Bó by NatWest is a new banking service. It seeks to refresh the culture and logic that traditional institutions and new entrants still operate under. It’s a companion bank account for people’s everyday spending that adapts to each user’s individual situation to help them create healthier financial habits, and learn more about money along the way. Bó is a Living Service that responds to a global, human need – to “do money better.”
The joint Bó and Fjord team’s intent has been to form a relationship with each customer, and to mold a service that responds to their personal needs with a self-learning system that gets smarter across time: Bó is a Living Service. A deep knowledge of human behavior and volumes of carefully managed data sit behind Bó’s ability to offer a truly personalized service that treats each person as an individual.
The first paragraph alone makes me want to vomit. A “Living Service that responds to a global, human need”?! Who got paid to write that rubbish?
Surely would be more accurate to say “Our craven attempt to grab a slice of the Fintech sector”.
Wasn’t there a genuine fintech company that RBS ran down in order to move the most important people into Bo to help build their faux fintech technology instead? ETA: yes, Loot.
Yes, they’re explicitly intending to be a prepaid/companion “spending & budgeting” accounts rather than a replacement for main incumbent accounts which is logical to me.
@HoldenCarver your overreaction is rather strong. It’s just more competition & choice which is good for consumers. I welcome this.
I stand by it. I think that their fancy words are effectively meaningless, in the same way that Goop can using fancy words to make it sound like steaming your fanny is a good thing - it doesn’t make it true. And as for the part about shutting down Loot and stealing the best staff for Bo? That’s factually correct, simple as.
That you disagree with my outlook, fair enough. But to go straight to characterising me as ‘overreacting’ is I think skirting dangerously close to a line.
That’s quite some spin to say the least. Fact of the matter is Loot was a failure: aimed at students who didn’t use it; they use Monzo, Revolut or Starling invariably as they did everything Loot did and more. To suggest RBS was obligated to rescue it by providing good money after bad is ludicrous. RBS as saving grace for their prior investment now at least have some form of return in the form of their staff, so I think both parties can be satisfied with the outcome of that inevitable demise.
“Living Service” seems to be a Fjord thing - I hope that the copy for customers would be clearer. Yes, some of the copywriting is a pretty flabby but I thought this third sentence was ok, just needed a couple more rewrites:
This is a bit more clearer for the customer that’s also in the article:
We’ve designed Bó to offer its customers a more intelligent bank account that can work together with people to help them recognize and change their regular financial habits for the better.
Control stays in the customer’s hands, and all the decisions are their own. Bó prompts them to make those decisions wisely and regularly, so that they gradually shift their behavior to a model that will help them to clear down debt and accrue savings.
