<< Read Part 1: FAANGs In Finance: Joining The Customer Journey

<< Read Part 2: FAANGs In Finance: Amazon

What’s the #1 source for fast, accurate information? Google. With a culture of transparency and unparalleled data management capabilities, Google is positioned to help wealth managers engage clients by delivering the highest level of insight into their investments. With rumors circulating of a Google Wealth product, today’s financial institutions should act fast in embracing Google’s platform.

In a 2015 FactSet survey, high net worth individuals (HNWIs) were most excited about a wealth management offering from Google, citing their need for more frequent and in-depth insights into their portfolios. A UBS analyst famously used Google satellite images of parking lots to predict Walmart’s revenue. Google analytics can predict unemployment claims before the government finishes counting them. While Google Finance failed to gain traction from Yahoo! Finance, Google has improved the results of stock-market searches by pulling the charts, quotes, and news onto their main search result pages.

Google has danced around the more profitable parts of finance for one reason: Regulation. While Google may have an aversion to the regulated parts of finance, it can still become a major player in finance by leveraging its strength as a preferred platform, its trusted brand, and proven ability to store information securely.

Google still makes 86% of its revenue from unregulated online advertising. Aside from its moonshot projects, its other products are mostly tools to gather behavioral insights that, in the end, further boost their ad business. Here are some of Google’s products that could prove to be a gateway for financial institutions:

Storage:

Google has not been shy about its ambitions in cloud computing. In fact, it has already made the Google Drive a passport platform for healthcare documents, see: How Google G Suite Helps Keep Your Hospital HIPAA Compliant. Google holds 27% of the market share for cloud storage, second only to Dropbox, with 47%.

The Google Drive would be an ideal place to bring together financial institutions and their clients – Google could allow financial institutions to create Google Drive Folders with securely stored client information, and allow the client to set up the PFM and wealth management tools they most desire, talk about personalized. To take it one step further, Google could leverage its platform to help clients control which third-party tools have access to their account information. This would position Google as a client-oriented provider, and help them ease sour relations within the EU – where PSD2 requirements are hanging over financial institutions.

Trusted Brand Offers & Engagement:

Currently, Google’s financial ads take you outside of their platform to the advertiser’s site. What if they internalized this process by embedding offers, and actions, for trusted brands? In this scenario, Google users could create, fund and manage financial accounts all from Google’s secure, familiar platform. Consumers crave frictionless finance and already trust Google. Why force a user to navigate away, when you can bring these offers into the Google platform? This would boost Google’s user engagement, make it easier for financial institutions to onboard clients, and delight users with a smoother customer journey.

Gmail:  

For individuals, Gmail is the email provider of choice with around 50% market share. However, cloud-based email is still in its infancy for larger companies; a recent Gartner study found that only 8.5% use cloud email from Microsoft, and a mere 4.7% use Google Apps for Work. The remaining 87% have on-premises, hybrid, hosted or private cloud email managed by smaller vendors. Most financial institutions are not using Gmail internally, but they should not underestimate Gmail’s potential for communicating with their clients.

Rather than serving as a gateway back to your financial institution’s website, Gmail could become a trusted platform for sharing secure information, proxy voting (which 72% of retail investors abstain from today), supporting customers on Gchat, and more.

Financial services emails today get a dismal 2.7% click-through rate. This weak communication channel could be displaced by an in-app messaging system that reduces friction and increases engagement with Gmail users – of which there are now over 1 billion worldwide.

We have explored 3 possible paths for Google to enter financial services, and there are infinitely many ways it could play out. We welcome you to leave comments to share your predictions for Google’s entry into Finance.