Between last year’s official release of Android Pay, the increasing ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered support platforms such as Sun Life’s Ella, and the ongoing digital transformation of Canada’s banks, Canadians have more opportunities than ever to integrate fintech into their lives – but according to financial comparison platform developer Ratehub.ca, the eldest among us aren’t taking advantage.
According to the company’s 2017 Digital Money Trends Report, released last month, fewer than half of baby boomers reported trusting robo-advisors, mobile payments, marketplace and peer-to-peer lenders, and rate comparison website, while in many cases millennials and generation X-ers were nearly twice as likely to do so.
“It’s interesting to see that the boomer generation is the least likely to trust in new fintech services. This may be because many Boomers have been accustomed to consulting traditional financial institutions and industry professionals throughout their lives,” Ratehub director of content marketing Alex Conde said in a Dec. 19 statement. “As millennials and generation X-ers start taking a more active role in managing their money, we expect adoption and trust of digital tools like rate comparison websites and robo-advisors to continue to grow at a rapid pace.”
Based on the report, which surveyed 1,000 Canadians about their use of financial technology, this digital shift is already taking place, with, for example, millennials and generation X-ers four times more likely to consult a rate comparison website (such as RateHub) to compare financial products rather than an industry professional.
Other findings from the report include:
- Nearly twice as many millennials (44 per cent) and generation X-ers (42 per cent) reported trusting robo-advisors compared to boomers (23 per cent).
- Nearly twice as many millennials (71 per cent) said they trust mobile payments compared to boomers (38 per cent). (62 per cent of generation X-ers said they trust mobile payments.)
- Twice as many millennials (47 per cent) and generation X-ers (48 per cent) trust marketplace lenders compared to boomers (23 per cent).
- 58 per cent of millennials and 53 per cent of generation X-ers trust peer-to-peer lenders, versus only 32 per cent of boomers.
- 63 per cent of millennials and 60 per cent of generation X-ers trust rate comparison websites, versus 42 per cent of boomers.
It wasn’t all bad blood between boomers and fintechs, however: The survey found that across generations Canadians preferred online banking over any other fintech service, with 86 per cent of millennials, 88 per cent of generation X-ers, 81 per cent of boomers, and 85 per cent of Canadians overall citing it as the fintech service they trusted most.
According to the report, 77 per cent of all respondents said they had used online banking to conduct financial transactions.
Next to online banking, boomers were most likely to list contactless payments (53 per cent of respondents) and rate comparison websites (42 per cent of respondents) as the fintech service they trusted most.
Millennials, meanwhile, listed mobile payments (71 per cent) and contactless payments (65 per cent) as their second and third most trusted fintech services, while generation X-ers listed contactless payments (67 per cent), and mobile payments (62 per cent).
You can read RateHub’s full 2017 Digital Money Trends Report here.