Ep. 14: What does Gen Z want from banks? SavvyMoney CPO David Dowhan discusses financial literacy, digital banking, AI, personalisation and trust.

Welcome back to The Payments Shed Podcast, live from Money20/20 USA.

We’re joined by David Dowhan, CPO of SavvyMoney.

David, welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role at SavvyMoney.

David Dowhan:

Sure. So, David Dowhan, I’m the Chief Product Officer here at SavvyMoney. Been here about three and a half years and it’s been a fun growth story for SavvyMoney as we’ve got to over 1,500 financial institutions we work with as a company.

Grant Evans:

Brilliant. And some very exciting news today, $225 million investment. Should we start with that? We’ve got to talk about that.

David Dowhan:

Very, very exciting. I think it’s a testament to the business that we built and a lot of awareness in the financial community that we’re onto something really big in terms of our support.

So, PSG, Canopy, both incredible partners. We really are looking to them not just for the capital, but also some of the strategy, some of the strategic introductions we believe they can help us make.

It really is about accelerating the good work we’ve done, and I think that’s a good testament to the strength of the company.

Grant Evans:

We wanted to dive into your latest research today on financial wellness, and particularly looking at that Gen Z part of the world. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

David Dowhan:

Certainly. So many of our credit unions and banks are always asking about Gen Z: “How do we attract more Gen Z partners?”

Part of what SavvyMoney solves for is providing a fintech experience inside of a bank or credit union, and we’re constantly innovating.

They asked us, “How can we do better with Gen Z?”

So we conducted a survey of about 1,000 Gen Z members to really get their impression of what’s working for them and what they’re looking for.

We discovered some very interesting statistics.

Generally, I would say Gen Z is motivated by financial independence, but there are really gaps in their confidence and their knowledge about finances in general.

Just some facts and figures for you. Only 14% are really confident in their own knowledge about financial services.

Think about that. There are so many resources out there. There’s ChatGPT, there are websites, yet only 14% are feeling confident.

86% want to know more about financial education. There’s a hunger for that.

They don’t want marketing. They don’t want someone pushing products on them, but they want someone to explain, educate them and move them through the process.

That’s really where the gap is.

It turns out that Gen Z wants to become financially independent. In fact, 91% of the people surveyed have financial goals.

It’s not like they’re sitting around playing video games. They really have goals and they’re motivated to do it, but they don’t know exactly how to get there.

There’s some anxiety we’re seeing out there. Roughly 64% of those folks are worried about their income or whether they’re going to be able to save enough money.

So we’re seeing some anxiety, but at the same time this thirst and need for education.

Grant Evans:

Are we doing enough to educate the youth of today on financial services and finance?

David Dowhan:

I don’t think so. Frankly, not just the youth. It’s everybody.

Everybody can use primers in terms of financial education.

For example, SavvyMoney provides a lot of tools and capabilities for people just to learn more.

How does a credit score work? What if I open a new account? What does that do to my credit score?

Gen Z really wants to know that, but frankly, you and I need to understand that too, so we can manage our credit most effectively.

Grant Evans:

A nice segue there into your CreditSnap acquisition as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

David Dowhan:

Sure.

CreditSnap really is another step in the vision of SavvyMoney.

At SavvyMoney, we really are about educating consumers about credit scores, how to make them better, and then we also promote various loan offers to those folks that are pre-qualified.

What CreditSnap does is allow us to take the consumer from education to an instant application where they can apply online, get approved online, sign their documents online and actually book the account and move money all digitally online.

CreditSnap is a huge step forward for us.

Frankly, that’s what Gen Z is looking for.

They want that fintech experience. Click, click, click, sign, you’re done.

They don’t want to walk into a branch and have an hour-long conversation with someone. They really want that more fintech experience. Easy to do.

The CreditSnap acquisition really opens us to this entire market where it’s now a possibility.

Grant Evans:

I guess we can’t really be at Money20/20 this year and not talk about AI.

But specifically for you, I wanted to ask: are banks doing enough with AI?

David Dowhan:

I would say no, they’re not doing enough today.

We actually had a partner advisory board. We got together 40 of our top partners and had a roundtable discussion, an open discussion about AI and what it means to them.

There’s a thirst and a hunger to do more with AI, but what I’m hearing is some of the compliance concerns are slowing them down a little bit. They’re a little bit more conservative and not really sure where to start.

Some of our partners are using AI for what I’ll call more back-office applications, streamlining their own internal operations.

But not enough of them have actually productised or introduced AI into the fabric of their product.

That’s something we’re working on at SavvyMoney, to make it not just AI for AI’s sake.

Think about all the data that we have on someone’s credit report.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could log in and say, “My credit score went down by 50 points. What happened?”

AI is capable of doing those kinds of things and creating that real-time interactivity that’s personalised for that individual member or user.

Frankly, that’s what Gen Z wants as well. They want this level of personalisation that they’re just not getting from open websites.

Grant Evans:

Gen Z are quite picky as well with the brands that they trust, and they want to look at everything a company’s doing behind the scenes.

How are you guys winning over the trust of those Gen Z individuals?

David Dowhan:

SavvyMoney is kind of behind the scenes.

Even though we power 1,500-plus financial institutions, we really treat it as a white-label solution.

The way we engender trust is by building on the bank’s own brand equity.

It’s all branded for the bank. All the communications are branded for the bank, so it looks and feels like my bank.

In this age of fraud, that’s really important.

You don’t know who you can trust and which links to click on.

We allow each of our bank partners and credit union partners to express their brand.

That goes for our customer communications, our tone, all of that really reflects the values of the bank.

That’s how we engender trust in that model.

Grant Evans:

That’s great.

We’re at Money20/20. Obviously, we like to ask all of our guests why this is such an important event for them.

David Dowhan:

It’s kind of where things happen.

This is where the key industry leaders are. This is how money moves today and into the future.

I learn a lot when I come here just talking to the various vendors, and we see a lot of our partners too, which is really important.

It’s really good for networking and connectivity, but I also learn a lot of good stuff every time I come to Money20/20.

Grant Evans:

And competitors probably revealing insights into their own products and services.

For someone in your role, you want to see what the competition’s doing and what they’re building as well, right?

David Dowhan:

Absolutely.

The roadmap is always evolving.

Many of our bank and credit union partners look to us to do innovation, so it’s on us to say, “Here’s what we’re seeing.”

We sort through the good and the bad and say, “We’re going to put this on the roadmap and make it happen.”

That’s really part of the role, to sort through that stuff.

Grant Evans:

Really interesting. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Just one final section.

We ask all of our guests at the very end of this segment, we have a section called the Shelf of Shame.

It’s where you nominate something that really grinds your gears. It can be in payments, fintech or life in general.

If you were to nominate something that you could banish forever, what would you go for?

David Dowhan:

Something I could banish forever?

I’d have to say some of the contracting complexities in our industry.

There’s a lot of legal overhead because of the compliance, and so I think it creates friction. Maybe healthy friction sometimes, maybe unhealthy at other times.

Just the third-party agreements we have to sign and you have to sign.

That friction can be an impediment to implementation and innovation.

That’s one of the things that I could banish, or at least simplify a little bit. That’s what I would say.

Grant Evans:

Would you chuck NDAs in there as well? The pain of my life.

David Dowhan:

NDAs, you’ve got it right.

Any kind of contracting.

I know they serve a valuable purpose, but gosh, can we make it simpler or easier so that it’s not this huge pain every time?

Grant Evans:

There are platforms in the UK that are building a centralised NDA framework, so thousands of companies can basically work off the same model, the same mutual NDA, and it just removes a lot of that back and forth.

David Dowhan:

That is interesting.

So it’s almost like once you’ve signed, you can just say, “You’ve got my token. I agree to the token,” and you’re good.

Grant Evans:

Exactly. You’re all in that same NDA ecosystem.

Brilliant. Thanks for coming on today, David.

Looking forward to seeing what you guys do with the massive investment as well.

David Dowhan:

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.