linkedin tracking
icon-sprite Created with Sketch.
Skip to main content

Financial Services Enemy #1:

Friction

A new bar has been set


2020 accelerated the self-service economy, advancing a growing problem in the financial services industry - Friction.

Unnecessary friction with customers can stem from a number of failings, like poor UX, lack of product transparency, or failing to leverage customer and market data. The end result for the customer might be a branch experience inconsistent with the online expectations, a burdensome onboarding process that leads to abandonment, or a retirement planning experience that fails to engage or motivate; all of this friction leads to frustration that will sour your growth, erode customer loyalty, and present opportunities for competitors.

Disruptive companies are identifying these opportunities, smoothing out the friction, and creating lightning-fast experiences that drive higher customer loyalty and steal your customers. And another major threat is looming from the masters of online engagement and customer loyalty... Big Tech. When they really lean in, the financial industry needs to be ready.

Winners
Winners
Crosshairs
Crosshairs

Our work touches over 20 million 401k participants and drives sales for multiple top 10 retirement providers.

What might the future bring?

Imagine a bank that makes onboarding a snap, uses machine learning to understand your spending behaviors and financial goals, and then proactively predicts your monthly expenses to help balance your checkbook and find new ways for you to save.

Picture a sales experience augmented by real-time language, market data and machine learning to help tailor ideal solutions to ensure your sales team delivers a differentiating, consultative experience to prospects.

Or what about a credit union that links you with other members for seamless, peer-to-peer lending? Next, it uses your location to provide financial incentives to eat or shop in partner merchants that will put money back into your rewards account every month?

Cantina Logo

We understand your problem space

For nearly 20 years, Cantina has been working with prominent financial services firms to streamline and strengthen relationships with their customers. At the key points of friction, our design expertise has helped clients transform 401k plan sales, simplify onboarding for retirement providers and credit unions, educate and empower over 20 million retirement participants, and much more.

In this unique point in time, financial services businesses have so much opportunity to help consumers better spend, save, acquire, insure, and retire. Someone is going to see that opportunity. We can help it be you.

Cantina Logo

Can Peleton revolutionize retirement?


Despite extensive tax-deferred savings programs and generous company matches, many Americans still don’t save enough for retirement. Charles Schwab wanted to change this for their participants and asked Cantina for new thinking to this generational problem.

Cantina launched a near decade-long relationship that still continues, by recommending a new approach to spark interest and drive retirement savings: competition. Cantina proposed Peer Comparison as a key component of Schwab’s online experience. This puts participants into theoretical competition with others in their peer set. Like other connected tools that rely on performance motivations, Peloton, for instance, this solution pits one person’s savings patterns against the backdrop of other investors looking to do better.

To make it happen, Cantina developed a robust peer-generation engine that uses three factors—age, salary, and savings rate—to create a real, tightly ranged “peer set”. Once a peer group is established, a participant can see precisely where they stand within the group on each measure, as well as where their peers live and what they do.

Schwab
Like Peloton, Crossfit and other peer-driven phenomenon, we believe Peer Comparison has a future in retirement planning
See case study

Starting from Scratch to Create the World’s Next Retirement Giant


When three retirement service giants came together to create Empower Retirement there was no legacy to preserve. Empower’s size and scale created the opportunity to set a new standard in sales, investor experience, and customer service. Empower Retirement partnered with Cantina to imagine and build a new kind of retirement planning experience. By 2021 the partnership had produced:

  • A cutting-edge online experience for Empower’s more than 8 million 401(k) participants

  • Android, iOS and Apple Watch apps that engage participants through multiple channels

  • Revenue-generating sales tools for advisors that make plan sponsors more efficient and extend Empower’s value

Empower
Online experience for more than 8 million 401(k) participants
See case study

“Show, Don’t Tell / Swiss Army Knife” Turbocharges Sales


The world’s leading 401(k) provider needed a better way to communicate value to small to mid-sized 401k plan prospects and turbocharge their sales. Enter Cantina.

As a market leader in fund offerings, plan design options, customer service and cost, Fidelity had a wealth of market data waiting to be leveraged. Cantina’s team brought this data to life through illustrative data visuals that use Amazon Web Services and integrate with real-time market data to help make Fidelity’s case.

Referred to internally as a “Swiss Army knife” due to its broad applicability and flexible design, the PlanExam boosts the effectiveness of each Fidelity account executive by arming them with the data and key talking points necessary to execute consultative sales sessions. Successful sales-enablement tools help turn full sales teams into “A players”, and the PlanExam is a perfect example of such a tool.

Fidelity
Fidelity account executives have run over 25,000 PlanExams for prospects since 2015
DRIVING 401K ENGAGEMENT

Can Peleton revolutionize retirement?


Despite extensive tax-deferred savings programs and generous company matches, many Americans still don’t save enough for retirement. Charles Schwab wanted to change this for their participants and asked Cantina for new thinking to this generational problem.

Cantina launched a near decade-long relationship that still continues, by recommending a new approach to spark interest and drive retirement savings: competition. Cantina proposed Peer Comparison as a key component of Schwab’s online experience. This puts participants into theoretical competition with others in their peer set. Like other connected tools that rely on performance motivations, Peloton, for instance, this solution pits one person’s savings patterns against the backdrop of other investors looking to do better.

To make it happen, Cantina developed a robust peer-generation engine that uses three factors—age, salary, and savings rate—to create a real, tightly ranged “peer set”. Once a peer group is established, a participant can see precisely where they stand within the group on each measure, as well as where their peers live and what they do.

Schwab
Like Peloton, Crossfit and other peer-driven phenomenon, we believe Peer Comparison has a future in retirement planning
See case study
BUILDING A BRAND

Starting from Scratch to Create the World’s Next Retirement Giant


When three retirement service giants came together to create Empower Retirement there was no legacy to preserve. Empower’s size and scale created the opportunity to set a new standard in sales, investor experience, and customer service. Empower Retirement partnered with Cantina to imagine and build a new kind of retirement planning experience. By 2021 the partnership had produced:

  • A cutting-edge online experience for Empower’s more than 8 million 401(k) participants

  • Android, iOS and Apple Watch apps that engage participants through multiple channels

  • Revenue-generating sales tools for advisors that make plan sponsors more efficient and extend Empower’s value

Empower
Online experience for more than 8 million 401(k) participants
See case study
ARMING A SALES TEAM

“Show, Don’t Tell / Swiss Army Knife” Turbocharges Sales


The world’s leading 401(k) provider needed a better way to communicate value to small to mid-sized 401k plan prospects and turbocharge their sales. Enter Cantina.

As a market leader in fund offerings, plan design options, customer service and cost, Fidelity had a wealth of market data waiting to be leveraged. Cantina’s team brought this data to life through illustrative data visuals that use Amazon Web Services and integrate with real-time market data to help make Fidelity’s case.

Referred to internally as a “Swiss Army knife” due to its broad applicability and flexible design, the PlanExam boosts the effectiveness of each Fidelity account executive by arming them with the data and key talking points necessary to execute consultative sales sessions. Successful sales-enablement tools help turn full sales teams into “A players”, and the PlanExam is a perfect example of such a tool.

Fidelity
Fidelity account executives have run over 25,000 PlanExams for prospects since 2015

"With Cantina, Putnam and Empower have created some of the most differentiated, elegant, innovative user experiences in the industry"

Paul O'Connell

Director of Digital Products and Analytics

Empower logo

Differentiate through design

Learn how we leverage Service Design to create compelling user experiences for our financial services clients.


By signing up you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy. You can withdraw consent at any time.

Contact us

Need help with reducing friction?

Speak with one of our financial services industry experts today.

Thank you! Your message has been sent!

We’ll be in touch.

Want to know more about Cantina? Check out our latest insights or join us at one of our upcoming events.