1) Account aggregators that pool customer financial data are gaining momentum as more banks implement open banking standards that allow this data sharing. 2) Aggregators provide potential benefits to customers including awareness of their financial situation, prompts to take action like sticking to budgets, and activation of goals through features like spending locks. 3) As aggregators gain more data and understanding of customer behavior and goals, they can implement more automated and personalized interventions to encourage positive financial habits.

1. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
TRENDS SHAPING THE FINANCIAL
LANDSCAPE IN 2018 AND BEYOND

2. Converging for the customer
Insight Report: Aggregators
(extract)

3. 2018 could be the Year of the Aggregator, where more customers start seeing the
value of pooling their accounts to understanding their finances and, with any
likelihood, feel more empowered to take the right actions for their financial
wellbeing.
Account aggregators and aggregator technology are not new. Mint was founded in
2006 in the US, and in the UK, Money Dashboard in 2008 and OnTrees in 2012.
Yodlee, which powers the latter two aggregators, was founded 18 years ago.1 But
large scale adoption of aggregators has not happened since then.
What holds promise for aggregators, is the era of Open Banking and PSD2, and with
it, the expected incorporation of account aggregation by the incumbent banks and
challengers. Yolt boasted a community of 100,000 registered users and 29
integrations in 2017.2 Anticipated this year are aggregators from Barclays and HSBC,
with BBVA and Deutsche Bank already there. UK challengers have more readily
embraced aggregator technology with Plum, Emma, Starling and Zopa partnering
with Truelayer to bring personal financial management (PFM) to digital natives. N26
has gone beyond PFM to include marketplaces. Momentum across the range of
financial providers will offer access to aggregators for the masses.
With this speed of implementation, it is apt to ask whether consumers will adopt at a
similar speed and scale. While it remains too early to judge the success of the
various launches and those still to come, Mapa Research believes it is possible to
evaluate the benefits that the established and new wave of aggregators will offer to
customers.
In this report, we look at three key benefits which aggregators could offer to
customers:
• Awareness
• Action
• Activation
Our focus is on the customer and the potential value which aggregators can create
for customers.
Introduction

4. To move consumers a step ahead, beyond
being aware of how they spend and save,
is to show them the overall impact of their
actions. PFM has long incorporated
budgeting as a basic functionality, and the
new wave of aggregators have made
budgeting more engaging.
The importance of encouraging financial
engagement by showing consumers their
overall financial health goes beyond
personal responsibility. High personal
debt has an impact on wider society and
the wider economy, as witnessed in 2007
in many markets and the social fallout
that resulted.
The current situation of low interest rates,
stagnant wages and an increased cost of
living in many economies makes the role
of account aggregators in PFM and
financial education even more relevant.
Alerts and notifications act as clear
prompts for consumers to take action to
prevent financial harm and to stick to
their budgets. In the UK, consumers don’t
budget because:5
31% Find it boring
19% Lack time
11% Lack confidence in making
money-related decisions
12% Prefer not to know
8% Find it difficult
The push PFM functionalities help to
alleviate the negative associations with
budgeting including effort and tedium.
Budgeting for action
“US consumer debt
levels are now well
above those seen
before the Great
Recession.”7
“50% of UK consumers
currently show one or
more characteristics of
potential financial
vulnerability.”6
Action

5. Overall budget information currently
provided by many aggregators is useful
but not necessarily actionable. It acts as
a general notification on whether the
consumer is on track or if they’ve strayed.
Cleo for example notifies the user that
they’ve exceeded the budget and only
offers the solution of adjusting the
budget. This offers no prevention or
action which enables the user to stick
their budget.
Yolt offers a “Smart Balance” function
which predicts a customer’s discretionary
income to their next payday based on
past transaction patterns and predicting
upcoming spend. Understanding what is
left to spend is useful but does not
necessarily put safeguards against
overspending.
Money Dashboard provides an interesting
proposition where users can add
predicted transactions to see the impact
on their budget. Users have the choice of
accepting suggested predictions based
regular transactions, adding an existing
transaction or adding a new prediction.
The latter can help customers to weigh up
whether they should make a particular
expenditure to help them judge
affordability.
Squirrel makes budgeting more
achievable by putting a spending
safeguard in place – a weekly allowance.
Dividing discretionary income can help
consumers to improve their pace of
spending to avoid the spending crunch in
counting down to the next payday.
CLEO (UK)
YOLT (UK) MONEY DASHBOARD (UK)
BUDGET VIEWS
Standard notification
Smart balance
Adding predicted transactions Creating weekly allowances
SQUIRREL (UK)

6. Adapting to goals and behaviour
Progressing from budgeting, alerts and
notifications to engage consumers to take
action, aggregators increasingly recognise
that they can support consumers’ goals
and behaviour with technology.
Goal-orientation: Visibly seeing their
goals, users of Moven are encouraged to
save something tangible using
quantification and time limitations as well
as a sense of achievement.
Projection: The ‘ISA time machine’
created by Moneybox projects
accumulation into the future so that the
consumer can grasp the size of their
investment gain over the longer term.
Emotion: In order to profile users, Plum
simplifies this with a ‘mood’, enabling
users to state their savings preferences
simply, resulting in an adjustment for risk
and returns. The mood can be adjusted
to suit the user’s savings needs and
circumstances as well.
Coaching: Tapping further into emotion,
Clearscore’s coach feature shows that
the provider recognises the importance of
positive encouragement to support
behaviour change, particularly for more
sensitive financial issues such as credit
building, debt management and
vulnerability.
Geolocation: When positive interventions
don’t work, Squirrel and its Money Lockup
app use geolocation to block spending.
Specific funds can only be ‘unlocked’ at
certain locations. Using the insight that
people often give relatives cash for
safekeeping, the aggregator takes action
on behalf of users to physically and
virtually prevent them from spending –
adding a large amount of friction to this
end.

7. To further reinforce positive behaviour,
aggregators have also been using social
norm nudges. As illustrated in the diagram
on the following page, behavioural data
and AI can be used to help minimise
customer effort and apply interventions for
beneficial outcomes.
Cleo compares users through category-
level spending via its chatbot. Being more
specific may help consumers understand
the areas where they could potentially cut
back in spending.
BBVA allows customers to adjust their
comparison profile based on demographics
and local area. Findings from the UK’s
Behavioural Insights team indicate that
behaviour compliance can be improved
when local social norms are used.8
Plum provides a joint savings goal using the
insight that being accountable to another
person can increase a customer’s chance at
success.
Behavioural economists Richard Thaler and
Cass Sunstein do however caution that “if
you want to nudge people into socially
desirable behaviour, do not, by any means,
let them know that their current actions are
better than the social norm”.9
Nonetheless, it remains important that
aggregators seek to understand customers
better and continue to experiment with
ways to enable them to commit to positive
action with the continued development of
AI and predictive customer insights.
Considering the challenging financial
situation faced by many individuals and the
current economic environment, Mapa
Research believes that consumers need as
much help as possible – to be open to
suggested actions and recommendations
which can improve their relationship with
money.
BBVA (ES)
CLEO (UK)
PLUM (UK)
Social norm category comparisons
Overall spending social comparisons
Joint goals

8. CUSTOMER
INVOLVEMENT
ACTION
Reinforcing positive behaviour
CUSTOMER
INVOLVEMENT
ACTIVE PASSIVE
NOTIFICATION ENFORCEMENT
Generic Warnings
Customer has limited control, and
warnings are limited to overspend
and debt
Generic suggestions
Actions are suggested positive
behaviour or suggested
transactions such as sweeping
funds into savings
GENERAL ALERTS
AND
NOTIFICATIONS
Selection
Customers can select from a
range of pre-set alerts and
notifications. Limits can be set by
nature of transaction or by vendor
Suggested Frictions
Customer can activate a range of
frictions on different channels to
prevent or encourage behaviour.
Social elements are included for
reinforcement.
SPECIFIC ALERTS
AND
MINOR FRICTION
Understanding
Provider knows customer goals
based on Q&A and financial data
profiling
Implemented Actions
Customer-adjusted or full AI
functionality to promote or
prevent specific behaviours:
GOAL- AND
BEHAVIOUR-
ORIENTATED ACTIONS
AUTOMATED
IMPLEMENTATION
• transaction-based/geolocation
access or blocking
• multi-level friction with
social/emotional/goal-based levers
• automatic rewards to incentivise
positive behaviour

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Tel: +44 207 566 3940
www.maparesearch.com
© Informa 2018. Contains Informa’s proprietary information and may not be disclosed or reproduced without the prior written
consent of Informa
Mapa Research Insight Reports 2018
Q1 Aggregation Insight Report
Digital Wallets & Payments Insight Report (Global)
Q2 UK Credit Card Insight Report
US Credit Card Insight Report
Q3 Mobile Banking Insight Report (Global)
Desktop Banking Insight Report (Global)
Q4 SME Banking Insight Report
Trends to watch in 2019 (Global)
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