VestMatch Blog

Today we are announcing the launch of a fast-track white-label Collaborative Savings tool for banks and credit unions.  By private labeling of VestMatch’s web-based social savings platform, a bank or credit union can expand customer retention efforts and be introduced to highly-qualified prospects quickly and effectively.

We know Collaborative Savings is growing rapidly because we see it every day.  Parents are trying to set up matched savings programs with their kids all the time and there hasn’t been an effective way to do that in the past.  Parents and grandparents often join together to save for college, but there hasn’t been visibility for everyone.   VestMatch has changed that with its launch in 2009, and now banks and credit unions can offer this service with their own brand, look and feel and usually have it available to their customers within four weeks.

Of course, the key benefit to users of VestMatch is transparency.  When someone sets up a plan and invites others to help them, they connect that plan to an account at the bank or credit union.  Anyone who is a partner saving toward the plan’s goal can see account balance, contribution history and transactions, as well as make contributions. This transparency builds trust between plan members, since they know how the money is being saved and used for the right purpose.  Because it also comes with a private social network, plan partners also can send private or group messages to each other, post photos or videos and keep others informed about the goal and ultimately how the funds get used.

The key benefits for banks or credit unions using VestMatch’s Collaborative Savings tool are relationship expansion, customer retention and new customer acquisition.  Since users invite others to join with them to save for a goal, the people who are invited to join are likely not to be customers of the bank or credit union, but now they become a highly-qualified prospect.

We can deliver a private-label tool within just a few weeks, and we do it with minimal impact on bank technology.  We create a separate site for the bank, and interact with the bank’s systems in just a few ways:  to handle contributions and to update balances nightly.   If required, we can use third parties to do one or both of these functions as well.  The marketing team at the bank or credit union work with us to design the home page copy, look and feel, and we incorporate that through the site.   We then provide ongoing reporting to the marketing team on users, assets, contributions, etc.  The marketing team can work with us to deliver cross-promotional messages to users either through the tool’s messaging service or as a separate e-mail marketing campaign.

If you are interested in finding out more, just drop Matt Sadler a line at matt@vestmatch.com.