First Hawaiian Bank announced Wednesday that its overhauled mobile app is now available for download.
There are three primary new features on the app, which has been in development for close to a year, FHB Senior Vice President and Division Manager Bill Weeshoff told Pacific Business News this week.
First, customers can manually add information for non-FHB bank accounts, 401Ks, mortgages, and miscellaneous entries to the app’s portfolio alongside their FHB accounts, to view all their dealings in one place.
“You get a complete view of your financial life in a single environment,” Weeshoff said.
Second, the AI-enabled “Money Map” feature gives a personalized view of how you’re spending your money. The system is meant to learn from your behavior and help identify transactions that previously might’ve displayed as hard-to-recognize code for a business.
“What am I looking at here? What did I do?” Weeshoff said. “It [presents] it in a human way, the way we’re used to in this day and age.”
And third, the app’s “Insights” feature displays similarly to social media and is designed to pick up on things happening across the accounts added to the app, such as calling out duplicate transactions, upcoming charges on expiring trial accounts, and debt payment reminders.
FHB noted in its announcement that no other banking app in the Hawaii market includes that precise combination of features.
Weeshoff said a recent industry study revealed that more than half of banking customers said they used mobile as their primary touch-point, as opposed to physically going into a branch.
The coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated that trend.
“We saw huge jumps in digital adoption from our customers during that period, and we don’t anticipate that necessarily going back,” Weeshoff said. “People understand the convenience and the benefits of that. With the functionality the mobile app provides, I think that’s going to continue to accelerate.”
Weeshoff would not reveal to PBN how much FHB spent on the new app, but said, that “The bank is definitely making an investment in its digital transformation, and we are making sure we’re providing best-in-class services in everything we do on the digital side of things, as well as in-person.”
The app update comes on the heels of FHB overhauling its website.
For digital improvements separate from the app, FHB recently expanded a partnership with financial tech company Fidelity National Information Services.
“First Hawaiian Bank is completing its implementation of the FIS Digital One solution, which along with several other digital innovations, will be launched this year as part of our digital transformation strategy,” Bob Harrison, FHB chairman, president and CEO, told PBN in an emailed statement. “Partnerships with technology companies like FIS provide First Hawaiian Bank the ability to accelerate the rollout of our newly reimagined approach to relationship banking, building exceptional digital experiences with our personalized banking approach.”
