Over the weekend, my niece who recently graduated from college was asking for my advice about doing some community service. She received a grant that would allow her to work anywhere in the country, so she asked me “Where do people need the most help?”. Should she go to a rural impoverished area? Big city facing gentrification? Southern state? Disaster prone area? As the VP of Data Integrity at SpringFour, I am often asked how we decide where to offer financial health resources. 

While the economy and the job market have boomed in the post-financial crisis period, Americans living in “distressed” zip codes are struggling to find stability. These zip codes are increasingly rural and suffer from low job creation and crippling levels of student debt. 

But while high income areas in Coastal and Northern cities may seem ideal, states experiencing the most economic boom are also the communities with the highest numbers of people who are living paycheck to paycheck. They are facing housing shortages and an affordability crisis that has led to historic numbers of working families that can’t afford basic needs and levels of homelessness that remain stubbornly high despite economic growth. Nationwide middle class people are falling deeper into debt just to afford a middle class lifestyle.

So the answer is; people need the most help everywhere. That’s a pretty grim picture to paint for a young person looking to make an impact on her own. But it also gets to the heart of our mission at SpringFour, the simplicity and accessibility of the products we offer, and how we approach building our proprietary database of financial health resources. We understand that serving America’s diversity means investing our research and development efforts all over the map. Our annual growth plan considers a variety of factors including population size, community needs, and market availability. 

Nationwide coverage means that we provide the best curated and vetted financial health resources to as many people as possible, and we work every day to grow that number. 

That’s why we are pleased to announce that SpringFour offers full coverage in 475 cities in 175 Metro Areas. If resources are not available in a rural zip code, we offer statewide and national resources that can help people by phone or online. No matter where a person lives, we want them to be able to find help through SpringFour. 

Don’t see your service area on the coverage map? We work with our subscribers to add resources where their customers need them most. 

The best thing about our work at SpringFour is that we aren’t doing this on our own. We work with dozens of companies and nonprofits to provide real impact with over 1 million financial health referrals made annually. Our subscribers understand that it’s more important than ever to have a presence in as many communities as possible, not only because it helps their bottom line, but because underbanked communities and the people who call these neighborhoods home deserve access to transparent lending products, asset development tools, and ways to save. 

If you’d like information about how SpringFour is helping leading Financial Institutions, FinTechs, and Nonprofits see results nationwide let us know. We’d love to chat . 

Cassandra Compton

Vice President, Data Integrity & User Experience, SpringFour Inc.

We are excited to announce that SpringFour and BMO Harris Bank have been named a finalist for the 2019 BAI Global Innovation Awards for our partnership.

Facilitated by BAI—a nonprofit, independent organization that delivers the financial services industry’s most actionable insights—the BAI Global Innovation Awards honor the most transformative solutions in the financial services industry worldwide.

Now in its ninth year, the BAI Global Innovation Awards recognizes leading financial services organizations on a global scale. Through hundreds of applications, the Innovation Circle, a panel of global financial services innovation leaders who thoroughly review each application, determined the top submissions. The judges weigh each innovation on originality and impact on consumers and the industry. This year’s finalists showcase what leading financial services innovators in all regions of the world are doing to deliver new value to customers and employees, as well as improve efficiencies and profitability for their organizations.

We are honored to have been chosen as a finalist for Innovation in Societal and Community Impact together with BMO Harris Bank. Together, SpringFour and BMO Harris Bank have increased opportunities for financial health and have helped BMO Harris Bank customers get back on track with their payments. 

As a Certified B Corporation, we are extra proud to be named a finalist in this category. Every day our team works to ensure that people who are struggling financially have the help they need and deserve to get back on track. Thank you to BAI and to the judges for recognizing our work. 

To learn more about our partnership and why our work was recognized, read here.

Read the BAI Press Release for the awards here.

Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey

Co-Founder & CEO, SpringFour Inc.

Since our participation in the BMO Harris/1871 Fintech Partnership Program and the official deployment of SpringFour applications at the Bank in August of 2018, SpringFour and BMO Harris have had a fantastic partnership.

BMO Harris collections agents embraced the use of SpringFour right out of the gate.  With consistent use on every call, this team quickly experienced tremendous results that allowed them to be more effective. Customers were pleased to be offered assistance, and collections agents were thrilled to have a tool providing for immediate and actionable help.

In March of 2019, we partnered with BMO Harris Bank to survey their collections agents to better understand their experience. And the responses were overwhelmingly positive:

* 95% of agents agreed that S4pro is easy to use.

* 94% of agents agreed that S4pro allows them to provide referrals to high-quality, local financial wellness resources for BMO Harris Bank customers.

* 86% of agents agreed that using S4pro has improved their ability to provide better customer service.

* 90% agreed that BMO Harris Bank customers appreciate the referrals they receive from S4pro.

After receiving such positive survey responses, we wanted to go more in-depth to learn about the collectors’ SpringFour experiences, and gain insight into what about SpringFour was enriching the experience and creating successful outcomes for the bank and its customers. We sat down with Jennifer Mota (pictured above), Sr. Manager for the U.S. Collections Call Center, to discuss our uniquely successful relationship. Here is what she said:

We began by talking about what working with SpringFour overall has been like:

Q: Many established financial institutions experience difficulty working with Fintechs because of challenges with integration, compliance, and scale.  Is this your first experience working with a Fintech solution? If so, how has your experience been? 

A: “This is not my first experience working with Fintechs. The experience (with SpringFour) has been flawless with open lines of communication and quick responses to help guide us through set up, maintenance of program, and issues or suggestions.”

Q: Why do you think BMO Harris makes a good partner for a Fintech like SpringFour?

A: “I believe that the open lines of communication, allowing feedback, and suggestions builds a stronger partnership.  We have provided feedback and requests for changes to program selections based on what our customers are asking for and SpringFour has been quick to listen and implement changes. The communication and openness to hear feedback has been outstanding.  The support we receive from SpringFour has been second to none.” 

Q: What were you most excited about in bringing SpringFour applications to your collections team?

A: “The most exciting part has been the opportunity to provide our customers with additional assistance that was not available prior to implementation.  Our goal is to reduce delinquency and assist our customers on finding solutions to rectify any hardships.”

We then dove into how Jennifer’s agents feel about the S4pro tool, and how it has changed their interactions with customers:

Q: How has SpringFour changed the conversations your collectors are having with customers, and do you have a specific example that shows how these conversations are changing?

A: “Conversations with our customers have changed as we have increased our range of services that may provide assistance.  One specific example is an agent spoke with a customer who was delinquent due to losing their job.  That agent provided several SpringFour referrals.  We spoke with the customer again a few months later and he had advised us that he had fallen behind on his payments due to losing his job, but was going to be starting a new job soon due to the referral that we provided through SpringFour.  The customer has since caught up on past due payments.”

Q: What are you hearing from members of your team about SpringFour? 

A: “They are relieved that there is an opportunity to help our customers with the referrals and providing assistance makes the calls much easier.”

Q: BMO executives have shared that SpringFour is a win win for the bank. Can you tell us more about how you see this play out in your daily experience with SpringFour applications?

A: “Even if we haven’t identified a hardship when speaking with a customer, most of my agents will still offer it.  Offering SpringFour has opened up communication between our agents and customers. The application is extremely easy to use which allows my agents to move through their calls.”

And finally, we talked about how BMO Harris customers have responded to receiving referrals through SpringFour:

Q: What are you hearing from your customers?

A: “I think our customers are shocked that we are providing assistance and not just demanding money.  Many have thanked us for offering potential solutions that other institutions are not offering.”

Thank you to BMO Harris Bank, and to Jennifer Mota, for sharing their insights and experience with us. By taking the time to document and share user experiences, we are helping to shine the spotlight on how Fintech and bank partnerships can work together to successfully move the needle and positively impact the lives of so many individuals and families living paycheck to paycheck.

Katie Gottschall Donohue

Vice President, Strategy and Customer Engagement, SpringFour