GenZ Banking Experience

BANK OF AMERICA 2019

In 2019 the GenZ population ranged from 16-24 years in age and is forecasted to outpace Millenials by three million. Therefore, understanding this generation's beliefs, behaviors, and desires about money is vital to creating products and services that meet and exceed their needs.

The challenge: In 2019, Bank of America had a relationship with 1 in 5 GenZ customers. To serve this generation, we needed to understand how GenZ approaches banking, money, spending, and saving to explore innovative banking experiences for this emerging generation.

The approach: In collaboration with Market Research, Customer Experience, and Experience Design organizations, we set out to understand this group through contextual inquiry, “Student Rush” interviews, Financial Center (FC) observations and intercepts, Voice of Customer (VOC) data, and Market Reports and insights.

Contextual Inquiry

We met with 24 participants in LA, Dallas, and Boston. 13 teens, 16-18 with a parent, and 11 young adults 18-24 on their own.

Our goal was, first off, to form empathy and gather qualitative data by observing their behavior in context and learning from them as they walked us through their actions and discussed related to money and banking.

We focused on.

• How do they feel about using money versus saving,

• Account opening and onboarding experience.

• Tracking of managing money

• Digital platforms and personal finance,

• How they think about traditional banks and new banks

• Navigating the shift from their parent’s money methods to establishing their own.

dISCOVERY - Mental Model and Insights

Through rigorous synthesis, we discovered a mental model we named, The Aquire Mental Model. The model focused on creating awareness triggers that motivate someone 16-24 years old to engage in banking services and general actions. We also discovered that those triggers are various, but the outcomes are cyclical. The critical phases of that model are Maturity Milestones, Decision Influence, Account Opening, and Money Management. As a teen and young adult go through each stage it leads to more knowledge and confidence related to money and finances. Thus, as the individual matures, those triggers in the model lead to the need for additional financial products.

Concept Exploration

By reframing the insights into How Might We statements, we facilitated two concept exploration sessions in San Francisco and Charlotte with designers, product managers, and tech leads. Through dot voting, and assessing feasibility and desirability, we prioritized 27 distinct concepts to be brought to life through vignettes and evaluated with a customer panel of 800 parents and teens.

Utilizing the mental model and end-to-end journey, we indicated where the highest-performing concepts would positively impact the GenZ banking journey.

Outcome

The first phase of the project was to understand the GenZ Generations' relationship with banking and money and explore ideas to improve BofA’s products and services for this generation. With the discovery and exploration phase complete, we collaborated with product and tech leaders to build a backlog from the prioritized concepts and determine a roadmap for design iteration and build.

A few months later, the world was gripped by the global COVID pandemic, and as the economy shut down, plans changed, and the roadmap was put on hold. However, the insights and ideas created continue to influence business and product decisions. The lead product manager for Student Banking said it was one of the most comprehensive studies and explorations she has ever seen and is a treasure trove of data to move the business forward and serve this unique client.

Images and artifacts from the project