Five Ways to Expand the Appeal of Your Financial Technology Product

Financial technology (“fintech”) has tremendous potential – as a delivery channel for high-quality products and services – to help consumers improve their financial health. While lower-income and non-white Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods with few or no bank branches, they are more likely to rely on their smartphones as their primary method of connecting to the internet. Yet, many fintech tools are not designed with the needs of underserved consumers in mind. After conducting nearly 50 interviews with researchers, product owners and managers, and service providers from a range of companies and nonprofit organizations across the financial services industry, we identified the following strategies that firms are pursuing to expand the appeal of their products.