Sherry Fairchok

A look backward: Six years after the release of the innovative Nonfiction Research report “The Secret Financial Lives of Americans,” the financial anxieties it explored in such vivid detail still persist among US consumers. But it’s unclear whether financial institutions (FIs) are ready yet to heed what the report’s authors called the “Hurricane Katrina-level” warning that modernization of financial services must come, not just through technology, but through customer-centric services.

The news: A consultant from Bain & Company first introduced the concept of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in 2003 through a Harvard Business Review article. This year, Bain is collaborating on an update aimed at establishing a better set of standards for benchmarking excellence in the customer experience. Along with the marketing consultancy Kantar and the customer experience platform provider Qualtrics, Bain drafted the Global Customer Experience Standard.

Two factors are converging to drive improvements in PFM tool functions and make them a bigger factor in customer satisfaction and retention. Open banking will let consumers assemble a complete, detailed view of their financial lives Consumers want to see all of their financial data in one place. Seventy-five percent of US bank customers find it useful when their bank shows the balances of their external accounts, per a May 2024 J.D. Power survey.