Atomic’s CEO on Embedded Subscription Management for Financial Institutions

Consumers are increasingly demanding more connected and personalized experiences that are easy to navigate and help them achieve their financial goals. The rise of fintechs like Chime, Venmo, SoFi, and RocketMoney exemplifies this trend. Coupled with increased regulatory pressure from the CFPB, these consumer expectations are driving the financial industry to innovate faster than ever. However, trying to give customers great experiences while being heavily regulated and with deep compliance requirements can be difficult. Every major project requires significant compliance and regulatory review, which takes time and can bring to light unforeseen obstacles, but also gives FIs invaluable experience in compliance.

That experience combined with extensive industry knowledge puts FIs in the position to anticipate what the next big thing will be. They can tailor innovation in the company to match where the industry is headed. Currently, we’re headed toward improving the customer experience by expanding functionality in an FI’s app. With fintechs such as Atomic, FIs can incorporate existing technology into their app rather than needing to develop it themselves. This improves the digital experience while maintaining compliance and conserving FI resources. Atomic CEO Jordan Wright recently provided insight into these experiences and Atomic’s newest product that focuses on subscription management.

Q: Why is there such an increased focus on improving digital experiences in financial services?

Financial services has become much more competitive in the last decade and with regulatory changes, such as the CFPB’s 1033, the only constant in this industry is increasing competition. You have traditional FIs and fintechs all vying for the same customers and trying to earn account primacy and become top of wallet. And improving digital experiences is an effective way to do that. It really makes sense because we’re so used to digital experiences in other industries, and now we’re coming to expect that from wherever we get financial services.

That pressure is what drives product development. It’s like being in an arms race, but for an app. When new functionality is introduced, it’s adopted by a few organizations and then it spreads until it’s the new norm. And when that happens, any company that doesn’t have it becomes subpar. The goal is to identify the essential features needed to meet current expectations while proactively showing customers you’re listening by offering superior digital experiences they can’t find elsewhere. One of those is subscription management that provides a proactive AI agent to act on the account holder’s behalf.

Q: What makes subscription management ideal to improve the customer experience?

This is where rebundling financial services comes into play. People really want to manage every aspect of their financial health in one spot. The more you can help them do that, the more time they’ll spend in your app. A major part of a consumer’s finances is recurring payments, including subscriptions. And that’s also a good place where consumers can make some cuts because they may not realize how many subscriptions they have or that they can change their plan and pay less each month. Subscriptions can be hard to track and so you’re paying for them month after month without realizing it and that really adds up after a while.

We wanted to give consumers an easy way to streamline this process. Their FI or fintech has access to their card info, and so subscription management can pull all the recurring charges. From the user’s perspective, they just log in to the app, pull up their subscriptions and then they can change them right there. They might pull up a streaming service and after selecting it, they decide if they want to cancel, change their plan, or just change which card the payment comes from. They can do all that in just a few clicks within the app, which cuts out a lot of the legwork that they would have to do if they wanted to track and change everything on their own. FIs that adopt this technology quickly provide a better user experience than their competitors and their customers will stay with them for that.

Q: Can you explain more about the advantages of using this tech now?

I’ve mainly discussed how this benefits consumers, but it offers significant advantages for financial institutions as well. Every FI aims to retain its high-net-worth customers, while also acquiring as many new customers are possible. By expanding their innovative, digital tools, FIs can attract a new generation of account holders to begin a relationship with. It’s crucial to gain the trust of younger generations now so that when they hold the majority of assets, you’ll already have their business.

Another advantage is that, while we’re focusing on subscriptions now, this same technology opens the door for connecting every area of a person’s finances. As the technology gets more advanced, we’ll be using AI to make suggestions to users to help them be better with their money. They’ll have access to the data, but an AI agent will interpret that data, suggest an action, and then carry out the action for them. With that level of ease, consumers won’t want to leave.

Q: How will subscription management help everyone improve their finances?

Subscription management certainly has the potential to help everyone, but what we’re really focused on is helping those who typically have trouble managing their finances. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, saving $20 each month is a big deal. It’s not just a nice to have. This could save you from overdraft fees, help you grow savings, and help you pay off debt. We all want to be better with our money, we just get caught up in our lives and never invest the time needed to do this. One of our goals at Atomic is to power initiative and that means we’re automating part of this process and making the rest of it easier. We want to be the workhorse and do the heavy lifting so consumers don’t have to.

We’re getting to the point that solutions, like subscription management, will be expected from consumers inside their financial services platform. So it’s important for FI’s and neobanks to not just be an early adopter here, but to switch your mindset to be an early adopter in general. That way, you always have the next big thing and you’re always providing the best experience for your customers. That secures you as their go-to FI for any time they need financial services in the future.