Intuit Making Mint Available to Banks
Intuit Financial Services announced today it is making popular PFM tool Mint available to financial institutions to integrate into their online and mobile banking services.
Intuit, which acquired Mint in 2009, will offer the Mint integration on a limited basis in 2013, before rolling it out to its more than 1,200 financial institution clients in 2014.
"Banks want to go to that next level of PFM, and blend it with the digital and mobile experience," Greg Wright, VP of product management for financial management solutions at Intuit Financial Services told Bank Systems & Technology. "By blending Mint with their digital banking home page, we believe financial institutions can deepen the relationship between them and their customers."
Wright believes offering PFM services such as what Mint provides will help banks to position themselves as trusted financial advisors to customers and give them a more personal experience when they engage in digital banking.
"Online banking products, for the most part, are fairly utilitarian and functional," he says. "Mint is about your whole financial life; it's different and personal for every user."
Another benefit Wright believes banks can see from integrating Mint is the ability to offer customers more targeted, relevant messaging. The Mint integrated offering can mine customer data and alert them to relevant products and services from their financial institution that are specific to their situation, at a time when they are most interested in learning more.
"The real secret behind Mint is the data analytics aspect," he adds.
Customers at banks who integrate Mint do not have to opt in for the service; when they log in to online or mobile banking for the first time after the integration they will see a screen similar to what Mint users see now, such as information about their accounts and money insights, which are customized financial alerts. They will also see a Mint tab at the top of the screen that they can click on to delve further into its PFM features. Banks that currently offer Intuit's FinanceWorks product can choose to upgrade to Mint.
Wright said customers who already use Mint will have the option of transferring their Mint account information to their financial institution's integrated offering, though they aren't required to.
For those who aren't already Mint users, Wright said Intuit is willing to work with its bank clients on marketing and communications outreach to customers to help drive adoption and usage. Mint does allow its users to manage multiple accounts from different financial institutions, but Wright said consumers shouldn't be concerned about their primary financial institution knowing information about their other financial relationships.
"If your bank integrates Mint, they won't be able to see the other relationships you have with financial institutions," he said. "Security and privacy will be maintained."
The Mint integration will also eventually be available to financial institutions that aren't Intuit clients, says Wright. He adds that integration should not be difficult as Intuit is offering a software development kit and open APIs "to seamlessly integrate this solution."
Wright says many of Intuit's banks and credit union clients "have come to us and asked for Mint by name," and thinks that integrating the service will improve the customer experience overall.
"We believe that Mint is a very strong brand and has a lot of good qualities to lend to our financial institution partners," he adds.
Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio
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