During FinovateSpring last week, I spent a lot of time talking with demoing companies about their new products and services. I was impressed by the overall utility of the products and the friendliness of the entrepreneurs. Over the next few months, I’ll be profiling a number of the companies that presented last week.
Amy Butte, former CFO of the New York Stock Exchange, founded NYC-based TILE Financial in 2008 with a goal to help financial institutions hold onto the $1.5 trillion in assets projected to be inherited during the next 10 to 15 years.
TILE seeks to help young adults establish a financial identity, learn to follow a budget, and understand financial terms and concepts. It’s also meant to facilitate a dialogue with their parents, grandparents or other funder, and their financial advisor.
Through TILE’s Spend Grow Give interface, the topics of money and finance are expected to transition from taboo to comfortable subjects. The unique user-interface is very visual, perfect for the target audience of 15 to 25-year-olds.
How it works
Homepage:
- Account Overview
After logging in, I see an overview of my account divided into three categories:
Each contains a pie chart of my spending, investments and charitable contributions. Please note that the Grow category is empty because I am using a test account without investments.
- Reference Bar
Pictured below, this feature has eight tabs and is located at the bottom of the user interface (see homepage screenshot at end of post). My favorite tab is TILEcasts, a unique reference tool that contains video clips of experts talking about subjects such as, “Here’s Why You Need Insurance.” The clips break down complex financial issues into bite-sized pieces with digestible language.
- Alerts
The interface includes customized alerts such as portfolio changes, budget limit approaches, and so on. Alerts are delivered via the TILE site, email, or text message.
Profile Page:
- My Profile
At first glance, the profile appears similar to Facebook. I can upload my picture, update my status, and share with the TILE community, my financial advisor, my funder (i.e., parent/grandparent), Twitter, or Facebook.
- Features
The main part of the profile page is My Financial Identity, which features the homepage categories: Spending, Growing, and Giving, as detailed below. Each contains quizzes and tutorials that allow the user to understand what money means to them. TILE refers to this as a person’s “financial identity.”
– SpendingHere, I can see how well I know my budget. I take a quiz to test my knowledge of how much I spend on certain categories and am guided through a tutorial to help adjust
monthly spending habits. Another lesson teaches the basics of establishing credit.
– GrowingIn this section I can learn when to start investing, how to time financial
markets, and take a risk profile assessment. There is an easy-to-use calculator that inputs age, investment
amount, and interest (see graph on the right) to show growth over time.– GivingThis area features a quiz to help me discover causes I really care about and would allocate charitable giving to. It requires much thought and in the end helped me create my own mission statement.
My user experience documented here covers only a small section of what is available in TILE’s Spend Grow Give product. To see it in action, stay tuned to www.finovate.com to check out TILE’s demo that will be posted in the next few weeks.
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