BOND.AI, a “human-centered” artificial intelligence firm, recently announced the creation of The BOND Network, a “first-of-its-kind” network of financial institutions and employers for “truly interconnected finance.”
The network gives partners – like banks, credit unions, large enterprises, and small businesses – access to modern financial health products “through an open-banking platform.”
They can gain insights “to improve the performance and efficiency of their organizations and their customers’ financial health in one convenient bundle without investing significant resources.”
The BOND Network partners will “gain exclusive access to BOND.AI’s advanced Empathy Engine® and a curated set of products from selected fintechs.”
The solution will “allow financial institutions to hyper-personalized banking, gain new consumers through the employers at significantly lower acquisition costs, and increase profitability with the potential to achieve at least 1% of their asset size in increased revenue and savings.”
For employers, it “enables them to embed AI-powered banking and measure the financial health of their employees to increase productivity, engagement, and retention.”
As noted in an update shared with CI, the economy is “facing massive disruption in two particular domains – financial and labor markets.”
The financial uncertainty, paired with access to digital tools, has “driven consumers to switch institutions at a click of a button.”
This puts financial institutions “under extreme pressure to produce technological advancements faster than ever to meet consumer expectations.”
Likewise, small businesses are under pressure “to deliver top-tier benefits to employees who are no longer bound by geography and loyalty when seeking a job.”
Job seekers are also “looking to employers that offer them more beyond the normal paycheck and traditional benefits to help with rising inflation and rent or mortgage prices.”
The purpose of The BOND Network is “to provide the API-driven collective of financial institutions and employers with an embedded-banking platform to access tools, products, and services not necessarily available in the current technological and core-centric environment.”
The network brings together the concepts of open and embedded banking to the global market “by cutting the time, effort, and investment that partners would have spent negotiating with multiple vendors for individual services.”
Partners on The BOND Network can “boost their organizations’ financial performance and their people’s financial health at the same time.”
Uday Akkaraju, CEO of BOND.AI, said:
“There is nothing like The BOND Network in the market today that combines the utility of modern financial technology with the life-changing benefit of financial health. Our Empathy Engine® and The BOND Network together will connect the dots between financial institutions and employers to get them back at the heart of peoples’ financial lives and spark a mutually prosperous relationship between them. This is the next revolution of embedded finance.”
The BOND Network launches “with 16 financial institutions and employers that are founding members.”
BOND.AI estimates “to have at least 50 partners by the end of 2022.”
Each network member will also “secure access to the Empathy Engine®’s data – to enrich financial health and inclusion at scale – and other regulatory guidance and support for initiatives, such as Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).”
This means that the partners “won’t have to go through custom regulatory processes or invest in research and development.”
They can simply focus on “impacting their people’s financial lives together.”
