We were recently contacted for answering fin-tech questions related to Mobile apps. Below are questions answered by our Founder & CEO- Manoj Chahar.
1) How many of your users (percentage terms) use the app?
Moneyfrog Mobile-App is used by all our customers (100% usage), averaging once a week, with count going higher per week, whenever the market is volatile.
2) Do you see the app usage increasing in coming times?
YES. With changing lifestyle and increased smartphone penetration, the Mobile-App’s will take precedence over web& human-touch. And with smart functionalities like alerts, reviews, notifications, advisory chat & many more new-age features, usage will only multiply. For instance, chat-bots will supplement human-touch for mundane tasks.
3) What are the benefits of investing through the app as against on the web?
None. Investing (execution – buy/sell) thru Mobile-App is a fad or just a marketing gimmick. One needs to understand, investing is unlike buying a smartphone thru e-commerce sites, or even need based financial products, like insurance (term/car) or loans.
Mobile-App complements (or adds value) to the investment account, thru the value-adds like funds tracking, alerts, notifications, advisory chat, reviews etc. Also investing in Mutual funds (buy or even sell) is a one-off process, which is like once (or few times) in a year. Therefore, execution services thru Mobile-App is just not an attraction, it’s one of the features.
4) What should investors be cautious about before using investment apps?
There are two kinds of investment Apps; first-one is for DIY investors (do-it-yourself), or the kinds, who understands investments (has the necessary know-how), and can research on their own (without any external help). Most of the market offerings currently, are for this category, i.e. for DIY investors, where one can short-list funds based on multiple filters, or help in the form of star-rated reviews & final execution within 10 minutes.
The second one is for ING investors (I-need-guidance), or the kinds, who needs advisory help to hand-hold and Mobile-App serves as enablers, towards portfolio tracking, comparisons, alerts, reviews, instant-chats etc. It also includes execution services.
Therefore, the investor should decide,which category they fall under? DIY or ING? … If DIY, they should opt for “Execution App’s”, and if it’s ING, they should opt for “Support App’s” or wealth services.
Also, they should understand the meaning of Free and Paid services? As Free will always have catch hidden somewhere😉.
5) Do you engage in financial literacy to ensure that the investors make the right decisions?
YES, across the value chain, from customer sourcing, to on-boarding, to plans & reviews, it’s all about financial literacy. Ours is a hybrid model, where we have qualified advisors, who interact with customers on a regular basis, thru our proprietary rule-based CRM. That’s one of the reasons, why we have a high usage/stickiness &also high ticket size per customer.
6) What is unique about your app as compared to your competitors?
We offer our customers wealth management services, which is very comprehensive, thru our hybrid model of online services & human-touch. Moneyfrog Mobile-App helps in complementing the online services, with hosts of features to support wealth services.We are work in progress, in-short, adding new features regularly.
He is an expert with numbers. Formulas & analytics.