INTERMEDIATE OUTCOMES 2 (EXPERIENCE)

Headlines

For the second Impact Report, direct consumer research was undertaken with 616 confirmed users of six leading PFM apps and three open banking-enabled savings apps to understand consumer experience of using these propositions.
90% of consumers found the services easy to set up.
The overall Net Promoter Score of the services was +17, with PFM services receiving +26 and Savings +8.
The majority of users agreed that the services met their core needs (76%).

76% of users describe themselves as definitely or likely to continue to use the services.

Background and methodology

This section covers the Intermediate outcomes stage as defined in the Theory of Change. This refers to the adoption of products and services which “are suited to [end user] needs and circumstances, and [end users] have positive experiences of them”.

Focus on consumer reaction to open banking services

It was agreed that this report should focus on consumer reaction to open banking services and whether they are changing the way in which people manage their finances as a result of using them. We selected improved financial decision-making and increased savings and investments for this report.

The results in Sections 5, 6 and 7 are based on a piece of consumer research in which current customers, or those who had used the service and stopped within the last 12 months, of nine leading TPP services were recruited via a combination of online panel and email invitations from a TPP. In total, we completed research with 616 customers, including 320 verified PFM customers and 296 verified savings app customers. We include full details of the research methodology in Appendix 3.

Unique insights into customer attitudes

To our knowledge this is the first time any quantitative research has sought to understand customer attitudes to these open banking-enabled services, which is possible for the first time given the growth in adoption.

Ease of use and set-up

Respondents were asked how easy they found it to set up the app that they were using and to link their payment accounts to it. They were asked to rate this on a scale from 0 - 10.

Easy to set up

This data suggests that customers found these services relatively easy to set up overall, with 90% finding the processing fairly or very easy, although around 1 in 10 rated it difficult. Interestingly, users of PFM services appeared to find services easier to set up than customers of savings apps. See Figure 10.

Figure 10: Research findings – ease of use

Net Promoter Score

Respondents were asked how likely they would be to recommend the app that they were using to friends and family. Overall, we see both propositions receiving positive scores from users, albeit some way from best-in-class. The sample sizes of individual TPPs are in many cases too small to draw firm conclusions from, but the scores ranged from -4 through to +607 indicating that there is a variety by provider. It is clear that some companies have built open banking propositions of which these customers are very strong advocates. See Figure 11.

7We use the standard Net Promoter Score methodology which is calculated by taking promoters (those scoring 9 or 10) and subtracting detractors (those scoring 0 – 6).

Figure 11: Research findings: Net Promoter Score for users

Meeting consumers’ core needs

The Framework defines ‘experience’ as a positive experience of open banking-enabled products and services that meet their needs.

This is distinct from outcomes which result from their use and which are covered in Section 6.

To assess whether services were meeting a customer’s needs we asked the users of PFM apps if they were better able to keep track of their regular monthly payments, and savings customers if they found it easier to save. A clear majority agreed with the two statements. See Figures 12 and 13.

Figure 12: Research findings: Keeping track of regular monthly payments

Figure 13: Research findings: Find it easier to save

Planning to continue to use the service

Respondents were asked how likely they were to continue using that service. Overall, we see high levels of intention to continue using.

Notably 36% of PFM customers and 27% of savings customers rated their likelihood to continue using the service at the highest possible level (10 on a scale from 0 to 10), indicating a core of extremely committed customers.

There is a smaller community who are clearly unlikely to continue using the service (7% for PFM and 9% for savings). See Figure 14 for more details.

Figure 13: Research findings: Find it easier to save