BNP Paribas' mobile bank will be expanding its range of offerings over the next few months in order to become profitable. Indeed, since its creation in 2013, the neobank has been unable to find its place in the French market.
In an interview with Les Echos newspaper, parent company CEO Thierry Laborde stresses the need for Hello Bank! to differentiate itself. The online bank's objective: to be profitable by 2022.
BNP Paribas' mobile bank evolves its model
While some online banks, such as Boursorama Banque, continue to build on their momentum, hoping to attract enough customers to break even, others, such as ING and Fortuneo, are focusing more on the customer experience. In a recent interview, Thierry Laborde seems to have made the same point, indicating that while Nickel is already profitable with 1.3 million customers, as is BNP Paribas' retail bank, this is not the case for Hello Bank! which needs to differentiate itself.
As a reminder, Hello Bank! had nearly 448,000 customers at the end of March 2019 in France and 3 million customers in all countries combined. However, its efforts have not enabled it to catch up with market leaders Boursorama Banque (1.7 million customers) and ING (1 million customers).
New offers for micro-entrepreneurs
The change in business model announced by the BNP Paribas subsidiary involves refocusing its offer on the self-employed. The online bank is thus moving away from retail banking to focus on new customer categories. The parent company's deputy CEO has also announced that these new personalized offers will be launched at the end of the year, without necessarily being supported by welcome bonuses, with the aim of reducing costs.
A robot investor for young investors
Another new feature scheduled for this summer is the launch of a robotic investor called "Hello fins! This is a simple, high-performance and transparent online discretionary management service. Available for investments of 1,000 euros or more, with fees of 1% on all assets under management and performance figures that can be consulted online, Hello fins offers Millennials the chance to invest for the long term. In concrete terms, after completing an online questionnaire and defining their investor profile, customers sign a discretionary management mandate. In other words, they entrust their money to the robot-investor, who then simply monitors the evolution of their portfolio using the online tools provided, an ideal solution for savers with insufficient knowledge.
Customers can familiarize themselves with the Hello fins robot by testing it free of charge, without investing any money, for as long as they like. The new service also includes product sheets for novice investors.
It remains to be seen whether these projects will be enough to enable Hello Bank! to become profitable by 2022 and win over more users.