Changing habits is not an easy task, especially when we're talking about the finances. For most people, financial health seems like a distant dream, achievable only for those with more money. That's why information alone on how to maintain good financial habits is not a guarantee of behavior change.

But how can we change behavior for good?

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When we started studying how we make decisions, we quickly realized that information alone is not capable of changing behavior in the long term. And I can prove you: We all know that exercising is good for health, but it doesn't stop us from feeling lazy or not prioritizing an exercise routine. It's a fact that sugar isn't good for us, but we cannot resist dessert... Having good financial habits follows this same logic; most people know that it is best for them to pay the credit card on time and have an emergency fund, but shopping brings immediate pleasure, while financial health is a long-term pleasure. Flourish Fi technology was studied by two American professors, Simon J Blanchard from Georgetown University and Mike Palazzolo from the University of California, Davis, to understand how our we change habits. The study was based on data provided by one of our clients during a temporary withdrawal of Flourish technology from the app.

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How does Flourish Fi technology work:

Flourish Fi's technology is modular and can be combined in various ways according to the business goals of each financial institution. In the case that was analyzed by the professors in the study, our partnership aimed to increase the usage of the bank's digital channels, encouraging online bill payments, on-time payments, and daily use of the app.

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The research observed the users' behavior of those who interacted with Flourish Fi's technology for two months prior to an abrupt interruption of six months without gamified journeys within the banking app.

Two months before the interruption:

The research showed that within the first 30 days of using Flourish Fi's gamified journeys, users started accessing the bank's app more frequently:

  •  78% of users accessed the app more than once a week, with an average of 4 accesses per week.

On-time payments began to rise in the second month of using Flourish Fi's technology. Within 60 days of using Flourish's journeys:

  • users increased bill payments on the app by 26% and saw a 145% increase in loan payments compared to the first month of use.

What happened when the gamified journeys stopped:

With the pause of the engagement journeys,  a 21% decrease in users accessing the bank's app daily was observed. Online bill payments dropped by 48%, and on-time loan payments decreased by 36%.

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Changing long term habits: 

Flourish Fi's technology aims for effective habit change, incentivizing people to adopt good financial habits. Our mission was proved true during the professors' research.

When users were divided into three groups based on their usage time of the gamified journeys: The first group had been using the gamified journeys for a maximum of four weeks before the technology was removed from the app. The second group had been interacting with Flourish Fi's technology for between five and eight weeks. And the third group had interacted with the technology for more than nine weeks.

Users in the first group, who used our technology for a shorter time, experienced an 8.5% reduction in the number of times they accessed the app. This percentage nearly halved when looking at users in group 3, who interacted with the technology for a longer period, experiencing a decrease of approximately 4.5% in logins.

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Check out the full academic paper

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