MovenBank is a bank expected to debut this year with a focus on the top tech trends. It will be a mobile bank accessed by smartphones, American Banker reports. More intriguingly, it will base its credit decisions and pricing decisions on social media data, the publication says.
It has developed a scoring product called CRED that combines traditional scoring elements and a consumer's social media "street credibility." This includes such metrics as a customer's timeliness in paying bills and tendency to have negative balances, as well as standing in social networks, and the ability to sign up friends for the bank. "If you introduced 20 friends, we might add 25 basis points to a saving account, or offer free p-to-p transfers," Brett King, founder and chairman of MovenBank, and the author of Bank 2.0, told American Banker.
Banking Leads Mobile Finance Activities
A mobile bank business model is a natural step from current trends. In terms of overall adoption, in Q2 2011 36% of financial service account owners (bank, credit card, brokerage, or auto insurance) were using a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) to manage their accounts or conduct financial transactions, according to Compete data.
Who Else Is Reading Your Tweets
MovenBank is also representative of another trend—one that might make some consumers more uncomfortable than banking via their mobile device—that is, companies using social media data for non-marketing purposes. Divorce attorneys and health insurance companies, to name a few examples, use social networking sites to gather information about their targets.
Insurance companies view social media data as a treasure trove, wrote Jeremiah Owyang.
He suggested a few hypothetical scenarios: Insurance companies, for example, monitor what members are saying, then offer suggestions on wellness, activities, and being healthy. "Overtime, they can develop intelligence and eventually predictive models based upon members published information and their overall well being." From there companies will be able to size up new members based upon their existing social behaviors online - and use that as part of the decision in what packages and rates are offered.
Another group made very happen about the explosion of data on social media has been divorce lawyers as they can be evidentiary gold mines. "Did your husband's new girlfriend Twitter about getting a piece of jewelry? The court might regard that as marital assets being disbursed to a third party. Did your wife tell the court she's incapable of getting a job? Then your lawyer should ask why she's pursuing job interviews through LinkedIn." (via Time).
