5 Ways Mint.com Is Stealing Your Customers

Some retail bankers think that Mint.com complements their efforts and have even invited account holders to use the service. What these bankers don’t know is that Mint has positioned themselves as a threat to traditional banking and is quietly pulling account holders away.

By Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report

As the main frontrunner to the online personal financial management movement, Mint.com has had a lot of time to grow. The company was founded in 2006, acquired by Intuit in 2009, and has recently undergone a fresh redesign. In addition, they acquired Check last year and have expanded their services to help consumers effortlessly see their credit score.

All of this growth is good for Mint users and potentially bad for financial institutions. And yet many financial institutions still don’t see Mint as a threat. In fact, some banks and credit unions even encourage their account holders to sign up for Mint.com to track their finances — a suggestion that could easily backfire on financial institutions.

Below are five ways that Mint.com can threaten banks and credit unions. In this list, I walk through a fictional scenario where an account holder at ACME Bank has signed up with Mint at the suggestion of ACME.

Mint Shows All Accounts in One Place

In this scenario, let’s say the fictional customer’s name is Scott.

When Scott signs up for Mint, the first thing he does is add all of his accounts — including those he has with ACME — to Mint.com. He sees his mortgage, his car loan, his checking account and more in Mint’s hub. In addition, he interacts with spending charts and budgets based on his aggregated data. The Mint experience is more engaging and insightful than the experience Scott gets through ACME’s banking portal (where he typically just looks at his balance and then signs out).

At this point, Scott sees less of an incentive to sign into ACME to check his balances and transactions. He can see all of that in Mint. This change alone is potentially damaging for ACME, because Scott no longer sees ACME’s offers when he does his digital banking. Instead, he sees ads for banking products from other institutions, including third-party competitors on his Mint site.

2. Mint Is a Digital Financial Advisor

When Scott sets up a goal in Mint.com for a mortgage, he notices that Mint encourages him to read relevant posts on Mint’s blog, MintLife. After reading a few posts and realizing that MintLife has the answers to a lot of his mortgage-related questions, Scott starts to look to Mint, not ACME, for financial guidance. He doesn’t call or visit a loan officer at ACME when he wants to figure out how to get the best deal on a loan. Instead, he looks up the answer directly on Mint’s impressive blog, and ACME loses its position as Scott’s primary financial advisor.

3. Mint Helps Simplify Bill Payments

After creating a goal, Scott sees that he can set up bill payment directly through Mint’s portal with Mint Bills. He likes that he can view his bills in context of his full financial picture, and so he signs up. Now he pays for his utilities and rent from the same place he checks his financial health.

What this means is that ACME no longer gets Scott’s bill pay data and can no longer use that data to produce intelligent marketing. Even worse, Scott’s bank or credit union will likely never get that data stream back again. It’s gone for good. This is damaging because, in the future, the best customer experience will likely belong to whoever can leverage their account level and purchase data most effectively to cater to the financial needs of the consumer.

More ways Mint.com is not good for a financial institution's well being ... here.