Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:23:41 · Vijay Konduru
[00:23:41] S2: One of the things to call out is that someone like Pav or or or Maya being in the industry, etcetera, super tech savvy. They know what to get done. And it's so... Encouraging, but it's eye opening to hear about even their challenges, right, potentially with doing a start up and so on and so forth. We gotta remember that most of the small businesses, especially the ones in America that we're talking about, do not have a tech stack. They are not tech savvy. Right? So we are hoping to kinda help them cut through all the noise that they're being exposed to, help them, again, aggregate all of their decision making in in one system. If I if I could take some time, I'd love to talk about the archetype or the use case that really set the vision for what this product could become in the future. So we have this archetype called Sarah. She is a bakery owner in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is a Midwestern city. And think about this product steady state where it says, hey. Our special kinda smart news is highlighting that tariffs are gonna change the price of some of the ingredients you have in in in your menu. Oh, by the way, there's construction near your bakery that might reduce foot traffic. So do you want me to go ahead and adjust your your inventory orders to account for the slower foot traffic? Or you have a catering order coming in, but you don't have enough liquid cash in your bank account. So it provides advice on whether Sarah should accept that catering order or not. So that's the kind of use case and vision that really set this product vision into motion. And we believe that by combining all of these different kinda outcomes into one place, Sarah, the bakery owner, can just make better decisions and manage her business in a much more seamless manner.
00:25:53 · Laura Watkins, Vijay Konduru
[00:25:53] S0: And then sort of how do you decide within that, like, which tasks kind of to perhaps point around talking to, like, humans versus AI? Like, how do you decide that? Like, which one is is sort of integrated and which one where the human needs to still play a role? [00:26:06] S2: Yeah. One of the things we are very clear about at Huntington, especially as we start to integrate AI into more experiences and more products, is that AI or agentic AI will not replace access to human experts. We will always enable our customers to reach out to our humans, whether on the phone or within a digital chat environment or walk into the branches if they live within the proximity of one. And we are very, very confident that that's gonna be what we always offer. [00:26:41] S0: Wonderful. So kinda keeping both in in balance as much as the customer's need is. Maya, you were gonna you were gonna add.
00:26:50 · Maia Bittner
[00:26:50] S3: Well, I actually... So I have a different take. The path... I mean, he said he wants to talk to someone on a phone rather than a chatbot. I think that there's so much nuance in this, and there's actually many situations when I personally prefer to talk to the chatbot. And here's why. I think when we think of talking to someone on a phone, I think about, like, I think about calling Laura. And Laura picks up and is friendly and eager to help and has lots of tools at her disposal to help me. But quite frequently, when I talk to customer support agents on the phone, they are not like Laura. Right? We do not share the same native language. They do not seem that friendly. They do not seem to have very many tools able to help me. They seem to be stuck on a script, and it is not a good experience. And chatbots... I've had a lot of bad experiences with chatbots, and they can be very rigid. But with the pace of AI acceleration and how quickly the technology is improving, I have actually had some really great experiences with chatbots where they are faster, they're more clear, they're easier to work with. And I have seen actually, like, thousands of examples of customers who are delighted with a chatbot experience because the chatbot does not have KPIs around how quickly they resolve the customer's issue, how fast they can get them off the phone, how... Like, they just wanna hang up and not give you money. While an AI chatbot is happy to patiently walk you through every single step. They will say, okay. They'll say, go to this tab in your app. And the customer says, what? And the chatbot says, let's back up. Do you have our app installed on your phone? And the customer says, no. What are you talking about? And they say, okay. Great. Let's back up. Do you have an Android or an I... Right? They will very carefully, slowly, patiently walk someone through. And customers are so appreciative. They said, you never made me feel dumb. You waited for every step. You explained every step that I needed to do. And they're so, so, so appreciative. And so I think in a world where we have really amazing people answering the phone, that's better than AI, but many businesses cannot afford to provide that kind of experience.
00:29:09 · Maia Bittner, Laura Watkins, Vijay Konduru
And so given the alternatives, I actually think AI is a superior experience today, even today, and that it's just gonna keep getting better as the technology improves. [00:29:20] S0: Wow. That is a different take. Maybe, Vijay, we're we're sort of almost out of time here, but do you wanna just maybe round us off and and kind of respond to that? [00:29:29] S2: Yeah. As far as what Maya talked about, there are definitely situations or or users where customers might wanna interact with an AI chatbot, for example, more than they wanna call in, like like Pav was talking about. I do believe that there's a very important role that access to humans and human expertise will continue to play. Like, for example, let's say a customer has gone through a fraud event. Right? They want to be able to walk into a branch. They want to experience that empathy from a real human expert that can help them even though the AI might help them resolve that situation in an equally effective manner. So I still think the role of the human in customer servicing, in customer experience is very, very critical.
00:30:29 · Laura Watkins
[00:30:29] S0: Yeah. For sure. And then, you know, you're offering both so people could choose the course that they wanna take, which is the the most important thing that customers have the choice, and that's what they value the most. So on that note, we're gonna take a quick pause here back very shortly. Before we get back to the news, we wanted to tell you about our next After Dark event, which is only two weeks away now. It is taking place at the Village Underground in London on Thursday, November 12, where we'll be recording a live Fintech Insider news show, followed by drinks and networking with the fintech community. Tickets are available now at 11fs.com/ after dark, all one word. And there is also a link in the show notes below. Don't miss out. And back to the news. And our final main story this week is Acorns buys Gen Z social finance app Fritch. The story in Finextra, US savings and investment app Acorns has acquired Fritch, a social finance platform aimed at Gen Z. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but founded in 2021. Fritch has built a community of 1,600,000 young adults who learn about money through peer conversations, group chats and creative content. The platform also allows users to compare their financial habits with those of their peers. The deal follows Acorn's acquisitions of children's money management app GoHenry in 2023 and family wealth platform Earlybird in 2025. And earlier this year, Acorns actually sold GoHenry's UK business to Barclays, signaling a greater focus on their US operations, while GoHenry US was rebranded and absorbed into Acorns family offerings as Acorns Early. So Maya, maybe coming to you first as a as a sort of product person on the on the call. Acorns has acquired a platform where young person... Young people, sorry, learn about money through their friends, through online communities. What does this tell us, about how Gen Z and and probably the generations coming up behind them want to engage with financial services and and and what it kind of means for Acorns to acquire this company in this way?
00:32:40 · Maia Bittner
[00:32:40] S3: How cool. I mean, I view this very similar to our Huntington story, which is that this is a growth and customer acquisition play, specifically by moving earlier. And everyone knows that the hardest part of fintech is frequently customer acquisition. And so they're trying to get new investing customers before they're investing and early on. I think the community and education angle is is really cool. I think that has been one of the advantages of the Internet for a long time is that you can be connected with people like you when those people might not go to your school or live in your town or be accessible otherwise. You can sit in your bedroom and calibrate with people who are like you. I think with money specifically, it's actually really, really valuable. There's another tool called Status Money that was doing something really similar where it lets you benchmark. Okay. For people like me, how much are they paying in student loans? How much is their car payment? How frequently do they get raises at work? And it really help... Helps people sort of ground themselves and understand, am I doing okay? Do I have, like, too fancy of a car given how much money I make? Should I be trying to save money on going out to drinks with my friends, or am I doing this a normal amount? You know, I think those are very, very normal questions for people to have about their finances. The finance influencers also always give people that kind of benchmarking. They will say, you should only spend up to 25 or 30% of your income on housing. You should only spend up to this amount of money on discretionary spending. And so, you know, I think people are really hungry for that. Acorns has actually done quite a lot of acquisitions. I think they've done almost nine. And so they must have a playbook. Like, this is working well for them. Right? They have a playbook. They are shutting down the French platform. And so I think it's less about keeping that community going and more about how can they bring that community into the Acorns platform, how can they add education and community to Acorns and sell the existing Acorns product suite to that group of millions that that Frint has collected.