my career along the way and it started kind of interesting in that my first job wasn't a space that I thought I'd be in. I thought I'd be doing what you're doing, which is broadcasting. But ended up taking a job at Household Finance, was my very first job.

JB Orecchia (02:03):

So, that's 35 years ago. It was actually 8, 8 of 88 was my first day of work. And I started as an assistant manager in the branch. And what was interesting about my career at Household was that back in those days, we did collections. We did loan approval. We knew how to read a credit report, we knew how to score people. We actually had a manual scoring system for scoring consumers.

JB Orecchia (02:30):

And I really got a sense for consumers at that time, because we spent a lot of time one-on-one. We were out in people's living rooms across the kitchen table when they'd bring the box and dump their pay stubs and W-2s and you'd go through their finances, kind of get a good feel.

JB Orecchia (02:47):

You'd also get a good sense of who they were and what some of their goals were. Because there's a human element that we'll talk about as we get farther into this that's super important in terms of managing a consumer's financial life.

JB Orecchia (03:04):

I was 10 years at Household, five years on the running branches. And I eventually became branch manager, ran one of the largest branches in the Bay Area. And left to go work in the credit card division.

JB Orecchia (03:21):

While at the credit card division, I ran a business called Enhancement Services. The Enhancement Services business was insurance, was the various clubs, credit card registration. And one of our products was actually a credit product where you got sent your credit report in the mail.

JB Orecchia (03:42):

And so, it was interesting. People would call up and say, "I don't really understand how to read this." If you remember Jim, the first credit reports were really confusing. You had to have a decoder ring to kind of understand.

Jim Marous (03:53):

I read a whole lot of them when I was in banking because I worked in the credit area. So, when — install a loan, I had to read them over and over and you had to scan while not missing anything important, which was kind of difficult.

JB Orecchia (04:04):

Yeah. So, advanced to my next career, which was freecreditreport.com and free credit score, was one of the founding team members there, and ran all of marketing sales and business development for that business for 10 years.

JB Orecchia (04:18):

We later sold that business to Experian, but we were the first to kind of pioneer credit reports over the internet, which was at the time a really big deal because people be like, "Could you overnight that credit report to me? I need to see it, and then could you explain it to me?"

JB Orecchia (04:34):

And so, there's an aha moment, digital, the internet was just getting rolling at that time. And it was an opportunity to show consumers their report and then explain their credit score. And so, that was really the genesis of kind of credit reports on the internet.

JB Orecchia (04:52):

Now, as everyone knows, freecreditreport.com wasn't free. It was free to try. And all those businesses at that time were subscription services.

JB Orecchia (05:00):

And then along comes this little company called Credit Karma, Ken Lin, fantastic job of saying, he's like, "Huh, I'm going to make it really free and I'm going to monetize through advertising." And most people know the Credit Karma story, fantastic product, really drove their revenues through advertising.

JB Orecchia (05:22):

So, when I started thinking about SavvyMoney, I was like ... came out of the lending space. If you're a bank or a credit union, do you really want your consumers going to Karma and then losing them? And so, I was like, "Hmm, there's a real opportunity here to build a business to support financial institutions so they can offer services like this to their customer base and be able to provide that."

JB Orecchia (05:50):

And the other thing that I thought about Jim, was that customer acquisition costs are expensive, to acquire consumers in the direct-to-consumer space. And so, these banks and credit unions have a really great relationship already built up with their institution, but sometimes they're not really good at specific things.

JB Orecchia (06:09):

And so, this area that we play really helps the bank or credit union build a deeper relationship with their consumers. And so, I'm almost 13 years in to SavvyMoney. We're up to 1,160 institutions. Built a great culture here. We integrate with 40 digital platforms.

JB Orecchia (06:31):

And so, yeah, so I don't want to keep talking. So, let's kind of move through your agenda. But we are having a blast. We are having a blast at SavvyMoney. And the FIs we work with are absolute gems. It's like, it's really part of our culture here to ... our mission is we empower our financial wellness through partnership.

JB Orecchia (06:57):

And the partnership really, we'll unpack that, but it's truly a partnership with these financial institutions to help them build a deeper relationship with their customers and members.

Jim Marous (07:08):

It's interesting because my son's first credit card was Discover. So, I go back to your beginning as well, and he did it — story, I've told it a few times in the podcast. The story was, we are beginning of the seventh inning of the Cleveland Indians game, back when they were called the Indians.

Jim Marous (07:24):

And beginning of the seventh inning, he goes, "I've had some friends, they've gotten some credit from Discover and they want to get a credit card." And so, he said, "Do you mind if I try it?" I said, "Sure."

Jim Marous (07:33):

So, he got on his phone and his first question was, "Do I put down my monthly income because I'm working on a summer job, or do I put it annualized what I'm making a complete year?" I said, "No, you put down your monthly and hope that they just multiply it by 12 even though you're only making that for three months."

JB Orecchia (07:50):

Yeah.

Jim Marous (07:51):

But the reality was just then I realized, okay, it's not as easy to understand how to maneuver credit as it is a deposit account, for instance. Well, what was also interesting before the half inning was over with, he showed me his phone and he got approved.

Jim Marous (08:06):

And so, at that point, it's only five years ago, maybe six years ago, it was about the ease. It was about simplicity of the process. It's about the integration of knowledge and the ability to get what you need at the time.

Jim Marous (08:20):

But more importantly, it really was around the education during the process. And as you know, Discover does a really good job. But today, when you talk about credit, it's a lot more people have credit as what I'll call their primary financial institution. That's how they define who their bank is as opposed to a checking account because they're not regularly writing checks.

Jim Marous (08:44):

My son uses his Discover card and Venmo, he has a bank account, but it's all in the background. But when you look at it, what's really important here is his engagement. And that's what's unique, what's happened in the last few years is the movement of financial institutions from wanting to have a great experience as a great experience can be, simplicity and transparency and all those to really trying to build engagement.

Jim Marous (09:10):

That's what SavvyMoney does from what I understand, is that you really are building an ongoing dialogue, so to speak, with a consumer. But just importantly, the financial institution has information. And we both go back to the days when financial institutions, one of their biggest parts of their business was the vendor relationship, the POS system at the retailer.

Jim Marous (09:34):

Well, they gave that up and, in the process, they gave up all that data, that transaction data. And it's gotten more and more difficult to capture that transaction data to know where customers and lifecycle. So, could you talk a little bit about how SavvyMoney works with financial institutions to promote both financial education as well as financial wellness?

JB Orecchia (09:58):

Yeah. So, first you have to kind of figure out, well, where are you going to be? Where does the consumer want you to be? And so, we're built into digital banking as a starting point. So, when you log into any one of our 40 digital platforms that we're integrated with, we're a widget built right in. And it's powered by SavvyMoney, but our brand really takes a backseat to the financial institution's brand.

JB Orecchia (10:24):

We're also built into mobile. 75% of the users now are engaging on their mobile phone. You have to be in mobile, you have to have a good mobile experience. And really what is credit or credit score, why is that even important? And really, it's a means to an end. You're really trying to manage your credit in order to get the best rates to save money.

JB Orecchia (10:51):

We have a little saying in SavvyMoney. In fact, I trademarked it, it pays to be savvy. And it does because the little things that you do along the way, whether it be budgeting or improving your credit or making different decisions on refinancing a loan to save another couple percent on interest rate, all that moves you closer to out of debt and ultimately building your financial life.

JB Orecchia (11:17):

And so, within the product, you hit on a key word, and the key word was engagement. If you have a static product that doesn't engage the user, then they're going to look at it and they're going to go, "Hmm, okay, that's interesting. Next."

JB Orecchia (11:31):

So, we build in, first of all, advice, we break the score down into its parts. We look at everything that we're doing, and we say, "Jim, you're doing this right and you're doing this wrong." In fact, we've even got a simulator in there. Go, go see what happens when you, when you pay down in your debt.

JB Orecchia (11:48):

Then we create action plans, and we create goal setting. So, there's almost a little bit of game mechanics. Think of it like a Fitbit for your credit. I don't know if Fitbits still exists, but a Fitbit for your credit. And so, what we see are those users that set goals and engage in the action plan, improve their score by a much larger margin than those that don't.

JB Orecchia (12:14):

And so, our challenge at SavvyMoney is continuing to add financial wellness, different types of things that bring the user back in to track and to kind of manage their credit and really get behind winning.

JB Orecchia (12:28):

And so, when you reach a goal, we have confetti that goes down and I mean it's cute, but it's motivating, and consumers feel like it's motivating.

JB Orecchia (12:38):

The other thing is we do personalization around offers. So, if I'm managing my credit, that's great, but what does it get me? So, we actually show you, hey, if you did this balance transfer, this would be your payment and this is exactly what you would save.

JB Orecchia (12:54):

Or if you consolidated credit card debt into a personal loan or if you refinanced your car, all of that is built into SavvyMoney, very specific, so they can run the calculations and go through, and it's not in an environment where they feel like that they're embarrassed or they are talking to somebody, maybe at the branch, they can do it in the comfort of their own home and kind of see the results. And it's all with no impact to your credit.

JB Orecchia (13:21):

We also make the borrowing process easier by integrating into the loan origination systems. So, why ask me for my name, address, social, date of birth, all that stuff, you already have it. So, just ask for the incremental things that you need and populate that information within the loan origination system.

JB Orecchia (13:40):

So, we're trying to reduce friction on the borrowing process. Make the understanding of your credit easy, give you specific things that you should be working on and doing in order to get better.

Jim Marous (13:50):

So, it's interesting because at a time when financial institutions are having a heck of a time trying to take data and insights and democratize it across an organization for different purposes, you actually help organizations in the process of what you're doing, do that.

Jim Marous (14:07):

I mean, when you have it embedded in a mobile app, is it something that a person has to reach out to within the app? Or do you have communication that actually gets the consumer engaged where it's outward communication. So, when I'm going to my mobile app, there's a notification on the top of my mobile banking app that says this, this, or this happened.

Jim Marous (14:27):

Which way do you provide it within a mobile app? And is it the same at every organization or some people want to take more of a backseat. Some people want it more front seat.

JB Orecchia (14:36):

Yeah, so when you log in, you'll actually see changes in your score. You'll see if your utilization rate went up, if there's an alert, like a credit monitoring alert, something that hit your credit.

JB Orecchia (14:46):

And we also show you offers based on your credit changing. So, we would tell you, "Hey, you now have a new offer, it can save you X on refinancing this credit card debt or whatever it is." All that is built into the application as well. So, it's very interactive. It's not just this static score.

JB Orecchia (15:04):

We allow the consumer too to update their credit report every day if they want. So, if you're going to apply for a loan, you want to see the most recent data that's in your credit before you apply. And the most recent score as well.

Jim Marous (15:18):

So, the ability to not only interact with your platform, but also do your what ifs. The geez, if I do this, what will happen, that gives them control. And it also educates them.

Jim Marous (15:30):

My son recently was going to be making a major purchase and he said, "Dad, I have my Discover card. I have another card, but I want to find out what card I can get. I need a $5,000 limit. I don't want it to impact my credit score negatively if they don't give me the amount I want. So, I want to be able to know I'm going to get it and where should I go?"

Jim Marous (15:54):

And I was stunned. I was flabbergasted, I guess would be the right word because I'm going, "I'm not sure." And so, I referred him to Capital One and said they have a really good comparison app, but honestly, any organization that has SavvyMoney would've been a good place to kind of test out the waters before he made the commitment.

Jim Marous (16:16):

He ended up getting the credit from the ring manufacturer itself, which was his purchase, and he was satisfied because he could pay it down immediately. But initially he wanted points, he wanted these different things. But to do those what ifs is something that really puts the control back to the consumer, doesn't it?

JB Orecchia (16:33):

Absolutely, yeah. No and in fact, we have a ton of analytics and behavioral data too that we're tracking in the tool. So, we're not just enabling the consumer to do better with their finances, we're enabling the financial institution to better serve their customer base as well.

JB Orecchia (16:52):

So, we've got advanced analytics in the tool where they can see their members or customers that are improving, how many of them are improving, how many score bands are they actually moving? And we can communicate with those consumers and say, "Jim, congratulations, you just moved to a new level. Come back in and check your offers because your offers have changed."

JB Orecchia (17:13):

So, that's insightful. We also show where the users are borrowing and market share over time. So, you can see how many auto loans you have relative to the other lenders that your consumers are borrowing from because we get the complete financial picture when we pull credit.

JB Orecchia (17:31):

That type of benchmarking data and information back to the FI is very telling because a couple things that you see is one, if you go into various credit banks, I would see shoot, Cap one Ally Financial and Santander is getting a bunch of my business. I maybe need to think about my risk-based pricing a little bit because these are my members if I'm a credit union. And I need to do a better job of making sure that wallet share, I have as much wallet share.

JB Orecchia (18:00):

And then I can also look at the click data to see that Jim was poking around in that consolidation loan of that auto loan. So, now we do follow-up campaigns, or would you like to talk to somebody about this? We'd be happy to help you. The conversion rates on that retargeting is phenomenal.

JB Orecchia (18:19):

Because the person's raised their hand, maybe they haven't applied, we know which ones apply and which ones are just kind of browsing or looking. So, that's super insightful data for the financial institution.

JB Orecchia (18:31):

And then how are my rates relative to my peer group? And so, am I charging more or less? And so, we track the interest rates. So, the ones where we have accurate data, auto loans, mortgage, that kind of thing, credit card's a little harder. But if the consumer's entering that data in, you can get an idea.

JB Orecchia (18:50):

And then the click data will tell you if people aren't clicking on these offers, but other institutions are getting these clicks, then maybe I'm not competitive. Or if all of this business is going to Citibank, I probably need to take a look at my loyalty program. Or with that specific consumer, maybe my transactors need a different credit instrument because they're really not borrowing as much they want the points.

Jim Marous (19:21):

So, what kind of insight sharing do you have between your organization and the financial institution? Is this something that a consumer signs up for ahead of time, that this information is transferred between or is it kept separate?

Jim Marous (19:32):

Or how's it work? Because everything you just brought up, brought up really good series of questions in my mind as to you're actually having more transactional information data than the bank's probably getting on their normal consumer relationship.

JB Orecchia (19:49):

That's right. That's right. So, when a consumer opts into SavvyMoney, they're saying, yes, I want to check my credit for personal use, and yes, I want to be pre-qualified for offers based on my credit data. And so, that's the permissible purpose around the data. And it's really a value to the consumer.

JB Orecchia (20:06):

So, the FI controls how much communication, what they want to do. We don't share that data with anybody else. In some cases, we may share with the digital banking provider, provided the FI wants to do that and they want to leverage that for marketing within other areas of the digital experience. So yeah.

JB Orecchia (20:28):

And the analytics part of our product that the FI has access to is all included in the SavvyMoney package. It's not extra. So, one thing that we're doing is, yes, we want to help your customer base. We also want to help you financial institution. We want to give you the tools because this stuff's hard and we want to make it easy.

JB Orecchia (20:48):

We provide a tremendous amount of marketing resources. There's 7,000 pieces of marketing. We create marketing that fits right within the digital platform. We've got how to kinds, best practices. We do monthly or quarterly best practices calls where other FIs come on and share like, we did this with SavvyMoney and this is crushing it, or this is working well.

JB Orecchia (21:13):

And so, those types of things really help other institutions. In fact, when we do our best practices calls, we get about 400 participants each time. That's a lot.

Jim Marous (21:25):

That's really good. Yeah.

JB Orecchia (21:26):

We're getting 2000 logins into the marketing hub where everyone's leveraging these digital assets because we're trying to teach them to fish. We can't always do it all for them. We got to-

Jim Marous (21:37):

You're helping with their final mile, which is so important. I mean, I talk about this often when we have podcasts or webinars with service provider. I said, you have a great product, but so many organizations really fall flat when it comes to that final mile because while it's great, they haven't really figured out how to present it to the consumer, present it to the small business, whatever it may be.

Jim Marous (22:01):

And if you don't help with that, then your solution's always at risk because you're not generating the revenue that's potentially there, so-

JB Orecchia (22:10):

Yeah. So, Jim, in addition to tracking everything that the user's doing, and part of the reason we do all that tracking is that we want to increase engagement. We want to see what things were doing well and what things were not doing well. And we want to continue to get that feedback from the consumer.

JB Orecchia (22:25):

And we have a lot of work to do. I mean, we have a long list of how we're going to personalize that more and that experience more.

JB Orecchia (22:32):

But back to the financial institution, we also monitor the functionality of analytics, of the marketing hub, of all the various areas. And if we see that a financial institution isn't using market share, isn't downloading campaigns, or isn't doing things, we track all of that. So then, the partner manager gets a list, and they see, oh, ICCU Credit Union, they're logging in all the time. This is good. Let's talk to them about why they're using all these things and what they love about it and how can we get better.

JB Orecchia (23:05):

But then for the ones that aren't logging in, we reach out to them, and we say, "Hey, can we help? Do you maybe not know how to use it? Let me set up a time to do a demo on how you get the most out of this tool or watch this video." And so, we send that out to all the folks that aren't leveraging that feature.

Jim Marous (23:23):

So, you talked about your product roadmap a little bit and touched upon the fact that we're not at the finish line yet by any means. What does the rest of the race look like for you in your mind today given what the environment is? What does your product roadmap look like and what are you kind of looking at in the future as much you can share?

JB Orecchia (23:44):

Yeah, yeah. I'll share some things. I don't want to share everything. But I'll share what I can. One product you talked about Capital One and your son applying for that one loan and it doesn't impact your credit. That's a one and done situation, when he does that.

JB Orecchia (24:04):

Well, we have a product now called Get My Rate, which is basically you go in and you get pre-qualified and let's say the rate comes back and you're like, "Eh, I don't really love that rate." So, then we send you down a path of like, okay, if you work on your score and get it to be a little bit better, then we'll notify you when that rate's better.

JB Orecchia (24:25):

Let's say you get turned down completely. So, we don't have a feeling of SavvyMoney. It should be no, it should be not now. And you need to work on these things. And when you get there, we're going to notify you. Because you're not going to check your credit or be going to Cap one every day and logging in.

JB Orecchia (24:43):

But we're updating your credit data every week. We're telling you, "Jim, you need to work on these things. And if you work on these things, there's a good chance you're going to get to a level, and we'll be able to notify you when you qualify for the product."

Jim Marous (25:00):

You got to have gamification. You have financial wellness education in the most tactile way. So, it's not like all these theories and everything. It's really about their situation more than anything else. It's a highly personalized and it's engaging from the perspective that a person doesn't have to log in to find it out as much as you'll tell them what things are going on.

Jim Marous (25:26):

Which those are the keys that financial institutions lost, I think when they lost all the deposit service transactions that now come out in every way, shape, and form. But they don't have access to all that data.

Jim Marous (25:40):

So, for instance, when a consumer test drives a car, there's usually a ding on their credit bureau because they want to make sure that person's not going to drive away with a car and without bringing it back. But do you provide organizations insights into here's potential car buyers that are out there shopping?

JB Orecchia (25:58):

Not yet. We are exploring that though. That is on the roadmap to link into an FI's car buying service. And then they could basically take their pre-qualified offer, and then go over to the car buying service and take a look at that. So, that is something that we're looking at. We haven't implemented that yet, but it's a great idea to link those two things together for sure.

Jim Marous (26:19):

So, anything that has to do with data has to do with credit and financial wellness, you hope to get your hands into on behalf of your partners.

JB Orecchia (26:28):

That's right. Yeah. So, we also display, if you're not in the credit score product, we see about a 36 to 40% adoption. Some institutions are at 60% adoption of their digital banking users. Which means that leaves a part of the population that doesn't have the credit score product.

JB Orecchia (26:46):

So, we're able to display pre-screens to those people in the digital experience and show them the pre-screen offers that the FI ran on those people. Because they know which ones are in credit score and they're leveraging the credit data there. And if they don't have it, they can run their own campaigns. And then we digitize that.

JB Orecchia (27:02):

So, we'll show multiple creatives. Within our analytics tool, we track impressions, landing page, we personalize the landing pages all the way down to filling out the app, so you know where all your drop-offs are in the funnel. So, it's really kind of an end-to-end marketing solution as well that the financial institution can leverage their digital marketing within digital banking all through SavvyMoney.

Jim Marous (27:26):

How long does it take a consumer to get to be part of SavvyMoney?

JB Orecchia (27:31):

The consumer?

Jim Marous (27:32):

Yeah.

JB Orecchia (27:33):

Two seconds.

Jim Marous (27:34):

It's simply a push of a button.

JB Orecchia (27:35):

Check the box, and boop ...

Jim Marous (27:38):

Well, I ask that because we assume we know those answers. I assume that every finance ... when we did surveys-

JB Orecchia (27:45):

We have some FIs now, the ones that have really embraced the analytics, they've decided to move to what's called auto enroll. So, auto enroll is you sign up for digital banking, your SavvyMoney terms are embedded in the digital banking. And so, 95% of the people end up getting the product automatically.

JB Orecchia (28:07):

One of the things that we were nervous about when we decided to do that, would engagement be less with those people than the ones that opted in. And we haven't seen that. And part of the reason is we've done a good job of communicating the value proposition.

JB Orecchia (28:23):

And we need to continue to do that of monitoring the consumer and making sure that they're leveraging all of the assets specifically if in your credit ban or in your situation, there's a feature within SavvyMoney that you're not using, we need to say like, X number of users that use this feature, see their credit score improved 20 to 40 points or whatever that number is. You need to be doing that.

JB Orecchia (28:49):

Because there's a little FOMO that you need to leverage of like, "Hey, I'm not doing this. Other people are doing it and they're improving." You need to communicate that to the consumer.

JB Orecchia (28:59):

The other is around personalization of financial advice. We've worked with Jean Chatzky now for 11 years, I guess. And she writes a lot of our content. And so, you can tell someone utilization, you need to reduce your utilization. Great. I don't have enough money to reduce my utilization. Well, how do I do that?

JB Orecchia (29:22):

And so, what type of specific prescriptive advice and content can you give them to better manage their finances or budget or save or whatever it is you need to do, very prescriptive content that gives them an action plan to kind of, oh, okay, these are things that I should be working on in order to get better so I can build up that nest egg to pay down that credit card debt or whatever it is.

Jim Marous (29:48):

So, you kind of touching upon a subject that's the next one on my list of things to talk about, which is generative AI. I don't think we can have a discussion about banking without talking about that or any industry right now without talking about that somewhere.

JB Orecchia (29:59):

I'm so excited about this topic.

Jim Marous (30:01):

What is the potential to revolutionize credit solutions overall, but even more specifically, SavvyMoney's credit solutions with regard to using generative AI and ChatGPT type functionality within your offering?

JB Orecchia (30:15):

Yep. So, it's on the roadmap for next year. We've already started looking at it, without sharing all the details. So, large language module, LLM I'm sure you're familiar with that, is really taking AI based on the proprietary data you have. Chat GPT one of the issues with that is becomes public domain, but how do you take public domain and the private data and get those things to work together to have very specific solutions to that consumer?

JB Orecchia (30:49):

Now, you don't want to take the human element out of it, but you definitely can shortcut the amount of work and the more data that you have, whether it be transaction data, consumer sentiment, how they feel about things, what's their specific situation. Now you can better plan or provide a roadmap to that consumer and give them great advice.

JB Orecchia (31:09):

I'm super excited about it because this stuff is hard. And the more you can personalize that experience, the better it's going to be for the consumer or enable a financial counselor to actually have the roadmap. And then, you can take it to personalization.

JB Orecchia (31:28):

So, whether you're integrating into an — or one of these services, which I'm sure you're familiar with, like how do you provide part of that through AI and then tee that up to a representative that can use that as talking points or roadmap and then you ensure that you're actually saying and providing the right advice.

Jim Marous (31:57):

I had a recent podcast, actually it was my only two-parter ever with a person by the name of Brian Roemmele. And what we started to talk about in the second part of the episode was the fact that ChatGPT combined with institutional data can allow the technology to actually build a communications platform that's individualized.

Jim Marous (32:19):

So, you have your own concierge, your financial concierge for, in this case, credit. But more so it can store questions you've asked it maybe what content you've downloaded or read, how you've achieved your goals and what awards you've received and keep that independent for each consumer to the point where every future conversation references what's happened in the past, which today is virtually impossible to do.

Jim Marous (32:48):

But as you said, democratizing that and making it available to all your advisors, your customer care people, your branch people, for instance, and say, "By the way we see you're a couple steps away from your ultimate goal on credit. That's pretty exciting. Is there something else we can do for you?"

Jim Marous (33:05):

And what's interesting, we get scared about the privacy issue and privacy and personalization, balancing each other out. But the reality is, most consumers, in every study that we've done and we've done in the marketplace, we find that consumers have no problem with privacy if you give them value in return.

Jim Marous (33:24):

In other words, they're concerned about it, but they open the doors more if they're going to get something out of it. That's why we pay 130, $140 a year for Amazon, is that they do really well with the data they have on me and make my life easier.

Jim Marous (33:38):

So, I think in your solution specifically the integration of generative AI in development of content, in the development of solutions, in helping people along their path individually is astoundingly exciting. I mean, it opens brand new doors that we only thought were possible before November 30th of last year, so-

JB Orecchia (34:00):

We'll really need to test it though. Really look at what the advice is because at least in our current model, we can double check everything. And so, we'll need to look at those outputs and look at every situation where it's presented that information and make sure that we're giving the consumer the right advice.

JB Orecchia (34:19):

So, it's not a tomorrow thing. Like this is going to be … we got to spend some time on it to get it right.

Jim Marous (34:24):

But the reality is you're already using AI to develop solutions and to develop a journey map overall.

JB Orecchia (34:32):

For sure.

Jim Marous (34:32):

It's just a matter of saying how can I amp that up a little bit? So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsors of this podcast.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (34:42):

Welcome back to Banking Transformed. So, today I am joined by JB Orecchia, president, and CEO of SavvyMoney. We've been getting an insider's view into SavvyMoney's product roadmap and how data insight and technology are impacting financial wellness and driving engagement.

Jim Marous (35:01):

So, JB, we talked a lot about the foundation around SavvyMoney and its impact on financial institutions that you're partnered with, but a couple of foundational questions that we didn't cover. Number one, what does this cost the consumer.

JB Orecchia (35:15):

Zero. Completely paid by the financial institution.

Jim Marous (35:18):

Good answer.

JB Orecchia (35:19):

Yep.

Jim Marous (35:20):

Number two is once a consumer gets engaged, I understand the dynamics of dialogue back and forth, but how much flexibility does the financial institution have with regards to how much you communicate to their consumer?

JB Orecchia (35:35):

Yeah, so in the product itself, the financial institution can control how many loan products they want. If they don't want any and they just want to provide financial advice. All the messaging, everything that's marketed to the consumer is all controlled by the FI.

JB Orecchia (35:50):

So, when we build the site, it's all in the FI's hands. And so, when the partner manager works with the FI, we talk about their goals, we talk about what they want to accomplish, and any other communication in terms of offers is all controlled by the financial institution. They control that frequency.

JB Orecchia (36:06):

Now, the one thing that we do, do is we do send alerts if something happens on their credit file or something like that. And if the consumer decides they don't want that, they can turn that off.

Jim Marous (36:16):

Okay. Now this seems like mom and apple pie to me. Because you're helping the finance institution work with their data better, you drive better credit decisions, you drive better engagement with their customers and members, but not everybody says yes.

Jim Marous (36:32):

Why would an institution say no to your solution? What is the biggest roadblock to actually having this turned down at a financial institution?

JB Orecchia (36:41):

Yeah, so there are a couple things. One is priorities within the institution. And them not realizing that this actually fits right in with them achieving their goals. And so, sometimes it's an education. In the early days, it took a while to convince financial institutions that this was a good idea. The early days of the sales process took a while, and you know how fast financial institutions moved.

JB Orecchia (37:08):

And so, what happened was once there was enough success in the market, it kind of really picked up. That's why we're at 1,160 institutions. And so, that was a big part of it.

JB Orecchia (37:23):

And the other is do they believe in the cost relative to the ROI they're going to get from it? And the ROI comes in a number of formats. So, the ROI is one, the loans they're going to produce or we're now marketing a ton of deposit products. So, we've actually moved in this current higher interest rate environment to helping financial institutions with deposits. So, that's one consideration.

JB Orecchia (37:48):

The other is, when you look at the data and a number of our FIs have went in and looked at the SavvyMoney consumer versus non-SavvyMoney consumer, and they're four to five times as profitable. So, then you're going, wait a minute, is this causation or correlation?

Jim Marous (38:02):

Yeah. Checking your — exactly.

JB Orecchia (38:05):

I believe it's both because the engagement drives the behavior. It's right there for the consumer. So, I think we're doing that, but I also think your best consumers gravitate towards the product. And so, there's that.

JB Orecchia (38:19):

Improvement in the consumer's credit is good for both parties because it's reducing the risk of the financial institution because now my membership or my customers are less likely to go delinquent because we've now put financial tools in front of them that are really helping them better manage their finances.

JB Orecchia (38:37):

So, we're lifting kind of the consumer up and therefore affecting the balance sheet because not as many consumers are going delinquent.

Jim Marous (38:46):

And I would imagine in the same sense, if they have to make a decision between who to pay next month, they're most likely going to pay the organization that's helping them with their credit than simply being a product.

Jim Marous (38:59):

And so, in the final set of this dynamic of conversation on the foundations around this product, how important is it for organizations to actually market what you're doing? We talk about great solutions that never get marketed.

Jim Marous (39:17):

I mean, you obviously provide a lot of tools to make it relatively turnkey, but do you find a difference between institutions that really actively market and get their customer in front of this versus those that just are passive about it?

JB Orecchia (39:31):

Yeah, so if they're passive, if they just put the widget inside digital banking, we know what the adoption rate's going to be. But if they actively market the product, we see a big lift in terms of adoption and a number of FIs have signage in their branches, wear t-shirts to sign up for the product. I mean, they've really kind of leaned in. Some have even named it their own credit name in order to kind of embrace it as a financial institution.

JB Orecchia (40:02):

So, we help them with that. We don't force it; we help them with that. And if they want to be passive marketers, they can be, but if they want that assistance, all those tools are there. And I think what happens is over time the comfort level increases with the ability to do it.

JB Orecchia (40:18):

Because what they start to realize is the benefits to the institution of all the other products and services and the consumer's happy. They feel like they're getting value. And so, that's an important aspect of it.

JB Orecchia (40:29):

The other thing from a marketing standpoint around this personalization idea is that consumers are bombarded with offers all the time. So, you want to be selective in terms of what you market to the consumer. So, leveraging that data, leveraging retargeting, looking what the consumer is doing, having a good idea of what works, allows you to space out that marketing and be very targeted with what you market to them so that you don't get fatigue.

Jim Marous (40:57):

So, when we look at the future here and we look at both the future of financial wellness as well as credit and engagement in financial services, what excites you the most about what may happen in the future that really it is game changing from the perspective of what you're providing financial institutions today.

JB Orecchia (41:19):

Yeah, so two areas, we touched on it a little bit, is the ability to humanize and personalize the advice based on that person's situation. Really get into you're a 600 and you're a 600, but you guys are 600 for different reasons. This person might be unorganized, this person might have a hard time meeting their financial needs.

JB Orecchia (41:41):

And really empathizing and having a product that provides the right tools, the right resources, access maybe to a financial counselor or coaching or whatever it is. We need to make sure that this product continues to evolve and feel like a coach and feel like it's really personalizing that experience down to the resources that I need in order to be successful. So, that's one thing.

JB Orecchia (42:05):

The second is really around automated marketing. Because the more data you have and the ability you have to leverage that data and having the dependent variable of the closed loan or the deposit or maybe ultimately an insurance product or investments, we're exploring all these different things. Having the ability to see that, you can begin to be much smarter and execute campaigns based on the needs of the financial institution.

JB Orecchia (42:35):

Even to the point where the financial institution should have dials of where ... we had a recent situation; I'll give you an example. We turned on auto enroll. We talked about auto enroll. And the financial institution was like, "This is great." It was driving so many loans that they had to turn it off. They're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. SavvyMoney's almost too successful."

JB Orecchia (42:58):

And so, in that case, what we probably should have done was said, well, let's keep an eye on this and let's make sure and drive products to the products for you as a financial institution are going to get you the most yield as well, for your institution.

JB Orecchia (43:14):

If you have unlimited lending resources, then that's a different situation. But we have to allow a little bit of dials within the system to direct it towards what's going to help the financial institution achieve their goals.

Jim Marous (43:28):

It's interesting because there's so many dynamics on credit. I interviewed a person, geez, before my podcast, so probably seven years ago in Poland that actually had access to credit on the mobile banking app as part of the front screen. So, in other words, every person who was a customer found out they had so much credit available at any time they wanted simply by pushing a button.

Jim Marous (43:52):

What was interesting, they didn't set a limit. So, it could have been only $50 or $100, the Polish equivalent, or it could be significantly more, but it made it so that they had an advantage only over any other financial institutions with regard to, I'm on your side if you need me, here we are for you.

Jim Marous (44:10):

That was a really cool tool, but it was one of those engagement tools that you always sought. And the ability to see that amount going up and down kind of told you how you're doing the marketplace.

Jim Marous (44:20):

But again, what you're providing here is you're providing a service for the consumer more than anything else, to become more informed as to where they are. And you're providing the financial institution the ability to communicate with those people based on where they are.

Jim Marous (44:33):

And a lot of times, I use the example of when the government gave out COVID checks. We never knew where they were actually going or if they stayed with financial institution because few financial institutions tracked where they went.

Jim Marous (44:47):

But at the same time, most financial institutions allowed people to forego loan payments. And very few financial institutions understood were they foregoing these loan payments because they couldn't pay for tomorrow's meal?

Jim Marous (45:00):

Or because they were saying, I need to put away a savings account to look out for the next time something like this happens. This information at access by a financial institution always and being able to see the flows over time is something that most financial institutions don't have access to outside of this. It's very hard to do that, especially with new customers, how you can do it.

JB Orecchia (45:22):

Benchmarking is an important thing as well. Telling a financial institution where they're doing well, where they're not doing well, and they can make the decision on how they want to compete in that category.

JB Orecchia (45:33):

But providing that information is super powerful for them as well, because it's their consumers that they're trying to serve. And they need to see where they're going, what they're doing, and how they're engaging with their products and services and make changes if they're not seeing the engagement.

Jim Marous (45:49):

Great conversation. JB, I really appreciate your time. What's the best way for our listeners to learn more about SavvyMoney?

JB Orecchia (45:56):

Go to savvymoney.com. There's a partner with SavvyMoney Link. Fill out a form and send it in and the team will respond immediately.

Jim Marous (46:05):

JB great to talk to you. Great to shoot. It was probably as informal as any podcast I've done a long time from the standpoint is that I was learning more and more every time and wasn't as familiar with some of the nuances, what you're doing.

Jim Marous (46:18):

But it's exciting because I have the feeling that virtually any size organization can partner with you. By the way, one last question I forgot. How long does it take for a financial institution to implement SavvyMoney once they say yes?

JB Orecchia (46:33):

So, it varies based on the financial institutions, how many resources they have to kind of put on. It's super simple. We build the site in probably a couple of days. So, the site's built and the FI can start testing it in terms of the credit feature.

JB Orecchia (46:48):

The longer process generally takes a couple weeks after that to load in all their financial offers because you think about all the credit bans and all the various rates. And so, if all you wanted to do is launch credit score, we do that in a snap.

JB Orecchia (47:02):

We're integrated in 40 digital platforms. That's all ready to go. All the SSOs are in place. And so, it's really around getting a tight marketing plan around the offers. It takes a little bit of time, but it's generally three weeks, no more than 30 days for the FI to test everything, make sure their compliance and legal is looked at all. And so, I mean honestly, it would probably take a week if the FI had time to just spend time on SavvyMoney.

Jim Marous (47:34):

Great to talk to you. It's a great solution from my perspective without knowing the dollars and cents of it. But that's what financial institutions have to work with.

Jim Marous (47:43):

But it's interesting because you really run side by side with the financial institution's credit side, the marketing side, all this to try to get down the field. It benefits everybody to get down the field quickly.

JB Orecchia (47:54):

That's right.

Jim Marous (47:54):

It benefits obviously, SavvyMoney, it benefits the financial institutions, but most importantly, it benefits the consumer or member around getting a solution that really helps educate them on being better stewards of their money. And it makes it so that it's more personalized and more direct in communications as well.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (48:14):

So, JB thank you so much for being on the show.

JB Orecchia (48:17):

Thanks so much, Jim.

Jim Marous (48:19):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking and the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence.

Jim Marous (48:27):

We appreciate the support we have received to make this endeavor a success. If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review.

Jim Marous (48:36):

Finally, be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report. This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage, audio engineer Chris Fafalios and video producer Will Pritts.

Jim Marous (48:52):

If you've not already done so, remember to subscribe to Banking Transformed on both your favorite podcast app and on our new YouTube channel for more thought-provoking discussions on the intersection of finance, technology, and leadership.

Jim Marous (49:06):

Thanks for joining us. Until next time, keep innovating and transforming.