Israel's Bank Leumi is hoping to win over millennials to its new mobile-only offshoot Pepper by teaming up with digital authoring platform Playbuzz to bring personalised, interactive content to its app.
Leumi may be taking aim at the younger generation with Pepper but a survey of 10,000 millennials shows that in fact fewer than half use banks' mobile apps. This, suggests Leumi, may be because respondents have higher digital expectations than older people and want a more fulfilling experience.
To tackle this, from early next year Pepper will have Playbuzz’s suite of interactive formats - such as polls, quizzes and flip cards - embedded into its app to improve user experience and engagement through personalised content.
The survey results suggest this could pay off because millennials are very engaged with their finances. Over 80% know what's going on with their current accounts and almost 70% think a few years ahead financially.
This chimes with another survey of over 20,000 16 to 25 year olds by Reevo and Good Rebels, which finds that nearly three quarters have savings or investments and on average aim to set aside 20% of their monthly earnings.
Although nearly one quarter (23%) of those surveyed use a banking app (for comparison, just 6% said they use the popular dating app Tinder), most agreed that these apps lack the functionalities they require. In their own words: “Banking apps have been the same since they were launched, all you can do is check your balance and generate security codes”; and “I am not content to stay with a bank that is behind the technology curve.”
Lilach Bar-David, CEO, Pepper, believes the collaboration with Playbuzz will he help the bank overcome these perceptions. He says: "The collaboration with Playbuzz will offer a feed of content highlighting a range of Pepper’s features, personalised content related to one’s banking habits and a variety of different value propositions."
Adds PlayBuzz CEO Shaul Olmert: "The challenge in our collaboration with Pepper is to turn the functional experience of browsing in the banking app into a personal, fun, pleasant and enriching experience - one that you want to repeat. Above all - the biggest challenge is turning banking content - which until now has deterred users - into content that surfers love."