Top 5 money objectives of Bank of America's digital customers

As more bank customers are accessing and managing their accounts digitally via their phones, what else are major banks learning about customers and their goals?

Bank of America (BAC) Head of Digital Nikki Katz sits down with Brad Smith on Wealth! to talk about what BofA customers are prioritizing in their financial journeys.

"The top five objectives that we see from our clients are budgeting and starting to save. That's literally 31% of our clients, that's what's on their mind: improving their credit, saving for a large purchase, buying a home, travel," Katz explains. "And then the other thing that we're seeing just through their behavior is they want it to be easy, they want it all to be in one place. And we've been on a journey to ensure that our clients can see every aspect of their relationship all in one app, whether that's banking or investment or retirement."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth!

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

Financial planning is life planning at the end of the day here too.

Where do you see even more of those decisions being made, especially as you're considering what customers are trying to do, whether that's budgeting or improving their credit or making a big purchase like a home or, you know, just trying to get a lavish, luxurious vacation, Eric, uh or not Erica Nikki, Eric is on the mind now.

It's easy to confuse us.

But um I, I think that's right.

I mean, exactly what you, what you just named, we launched a product called Life Plan, which is really all about clients telling us what's important to them in life.

And since we launched it, we've had 15 million uh clients set up digital life plans with us.

And it's exactly what you said.

The top five objectives that we see from our clients are uh budgeting and starting to save.

That's literally 31% of our clients.

That's what's on their mind.

Uh improving their credit saving for a large purchase, buying a home travel, that's what's on their mind.

And then the other thing that we're seeing just through their behavior is they want it to be easy, they want it all to be in one place.

And we've been on a journey to ensure that our clients can see every aspect of the relationship all in one app app, whether that's banking or investment or retirement.

And so they're, and they're, they're responding, they're leveraging the app more, they're using it more as a result.

And just lastly while we have you here, I only got about 30 seconds.

I mean, Zella has been massive for the entire financial industry, Zelle other peer to peer transactions platforms.

Where do you see banks and the industry leaning further into platforms like that, knowing the amount of consumers that it does connect.

Yeah, I mean, again, another example of customers just shifting completely into digital, I mean to, to underscore what you just said, Zelle transactions at this point exceed the combination of both cash and checks.

So customers are using Zelle at that level is completely uh surpassed cash and checks.

And just to put a number on that last month alone, we saw exactly 100 32 million Zelle transactions totaling a record $39 billion.

So I think where it's going to go is customers are going to continue to pick up these technologies and leverage them.

We're going to continue to see adoption and whether that's Zelle or Erica, uh customers are going to continue to expect things to be fast, easy, seamless, convenient and we're gonna see those numbers continue to grow and customer expectations are going to continue to evolve and change.

They're gonna expect everything to be fast real time at easy in the way that digital made made it really fascinating Nikki Katz who is the head of Digital Bank of Bank of America.

Thank you so much for taking the time here with us today.

We appreciate it, Nikki.

Thanks for having me, Brian.