Embedded Finance…move towards the ball.

Rugby, basketball, football…even FIFA 20 all drill the importance of moving towards the ball. It reduces the chance of an intercept and puts pace into the game.

Embedded Finance is the financial services industry solution to the intercept problem, encouraging brands to ‘move towards the ball’ by embedding financial services into the core of their business. It enables any brand or retailer to integrate financial products quickly and simply into their product offering.

It’s all about customer experience.

Today, consumers get well into a purchase journey for perhaps a car, holiday, motorbike, wedding, or home improvement and hit a hard financing STOP. They are big purchases and there is a need to spread the cost. A whole new- often opaque and time consuming- buying journey for the finance begins.

Not easy, not simple.

Take the example of a business that retails windows. They invest in their brand and work hard on customer experience. The problem is there is either no finance option- leaving the customer to fend for themselves- or there is a hand-off to a third party who has their own way of doing things. Fingers crossed the customer finds their way (and back) and the third-party experience aligns.

That got me thinking…

The example of buying windows doesn’t follow search, consider, quote, apply, credit, payment and buy as a single journey. A buying journey is more organic where it’s common to go through many search and consideration stages, and that may mean revisiting the finance quote amount, adding a different product or perhaps changing the loan term several times. Why is it that each time you return it seems like you have to start the process again?

Wouldn’t it be great if the product and finance journey were personalised, flexible and a single branded experience? Stay in the same journey, same look and feel- fully integrated.

Reduce the intercept- move towards the ball.