Listening to Frank Abagnale (of “Catch Me If You Can Fame”) we shouldn’t trust anyone. During his session Stealing Your Life: Identity Theft, Abagnale highlighted all of the areas of vulnerability that exposure our identities to potential for theft. Get a catalogue in the mail and just throw it away? That’s enough information for a cyber criminal to steal your identity. And social media; don’t even get him started. Abagnale does not maintain any social media profiles (but yet, we can live tweet his sessions, hmm) and then is incredulous about the cavalier nature of how people treat their data: We complain about people stealing our identities, but we give the data away to them for free, he says.
Perhaps most frightening of all is the rise of identify theft among children. According to Abagnale, a two year old’s data sells for four times as much as grown adult. Why? Because it takes long for the breech to be detected since children are not applying for credit.
By the time today’s two year old is applying for their first credit card, it will likely be in a very different finance world. For one, it will be almost entirely digital and two, it will be focused on the experience. These were key takeaways from the Chris Skinner moderated session Digital Banking: Perspectives on the Disruptors, the Incumbents & the State of the Art. The perspective from Ignacio Vilar of ING, Mircea Mihaescu of Moven and Josh Reich of Simple the biggest shift in the industry is how the individual is interacting, and experiencing their money. It is no longer about the visit to the bank branch but rather how their financial apps feed information about spending and savings habits, and recommendations for change.
And they share this experience. For my money, Reich had the quote of the conference during the session explaining this phenomenon: “Don't underestimate the technology power of a customer armed with memes and giphy."
This echoes the sentiments said during the Sunday night keynote addresses where we are seeing a shift in how the consumer receives information. As Lantern Credit’s Scully said customers care more about the opinions of other customers than they do about the opinion of the company. Companies need to learn to adapt or get left behind.
This is why the experience factor is so crucial. As consumers interact with their money as part of their financial wellness, they are sharing their experiences with their networks. The companies that get this right are the ones that stand to benefit from the tectonic shift. Just don’t tell Abagnale. It was a busy day. After the morning sessions, and a leisurely lunch at the Otto in St. Mark’s Square, it was off to assist our clients with media interviews. Money 20/20 has a very impressive media attendee list this year and we’ve been busy arranging meetings with traditional outlets like CNBC, Forbes and Let’s Talk Payments, podcast interviews with Breaking Banks and video interviews with BrightTALK. Thanks to Accenture for setting up the coffee stand in the hallway outside the media room. The go-go juice was much appreciated to fuel the interview sessions.
Between the established media outlets and the social media, Money 20/20 has been all over the news. We’ve been busy tweeting and posting behind-the-scenes looks on Instagram. This morning we were very excited to see the Money 20/20 Snapchat geotag is up and running!
Look forward to adding that to the snaps from the show floor.
On Tuesday We'll finally get a chance to walk the exhibit floor. Excited to stop by the booths for D+H, Marqeta, Geoswift, EY, Moven and all of our other industry friends We’ve seen as wandering around the show. Catch us if you can! We're always easy to find.