YES Summit: Candid chats with Gen-Yers
Posted by Brent Dixon on December 4th, 2007
This morning we had the opportunity to hang out with some Gen-Yers and talk about how they bank, save, and plan for the future. Here’s a snapshot (note: because they didn’t speak in html code, I added the links) -
Marsha
...is a 23 year-old University of Texas student and Starbucks Barista. She says:
My debt is in student loans and credit cards. After I graduate, I’m going to law school. When it’s all done, I expect to have $200,000 in student loans. It could take until I’m 45 to pay them off.
I bank with a credit union, and do all of my banking online. All of my loans are through Wells Fargo and Sallie Mae, but if my credit union had private loans I’d use them.
I go to my mom for financial advice. There is so much clutter on my credit union’s homepage that even if they had financial advice I still wouldn’t read it.
Do I think about retirement? Well, I know I want to go to France and I want to write a book.
Aaron
...is a 24-year old developer for St. Edwards University. He says:
I do all my banking online. I use ING for everything. I used to use a credit union because my parents were members. But I dropped them when they killed their mobile banking.
ING’s Orange Checking account makes me more aware of how I pay my bills because I’m getting a yield. It helps me save and probably helps me pay on time.
Elysa
...is a 19 year-old University of Texas student. She says:
I probably wouldn’t go to a financial literacy seminar put on by a credit union or bank, but I’d listen to a speaker invited by my sorority.
I’m a business student, and plan on learning about investing through classes at school.
I have no debt, I was always told to pay my credit cards in full (my dad is financial advisor).
I want to send Marsha one dozen roses for discrediting her CU’s advice because of their home page clutter. That line of reasoning is not just the sound of designers justifying their minimalistic fantasies. It really happens.
I agree fully about the CU home page clutter design problem. It sucks, looks cheap, and kills brand! Why would I want to put my money there when they can’t even get their info organized and straight on their site.
His credit union STOPPED offering online banking??!! What sort of reasoning could be behind such a blatant step backward?
@ Derrick. They dropped mobile banking, so he couldn’t access it from his cell phone. I’d imagine they dropped it because there wasn’t enough adoption by their members.
I heard in another session today that Wells Fargo did the same thing – kicking mobile banking off in 2001 and killing it a year later.
This is a fabulous post. A couple of things stood out to me, one was that two of the three had used CUs for their financial institution, which (yes, the sample size is negligible) gives a little weight to the fact that Gen-Yers paying attention know about CUs.
The second thing that stood out is that websites aren’t a financial institution’s branch, aren’t a brochure, aren’t a marketing tool, aren’t an educational tool.
A website, combined with the entirety of the online and mobile experience, IS the financial institution.
Sure, much more goes into it, managing assets, loan portfolio, policies, procedures…etc. But to FI’s customers and CU’s members, the branch is less and less relevant. The online experience is.
This is nothing new, sure, but bears mentioning here.
Good post, Brent.
Doh! “Mobile” != “Online” Guess I should have read that a little more carefully.
@Doug. I don’t think they are necessarily paying attention to CUs. I think that they have accounts at CUs because that is where their parents signed them up. I heard the same thing at last year’s YES Summit. Most kids said that they had CU accounts because they had ‘inherited’ them. I was the same way—my mom opened an account for me at the UT credit union during orientation. When I moved, I went to a bank because I didn’t know the difference.
Also, the UT credit union is ALL over campus. It’s hard not to have an account there.