The US is at the leading edge of the global fintech market.

Between 2019 and 2024, Mordor Intelligence expects the sector to grow by 8.6%. But it's still a relatively young, fragmented space, and there is plenty of opportunities for brands to capture new customers and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Here at Chattermill, we know creating an exceptional customer experience is what makes fintech brands stand out.

We deal in data. And we work to help brands bring all their data together in an intelligent way with Unified Customer Intelligence.

Unified data and customer intelligence based on this are crucial for seeing the customer reality, and providing more value for your customers. It helps you shape experiences which are more efficient and convenient. And it ensures you can provide that all-important personalised touch.

How unified data helps create more value for customers

The key benefit of neobanks and digital finance brands is that where traditional banks have needed to allocate budgets to branches, cash vaults and other physical infrastructure to move real money around, those existing digitally don’t need to do that.

In the first place, we can expect such brands to be better able to pass on savings to their customers.

We can also expect fintech companies to offer more products and services – to provide something the traditional brands don’t.

But first, we need to know what our customers want.

In our recent whitepaper Redefining customer experience in fintech, we found banking consumers today want banks to be “omnifunctional.”

Research from EPAM finds younger banking consumers are looking for investment services, cryptocurrency integration, financial education and money management advice – as well as places to look after their cash.

McKinsey found that during the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, Chinese banks have been offering ‘non-banking-related services ranging from help with online shopping to doctor appointments to the delivery of disinfectant’ – diversifying and broadening their role in the lives of their customers.

The products and services that fintech customers want in China may differ significantly from what Gen Z consumers want in the US. This is where understanding the voice of the customer, and seeing the customer reality is so important – getting to the heart of what your consumers really want.

Chattermill’s Unified Customer Intelligence can capture and analyse free text feedback from your customers – from review sites, support interactions, app store reviews, etc. – and pair that with other touchpoints to decipher where best to focus your product and CX strategy over the coming weeks, months and years. Having such a clear customer focus that's based on reality will be critical in the difficult times to come, after all.

How unified data improves convenience in fintech

We know there is an opportunity for fintech companies to become increasingly omnifunctional to offer customers more value and set themselves apart from competitors.

But they also need to be omnichannel.

They need to be available where your customers are. And the customer experience needs to be seamless and consistent across channels.

This presents several challenges for digital finance brands. Customer journeys are increasingly complex and unique, taking in many touchpoints. This provides a lot of data. But data from disparate sources can easily (and quite often) remain in silos and go unused.

Unified Customer Intelligence is designed to unify data from all of these sources.

This unified data helps brands see which channels work for their customers and the impact of changes made. It ensures you are on the front foot to reach out to customers in real-time or reallocate budgets and people where and when they’re needed.

Convenience in fintech is not only about being there for your customers where they want you to be, however. It's also about speeding up processes – from knowing which queries over live chat and customer support interactions are most critical, to credit decisioning.

In the 2022 Global Fintech Agenda, Provenir found that 74% of fintech brands plan to invest in a real-time credit risk decisioning platform this year. They also found that 68.5% of these brands want to invest in AI-enabled credit decisioning.

The report highlights that easily-accessible data is the key to implementing these agile, automated interactions. 60% of those asked said the biggest challenge to getting these services up and running was having a ‘centralised view of data across the customer lifecycle.’

Unified Customer Intelligence allows you to do just that. And that's why it will be integral to tomorrow’s fintech market. Brands need to have this comprehensive view of customers' sentiment, and automation and AI will be crucial for providing a direct and efficient customer experience.

How unified data helps personalise experiences

Today’s fintech customers want more value and convenience, but they also expect a more personalised experience.

According to The Economist’s Demanding More report, personalisation is an essential priority for banks driven primarily by the digital disruptors in the market.

The report refers to Israeli neobank Pepper:

‘The goal is a “segment of one”, tailoring the experience precisely to the individual consumer based on their activity and preferences. “The more personalised the service is, the more engaged customers are.”’

There is an overlap between value and the drive towards joined-up omnichannel experiences.

But personalisation deserves particular focus. Consumers don’t want to deal with faceless corporations, nor do they want to be treated like another number.

Digital transformation and automation have been crucial to growth in fintech. They will continue to be so, but they should not lead to cold, impersonal experiences – no matter how efficient they are.

Because in today’s competitive market, personalisation isn’t nice to have. It's fundamental to keeping customers loyal to your brand.

We’ve found that 33% of consumers admit they will abandon a brand that doesn’t offer a sufficiently personalised experience.

At a time when an alternative digital finance provider can be found with just a few clicks, it's not worth the risk.

Achieving competition-beating personalisation and that segment of one with your customers needs a unified approach to your data. You need a place to observe customers across touchpoints and pair this with real feedback from individual service users. Only then can you make decisions based on the customer reality.

For fintechs, linking the numbers with the actual voice of the customer is business-critical.

Outperforming the competition with Unified Customer Intelligence

The US fintech market is a saturated and competitive landscape, but it's still relatively fragmented.

Emerging brands continue to disrupt the space. And by providing exceptional customer experiences, they can successfully entice customers who are less loyal to banks than they ever have been and keen to move more of their financial activities into the digital realm.

Customer experience in fintech is itself a complex area, of course. It touches on value from the products and services brands offer. It also incorporates convenience and efficiency, such as what we see from joined-up omnichannel user journeys and automated processes. And, of course, it includes personalisation.

Unified Customer Intelligence is a solid step towards unravelling this complexity.

It brings all of your data together in one easy-to-use tool, and it gives you the clarity to see the actual voice of the customer (or, as we like to term it, the customer reality) alongside the hard numbers.

The fintech brands with access to this unified intelligence and can process it and act upon it quickly will be those who outperform the competition and make the best of the opportunity as the market continues to evolve.