Nationwide vs Monzo: Tracking Savings Goals
Time to budget for your next beach holiday (or city break if that’s what you’re into). To help, Nationwide’s launched a new ‘Savings Goals’ feature for its mobile banking app. It prompts customers to set a specific financial goal to reach at a particular date. Let’s take a look at this new feature, and see how it compares to Monzo’s ‘Savings Target.’
Time to budget for your next beach holiday (or city break if that’s what you’re into). To help, Nationwide’s launched a new ‘Savings Goals’ feature for its mobile banking app. It prompts customers to set a specific financial goal to reach at a particular date. Let’s take a look at this new feature, and see how it compares to Monzo’s ‘Savings Target.’
So let’s dissect the new feature from Nationwide.
Findability: While I received a prompt informing me of the new feature after logging into the app, there’s no link to access the goals in the main navigation or landing page. However, there is a clear indication this is a new feature on the dedicated savings account page. It will be interesting to see if Nationwide establishes a dedicated savings hub if they roll out additional savings features.
Intuition: The first page prompted me to set a goal, so I typed in £500. Then I received an error message to enter a valid amount. What? I finally figured out (after contacting the bank for help) that the goal is actually the total account balance you want to achieve at a certain point in time. Ah ha! I already had more than £500 in my account, so the goal couldn’t be less than that. The rest of the set up was straightforward. I set a date and a financial goal and received an instant breakdown of how much I needed to save on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to achieve my goal.
Personalisation: Customers can add a photo to the savings goal (holiday beach inspiration!). However, they’re a list of pre-set pictures. Most savings goal features allow customers to upload a custom image. The images are pretty soothing, though, so not the end of the world.
Management: Once the savings goal is set up, customers can top up their goal—essentially an inter-account transfer—and change or remove their goal.
Presentation: When a goal is set up, a progress bar displays on the landing page under the associated account. There’s a nice overview and breakdown via the same dedicated goals tab on the page.
Presentation: When a goal is set up, a progress bar displays on the landing page under the associated account. There’s a nice overview and breakdown via the same dedicated goals tab on the page.
Stickiness: Personally, the goal I set up sticks in my mind. I think about the different ways I can save my suggested £10 a day to meet my goal. And the ability to quickly transfer money from my current account to savings account via Impulse Savings is a handy feature.
Now let’s have a look at how Monzo manages goals.
Findability: Savings Target is found via the spend tab in the top right corner. It isn’t entirely easy to discover but the placement of the link is logical.
Intuition: When setting up the targets, Monzo clearly outlines how this works. They informed me how much I spend on a monthly basis in different categories, and I can amend these targets by clicking on the plus or minus buttons.
Personalisation: Intelligent info about typical monthly spend.
Management: Customers can easily amend the amounts via the targets tab, again by clicking on the plus or minus icons.
Presentation: When a goal is set up, a progress bar shows on the dedicated spending page. I can see how much I have left to spend and how much has been spent. The amount spent is in black font—red would stand out more.
Stickiness: These goals are a great reference point to see how much I am spending per month or in a particular category. The focus here is more on the short term (monthly) then long-term behavior change.
Conclusion
Can a bank PLEASE combine these two features into one app?! Monzo’s personalisation and analysis make it so easy to set up goals. With Nationwide, the ability to see how small spending changes over time add up really encourages behaviour change (I am already planning how I can cut down my smashed avocado on sourdough intake!).