WHY SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR

Michael Mansard, Principal Director – Subscription Strategy at  Zuora

 

The business world is wondering: what does post-pandemic growth look like?

A phenomenon known as the “Subscription Economy” might give us a clue. This term describes a new business model where customers pay a recurring fee at regular intervals — weekly, monthly, yearly, or just based on a customer’s usage — to access a product or service.

Unlike the more well-known “Product Economy”, which relies on one-off transactions, subscription business models are built around generating stronger lifetime customer value.

For the financial services sector, this could mean more opportunities to upsell and cross sell services to customers, helping to reduce customer churn and to unlock new revenue streams.  Amid a decade of challenging regulatory frameworks, a wave of digital disruptors, failure to pivot business models accordingly could spell the end for many businesses operating within the financial services industry.

 

Signing up to the Subscription Economy

The subscription economy is just getting started, and use cases are likely to continue evolving as the technology develops to meet demand. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, many digital-based subscription business models fared well due to their promise of convenience and strong business continuity. Research from our recent Subscription Economy Index has shown that companies that embraced subscription-based models grew at 400% on average over the last 8.5 years, outpacing S&P 500 revenues by almost 6x during the pandemic last year.

One of the recurring success factors for these organisations across the board is personalisation – those that embrace customer-centric business practices prevail over those that don’t.

Tailoring a product or service to a customer’s needs in a time of immense change is a sure-fire way to gain loyalty and win over those who previously favoured more traditional financial organisations.

Subscriptions also help cast a wider net to expand an organisation’s addressable market. Financial services companies can expand their addressable market by making their products and services more affordable, not necessarily by reducing the overall cost, but by allowing customers to spread their payments over a longer time period. Given their ability to grow user bases, subscriptions can boost revenue growth in the long run.

 

Accelerating digital transformation with subscription services

Though the transition to the Subscription Economy is still in its infancy for the financial services industry, we are seeing significant traction from organisations in this area, outlined in our recent whitepaper, A new formula for growth for The Financial Services Industry (FSI).

Multinational wealth management and financial advisory company, Charles Schwab, for instance, shifted to the subscription model on just one of their product lines. Charles Schwab automated investing to build and manage clients’ portfolios for $30/ month fee for accounts with at least $25,000, and in doing so brought in $1B in new client assets, primarily from younger investors.

Financial services company Wells Fargo took a slightly different approach, leveraging subscription services to develop a hybrid digital advice platform. The service provides access to both a robo-advisor and human advisor through an annual subscription model which was recently lowered to 0.35%, with the aim to attract more mass and emerging affluent clients taking their first steps into investing.

Insurance provider Metromile, on the other hand, used their subscription model to offer pay-per-mile car insurance through its driving app, basing pricing on usage in addition to a monthly base rate. Metromile claims that the service allows its customers to save on average $741/year.

Meanwhile, in the B2B space, Serai (by HSBC) leverages HSBC’s trade banking client network, connecting buyers and sellers around the world and helping them to simplify the complexities of international trade. For “high touch” B2B offerings, the sales force is a crucial building block of sales strategy.

Since most established FSI players are using the same operating models they’ve used for decades, a shift to a completely new approach can seem daunting. Industry transformations are never fast, and never easy. But the good news is that financial services companies don’t have to dive in and completely change their business model to reap the benefits: new revenue streams, churn reduction, upsell and cross-sell to name a few.

Transitioning to the Subscription Economy can be an iterative, try-and-learn approach. That said, in a time of upheaval and rapid industry changes, financial services companies can’t afford to ponder the relative merits of the Subscription Economy for their business. Industry leaders need to be asking not if, but how they can adopt subscription models to position their organisation for growth and success.

 

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