Ally Bank is all about appealing to its “digitally savvy” millennial customers base, says CEO Diane Morais. And rightfully so, since millennials now comprise nearly half – 48% – of the digital bank’s customer base.
In that spirit, Ally is focusing its efforts on digital wealth management and credit cards, Morais said at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference this morning.
Since we have completed the acquisition of TradeKing, we have been hard at work integrating their team and platform. We believe wealth management is a natural extension of our deposits business. We are working on integrating a new automated online product, and I don’t love the word robo-advisory, but that’s what people call them.
The bank believes the new digital product will particularly appeal to its younger demographic of customers. But overall, Morais said, the mobile and online usage has been steadily growing. Currently, 30% of Ally’s customers have active mobile accounts, and 68% use the bank’s web portal.
The wealth management space is competitive, Morais said, but the acquisition of TradeKing was still a timely decision.
There is going to be a lot of dislocation in that space for a lot of reasons, but we expect a healthy movement for us, with TradeKing being well-positioned digitally. With the automated product, we are looking to tap the newer investors, who may not want to communicate with a human necessarily, and it just seems like a logical extension.
In addition to wealth management, the bank is now working on the launch of the Ally Bank credit card, yet again, targeting the millennial customers that already have a deposit account with the bank. “More than 85% of our customers are using credit cards today, and it has been our number one requested product for a while now,” she said. “We are going to do a big flash at the launch, and are anxious to get it in the hands of our customers very soon.”
Expect some clever ads around that launch.