How Chase Is Evolving Its Consumer Products from ‘What Can I Do Now?’ to ‘What Should I Do Next?’
By Steve Cocheo, Senior Executive Editor at The Financial Brand
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Bank digital product design has changed drastically with the growing adoption of GenAI, especially when it comes to defining customer segmentation.
“In the past, we thought about distinct segments and we tried to build our tools in what I call a ‘peanut butter way’,” says Christina Claudio, managing director and head of product for connected banking at JPMorgan Chase. “We tried to spread that peanut butter across everyone, making everyone happy.”
Useful consumer finance tools did emerge, Claudio says, yet segmentation keeps evolving. The industry has been talking about “hyper-personalization” for some time, she admits, but GenAI and related tools can now actually make that possible and practical by enabling more intuitive and proactive experiences.
Need to Know:
- Claudio leads the Chase team that developed the bank’s personal financial management suite, including Autosave, Spend Planner and the bank’s Budget tool, which automates creation and management of customers’ finances.
- The team also developed Credit Journey, a digital service available to both customers and non-customers that provides their credit score as well as guidance for increasing their score. (Enrollment means agreeing to being approached for Chase products.)
- Claudio says more than five million consumers have set up credit score improvement plans using Credit Journey. The strategies can be tailored according to the reason the customer wants to raise them — such as buying a home — as well as the timeframe the customer has to work within.
- Scores increase by an average of 35 points over the life of a plan.
Key insight: “As technology has evolved, segments are now really just guideposts,” Claudio explains. They provide some direction, but now product design can account for significant differences in needs, comfort with tech, and more among people who simple demographic analysis would suggest have identical personas.
A personal example: “My dad and my mom are in the same cohort, age-wise and in terms of their place in their lives,” says Claudio. Yet, she says that from the perspective of a bank product designer her parents are really quite different.
On one hand, “I’m lucky if my dad remembers how to turn on his phone and plug it in to charge it,” says Claudio with a smile. On the other hand, her mother uses GenAI and, in fact, has a preference for Anthropic’s Claude.
Such differences can be addressed through design aided by GenAI, Claudio says:
“What are you used to? What do you expect? How do we help introduce you to new things as AI continues to allow us to have a greater sense of where you sit today and where you might want to go tomorrow?”
Beyond using AI behind the scenes, Claudio says that the technology helps when customers engage the bank’s digital tools.
“In Connected Banking, AI helps translate complex financial information into simple, conversational guidance, making it easier for customers to understand what to do next,” she says.
Stay Focused on Core Deliverables
A touchstone concept helps Claudio keep product development relevant: “At the end of the day, people want to establish their finances, manage their finances, and optimize their finances.”
Focusing on the core trio, she says, guides her group’s product design.
“Everything has to fit into one of those jobs to be done,” says Claudio. In addition, it has to fit the overall group of tools that Chase makes available.
Nurturing a financial ecosystem. “We look at all of our personal financial management tools as an ecosystem,” Claudio explains. “It should be intuitive for customers to move from one to another.” This must apply whether the customer still wants a screen-based experience, as Claudio terms it, or is ready to engage with a chatbot or an AI agent.
“It’s all about where the customers’ on-ramps and off-ramps are,” says Claudio.
Read more: How TD Bank is Attacking Its Primacy Challenge in the U.S.
Bank Product Development in a GenAI World
Financial institution product builders face factors today that the previous generation never dreamed of.
• One factor is consumers’ increasing willingness to tap ChatGPT and other large language models for at least a second opinion on their options for products and providers.
• Another is the frequent fragmentation of financial relationships among multiple providers that has upended the concept of primacy.
Key question: Why AI? Claudio says consumer use of AI tools should be cause for introspection among product developers. Consumers may be trying things out for the novelty, to compare recommendations to what their bank suggests, or because there are some unmet needs, she says.
Ask the tough questions. If consumers are going to ChatGPT or other models, “we need to ask, ‘Why are they doing that? What are we not hitting the mark on?’,” says Claudio. “Then we have to challenge ourselves to meet that need.”
Filling in the Data Blanks Via Customer Trust
The other challenge — fragmentation of consumer relationships — carries its own complications. The diffusion of accounts among many consumers can undercut the ability of personal financial management tools to deal with their financial status in a holistic way.
Key strategy: Claudio says this can be overcome through developing trust that a bank will not sell or otherwise misappropriate a consumer’s personal financial data.
“We want to give customers such a good experience that they feel that they want to import their data,” says Claudio. “I am fighting to make sure that customers feel that they can trust Chase, that their information is secure and that their privacy is respected.”
Put that across, provide tools like Credit Journey that give value, and they will willingly let Chase pull their whole financial picture together, she argues.
Read more: How GenAI Can Uplevel Your Bank’s Financial Literacy Program
Developers’ Holy Grail: Long-Term Digital Financial Guidance
Claudio believes Chase can continue to grow its digital ecosystem, by ushering in the next stage of consumer financial guidance.
Reality check: She says that the bank has mastered the rear-view mirror, but it must go beyond that.
“We have done a very good job of showing customers what has happened in the past, helping them access insights like: What did you spend? What did you save?” Claudio says.
However, Claudio says more tools have to be provided for the future.
“At the end of the day, what we’ve done doesn’t help customers answer the next question,” says Claudio. “That question is, if I know what to do, how do I consistently do that thing year after year, decade after decade, for the rest of my life?”
Key perspective: Claudio says much of what Chase has done so far addresses financial literacy, helping people understand where they stand.
But she believes financial literacy is not the same as financial wellness, which is the next tier.
“We have to transition to ensuring that every customer has an opportunity to pursue financial wellness by offering them proactive guidance,” says Claudio.
Next-level banking. “Moving from reactive to proactive engagement to outcome-based guidance is where everything is heading,” Claudio believes.
She says this transition won’t be simple. There’s a risk: As providers know more, consumers may find it “scary and sketchy.”
Claudio admits that when she tries out enrolling in some financial apps, she sometimes abandons the signup. Why? Anything touching AI generally needs context in order to function, which requires the consumer to provide more and more data. Claudio says she sometimes stops short of pushing the enter button, thinking, “Do I really want it to know this about me? What is it going to do with that information?”
Finding the sweet spot that enables guidance toward wellness will be a competitive coup.
“A lot of folks will get close to it,” says Claudio, “but whoever can think through it the right way, and nail it, is going to do great.”
Read next: Banks Keep Asking Why Chime is Winning. Most Are Focused on the Wrong Questions
