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SXSW panel: Banking 2.0: Financial Services Driven by People & Emerging Technologies
Date/Time: 12:30 p.m. Saturday
Speakers: Rob Garcia (Lending Club), Jennifer Openshaw (Family Financial Network), Kenneth Lin (Credit Karma Inc.), Aaron Forth (Mint.com), Bob Weinschenk (SmartyPig)
The gist: The future of banking, or at least part of it, will include front-end companies like Mint.com and SmartyPig that help demystify money and financial transactions for customers. It could be Mint guiding users toward better saving practices or SmartyPig’s mission of helping users save toward specific goals, most emerging companies in the personal finance space utilize existing banks’ infrastructure and acts as surrogates for niche services. Another difference from traditional banks; they all have social components at their core and use customer feedback and interactions online to improve their services. Worth noting; both Mint.com and SmartyPig were represented at a similar panel at last year’s SXSW. Since then Mint.com was purchased by financial services giant Intuit and SmartyPig’s accrued funds in goal accounts has grown from $42 million to more than $350 million, and Weinschenk said his company will very soon announce a partnership with a major national bank.
Quotes: From Weinschenk: “I look at every comment on our profile pages. When you’re running your own company in the social media realm it’s different to be right there to see and hear about every mistake your company makes. But because of that the last three top product ideas we’ve had have come from customers and working with what they have to say.”
Takeaways:While banks’ government charters and regulations will make them the money holders and movers of our economy for the forseeable future, online startups that value transparency and innovation will continue to crowd into the realm of financial management and stewardship for customers. Basically, if there’s some way to make your financial health better and easier, a company will soon emerge (if it hasn’t already) to do that.
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