In June 2017, U.S. Bank and Envestnet | Yodlee co-hosted a hackathon competition for internal developers from U.S. Bank to come up with new ideas surrounding retail banking and personal finance.
The idea was to create "mashables" using U.S. Bank and Envestnet | Yodlee APIs to further help U.S. Bank and its customers. The teams were granted access to Envestnet | Yodlee’s developer portal, including our Account Verification API and Aggregation API. These APIs help developers verify the existence of their users' financial accounts, and grant them access to accounts for use in personal financial wellness, wealth management, and retail banking applications, etc. The competition was held at U.S. Bank headquarters in Minneapolis, and our developer staff were available on-site to answer questions and provide technical assistance to the hackathon participants.
Six teams participated in the hackathon, and the top three teams were awarded prizes. One team, YoBank, even went so far as to make a commercial, explaining their concept of earning cash back for spending with particular businesses and getting rewarded for their loyalty. Their idea would create opportunities for new revenue streams through regional and national partnerships with businesses in all industries to create customized offerings for customers based on their spending habits.
The winner was actually a single developer, Team Tim, who proposed using data from Envestnet | Yodlee to allow bankers (or individual users) to segment a customer based on their assets and liabilities, and then determine what product mix other customers in that segment would normally have. The banker could then offer additional products to benefit the customer.
Using Envestnet | Yodlee APIs, plus our machine learning and AI capabilities, this could help the bank identify smaller segments of customers, predict how a mix of products could benefit them, and then make customized recommendations based on an individual's particular financial situation and spending habits. This is an ideal way for customers to learn about new products a bank offers or even a particular product they were unaware of. A third team, Team CWS, created the U.S. Bank Financial Goal Tracker as a way for users to set financial goals, such as saving for a new car, and predicting when they should reach the desired amount needed for that goal.
The product would identify an end date for reaching that goal based on intended activity, such as saving $500 per month. It could then also change the goal date based on actual activity, such as saving $750 one month and $300 the following month. A product like this is ideal for people who want to save for future goals, and want to be able to track their progress towards that goal, using U.S. Bank account information.
To find out how to use Envestnet | Yodlee APIs to securely access over 16,000 data sources covering all types of financial products including checking, savings, credit card, loan, mortgage, brokerage and 401K accounts, visit https://developer.yodlee.com/Yodlee_API.
