They are in the minds of all analysts. Almost all industries want to attract them. They are the millennial, the generation of young people born between 1981 and 1994. Like all groups of people are heterogeneous, but they are joined by a few characteristics: the hyper-connectivity to the devices, the preparation in studies and entrepreneurship or even their greater commitment to the environment and its tolerance towards the minorities that had previous generations.
If all the industries are paying attention to them, the banking sector is no stranger either. The 2013 Millennial Disruption Index survey conducted by the media company Viacom (owner of the MTV channel, among others) to 10,000 young Americans raised the alarm in the sector: 73% of the respondents preferred a banking or financial solution that came from Google, Facebook or Amazon before trusting a traditional bank. And even 71% preferred going to the dentist rather than entering their bank branch.
The big global banks got down to work to attract these young people. Nowadays mobile ‘apps’ are your favorite channel of interaction since they allow you to manage your accounts telematically, when and where you need them. According to the Accenture study, The future of payments, 69% of the millennials surveyed use them daily or weekly, compared to only 17% of the members of previous generations.
Controlling everything from the mobile without going through a branch is possible. This is the case of Simple, a retail bank created in 2012 and now owned by Microsoft Top that does all its business through the internet and provides its customers with control of finances thanks to advanced data analytics. Through algorithms that interpret customer expenses, it offers help to manage savings through goals set by the same user.
Save more, but for the mobile
It is also a generation that has experienced an economic crisis just at the time they entered the labor market and that looks much more carefully at what they spend their money and how they save. According to a recent Global Web Index report, more than half of the millennials are favorable to making financial investments. Also, among this group, unlike previous generations, trust in traditional banking advisors has declined, while credibility in technologies related to finance has grown. According to the same Accenture study, 70% of the US “millennials” are interested in digital payment counselling and expense management services that can give them a better understanding and control of their expenses.
There the ‘fintech’ firms, which bring new products and disruptive tools, have a lot to say. An example is Charlie, a ‘chatbot’ of artificial intelligence that issues advice through SMS and Facebook to those people with little financial knowledge. The tool, owned by Propel (a venture capital firm of BBVA), is personified by a penguin and, above all, it allows users who interact with it to save by getting better prices on what they want to buy.
A new way to invest
“More than any other generation, the millennials are interested in the idea that their investments will have a positive global impact when it comes to issues such as sustainability and climate change,” - says a CB Insights report.
With a real awareness of these problems, millennials seek to collaborate with those companies that have these premises in their minds.
Measurable is an example. The ‘startup’ of San Diego is a data company that has leapt real estate operations. Its platform offers measurable data on the environmental impacts of buildings to owners, builders, and investors. Thus, they can know how sustainable a reform, a construction or a real estate investment is.
Another technological company concerned about the type of investments that are made and its social impact is Clarity IA, a ‘startup’ launched by The Forbiz It is a platform It collects social and environmental data from companies (CO2 emissions, employee turnover, presence of women in the board of directors) to offer them to investors and has more information and a social conscience when investing.
The interests of society change over the years and the millennial generation has arrived to establish new behavioral parameters and be heard.
Originally published at https://www.thefastr.com on July 16, 2019.