Global Fintech Interview with Nicole Meyers, VP Strategic Account Management at Personetics

Hi Nicole, please tell us about your current role and how you started at Personetics.

I’m the VP Strategic Account Management at Personetics. Prior to joining Personetics, I worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in the Financial Services and Social sector practices. I entered the FinTech world by focusing on financial inclusion, providing access to financial services to underserved customers. I saw that in developing countries across Africa and Latin America, as well as developed economies such as the United States, consumers did not have the services they need to protect and grow their wealth. I joined Personetics to help develop vanguard solutions that large banks could use to attract and retain each customer segment. 

What is the biggest challenge of working in the modern Financial technology space? How do you cope with these to stay on top of your fintech game?

For all businesses, diversity is essential in order to bring in new ideas and perspectives. The fintech industry is full of opportunities, but entry into fintech is limited. Both Finance and Tech are male-dominated industries and draw from traditional backgrounds. I believe to keep up with the pace of change, the industry needs to draw on people with wide perspectives and experiences. Without this diversity of thought, we won’t invest our resources on the right challenges and solutions. 

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How important is the “customer experience management” for a fintech company? How does Fintech CXM differ from other businesses, say IT services, or E-commerce?

Customer Experience Management varies based on who the target customer is. At Personetics, our customer are digital bank teams. They’re attracted to a particular customer experience, and hopefully they know their own customers well enough to customize our product’s user experience to align with their brand. Across the board, customer experience needs to focus on simplicity and usefulness.

You recently partnered with ecolytiq. Please tell us more about this partnership and how it would improve ROI on efforts taken toward achieving climate-friendly financial goals?

We partnered with ecolytiq to benefit from their industry expertise to country- level carbon footprinting and to share our experience on leveraging customer engagement to drive action. Together, we believe we can encourage everyday banking customers to change their behavior to spend and invest more sustainably. 

This solution will be the world’s first to show banking customers the carbon footprint of banking transactions and recommend personalized actions to reduce carbon emissions – such as by making purchases from lower-carbon merchants or categories or saving for climate-friendly financial goals.

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Please tell us more about “The Personetics Sustainability Insights solution” and what inspired you to launch this platform? Which segment of customers and users are you targeting with this solution and how?

We launched this new offering last month on the Personetics engagement platform. The solution will help banks meet growing customer demand and regulatory pressure for environmentally responsible banking and sustainable finance. Personetics’ Sustainability Insights solution will empower financial institutions to be leaders in environmentally responsible banking by first and foremost growing customer awareness of their own contribution to climate change. The solution will help shift awareness into action by empowering customers to choose a more sustainable lifestyle with better-informed financial choices. 

Banks will also be able to feed insights from the Personetics platform into their ESG reporting, by tracking and measuring the actions customers are taking to reduce their carbon footprint. This can help financial institutions demonstrate significant leadership in supporting their customers while fighting climate change.  

Some key capabilities of the Sustainability Insights offering include:

• Giving customers the ability to take action to reduce their carbon emissions with personalized insights and advice, depending on their financial situation. For example, the solution might suggest alternative merchants that are more carbon friendly, suggest a savings goal for installing solar panels, offer green investment products, or allow a customer to set a carbon target and track their progress through their spending.
• Personalization and Engagement: Actively engaging with the user to increase the accuracy of the insights via quizzes and feedback insights.  

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What kind of response have you received from your customers, in general, about this initiative to reduce carbon footprints?

Lately what we’re really seeing from consumers is they want tips on how to spend money that aligns with their values. Banks have an opportunity to help advise customers on green banking. As we’ve been building a model around green banking with a focus on carbon footprint we’ve received a very strong response from our financial partners, especially in Europe. We’re all still learning in this space and our partners are very excited to find vendors that are making this accessible to customers at a large scale. I believe that we’ll start to see that customer impact and change in individuals’ behaviors in the coming year as they become educated through these data-driven insights. 

Your take on the future of PXM for Banking and Credit – how do you plan to expand the Banking SMB offerings to new markets?

In the future, I see fintech entering into all industries. Advancements in fintech have the ability to touch all corners of each sector, from using AI to help manage finances, to giving customized recommendations for business owners of all sizes. The Financial institutions that do not embrace the technology side of personalization are falling behind their competitors. Personalized insights for consumer finance will become central to the growth strategy for every financial institution.

Thank you, Nicole! That was fun and we hope to see you back on globalfintechseries.com soon.