How to convert savings into investments with the Conversion Engine

In an era of low-interest rates and cash piling up on current and savings accounts, banks have tried various tactics to convert the cash hoard into investment fee business. However, if we look at the results, we must conclude that these attempts have only partially succeeded, at best.

More traditional approaches such as launching yet another (defensive investment) product or setting up a new campaign pointing at the virtues of investing or incentivizing the advisors to sell more funds and lowering entry fees have not convinced the mass market to reconsider their loss-making savings accounts and switch to investments.

Conventional tactics do not succeed in pushing wealthy savers into investments. We need a new approach to address the never-investor, certainly in a digital context where human assistance is lacking.

The typical saver will not ask for an investment proposal, nor will he or she select an investment solution himself/herself. Traditional savers need to be approached differently and presented with a particular offering. They have to be addressed, targeted and persuaded into entering the investment space.

 Such a personal targeting and engagement legally kick off an advisory flow in which a risk profile is mandatory and constitutes yet another hurdle to overcome. The saver won’t be willing to go through a lengthy and time-consuming questionnaire, especially in a digital context, without any human encouragement. Indeed profiling kills conversion and needs to be rethought.

The Conversion Engine, a software component recently launched by everyoneINVESTED, comes to the rescue. everyoneINVESTED is a WealthTech100 innovative company and spin-off of the Belgian KBC Group.

Instead of pushing investment products via classic, generic marketing campaigns that only convince the usual suspects, the conversion engine is a magnet that targets and converts wealthy savers into first-time investors. The software is to be integrated into the mobile and online banking applications of financial institutions. It allows banks to launch hyper-personalized campaigns in their customer-facing applications that revolutionize the onboarding process yet respecting all regulatory obligations.

The disruptive character of the Conversion Engine lies in several aspects:

1. A personalized trigger;
2. A vocabulary and message that considers the clear preference for savings and the emotionality of investing, especially the fear of losing money;
3. The replacement of the classic questionnaire for risk profiling by a short, graphical, interactive, and personalized journey is the disruptive core of the solution. In a digital context, the lengthy, static, tedious questionnaire kills conversion.

The result is an advisory process that feels and converts like execution-only. Clients will feel like they have bought a long-term investment instead of being sold just another product.

So the Conversion Engine reengineers the sequence of an advisory flow, making it more customer-friendly and effective:

Via this unique new solution, banks now have a magnet at their disposal that nudges the never-investors into buying their first investment products. And of course, this is the most challenging part. But, getting a die-hard saver invested opens up an array of opportunities for selling more investment products.

The Conversion Engine defines one single journey useable for multiple campaigns. Each campaign targets another selection of clients. So building one process enables addressing all clients, target group by target group.

Acquisition costs can be reduced by onboarding customers digitally. Moreover, as the number of physical branches is declining and brick-and-mortar is costly, financial institutions can unleash the full potential of their digital channels and enrich their sales potential. The technology of the Conversion Engine is available as an API ready to be integrated into online and mobile banking applications. As a result, banks do not need to develop or redevelop a new application; it is just a matter of integrating the component into their existing channels.

By doing so, the sales capabilities of their banking apps will be notably enriched and transformed into genuine conversion engines. And this in a MiFID compliant way.

The Conversion Engine is fully developed by everyoneINVESTED and enables financial institutions to increase digital sales in investments to a clientele of wealthy savers via an innovative approach. For the German market, everyoneINVESTED collaborates with Fincite exclusively.