Today I share an example of Slingshot-like innovation from the financial sector. Overstepping traditional boundaries of banking, Fifth Third Bank is acting to prepare and help under-employed customers to find jobs, and avoid missed mortgage payments and foreclosures in the process.
Let’s take a quick look at how this smart strategic move encapsulates all three of my tenets for meaningful innovation:
1. Turning major pain point of dealing with a bank during time of personal adversity into point of infatuation where the bank is an active agent of positive change.
2. Expanding the bank’s relevance in customers’ lives — from simply lending money to helping customers manage broader aspects of their lives.
3. Embracing the innovation ‘shortcut’ by combining two seemingly unrelated components — in this case mortgage financing and employment support.
Check out the full story at Cincinnati.com:
Robert Rinfrow was skeptical last year when he got a letter from Fifth Third Bank offering to help him find a job.
At the time, the mail he got from his bank tended to be about his loan payments, which were occasionally late. The letters weren’t threatening, but “helpful” isn’t a word he’d use to describe them, either.
“It made me think twice,” Rinfrow said of the bank’s offer. “Why would they do this?”
[Image via edudemic.]
