Blog, Strategies September 23, 2025 Celebrating Alkami Community’s August Partner Month: Financial Wellness Preparedness

Turning financial wellness into measurable growth for your institution

This August, Alkamilaunched its first-ever Partner Month: Financial Wellness Preparedness - a dedicated initiative to help banks and credit unions not only prepare for Financial Wellness Month in January, but also set their account holders up with the tools and knowledge they'll need to participate fully. Through this effort, financial institutions gained access to resources, best practices, and partner-driven solutions to engage account holders by building awareness, highlighting financial wellness offerings, and driving measurable growth opportunities. Throughout the month, we spotlighted seven leading fintech partners to the Alkami Community through webinars and blogs, each showcasing innovative ways to strengthen financial wellness and help consumers start the new year more prepared.

The focus is on equipping institutions with future-ready, embedded financial wellness solutions that go beyond one-off tools. These solutions are designed to be built natively into the digital banking platform, adapt to the evolving needs of account holders, and scale with institutional growth. By meeting account holders where they are and supporting them at every stage of their banking journey, financial institutions can build long-term trust, deliver personalized guidance, and ultimately support account holders to achieve lasting financial goals.

Across the sessions, a few key themes emerged:

Holistic Wellness: Financial wellness now spans credit, savings, education, charitable giving, property, investing, small business enablement, and identity protection.

Engagement with Proven Outcomes:Data-driven campaigns are driving loan growth, deposit increases, retention, and community impact.

Multi-Generational Reach: From families and Generation Z (Gen Z) to small businesses and retirees, solutions can be tailored across life stages within one unified brand.

Proactive, Embedded Approach: Financial wellness tools must live inside the digital banking experience - not as fragmented, third-party add-ons.

SavvyMoney: Turning Credit Scores Into Loan Growth

What happens when financial wellness becomes more than just a feature and instead becomes the foundation of your digital banking strategy? That was the focus of our Partner Connect session with ICCUand Vantage West Credit Union(Vantage West), who shared how SavvyMoneyis driving measurable engagement, loan growth, and long-term loyalty.

By building SavvyMoney's solution into their digital banking platform, both institutions have made financial wellness a central part of the banking experience. The results speak for themself. In their webinar, we learned how Vantage West achieved a 90% activation rate for credit score access and increased annual loan funding through SavvyMoney from roughly $22 million to $46 million after implementing InstantAccess. Vantage West credits the solution with delivering a 10x return on investment by transforming credit insights into tangible loan growth.

SavvyMoney's dual approach combines always-on credit monitoring with pre-qualification tools that let account holders explore loan options at their own pace, while traditional pre-approval campaigns deliver firm offers. Together, these strategies create a more personalized, data-driven journey that moves account holders from awareness to action.

Institutions are also finding creative ways to boost adoption. ICCU pairs automated onboarding emails with prominent in-app placement and semi-annual enrollment campaigns, while Vantage West integrates the tool into digital onboarding, financial wellness promotions, and re-engagement campaigns. Both credit unions emphasize staff training and incentives, knowing that when frontline teams understand the tool, they can share it confidently with account holders.

The result is sustained retention built on trust and transparency. By putting credit wellness at the center of digital banking, SavvyMoney helps institutions move beyond passive engagement to demonstrable outcomes, enabling account holders to improve their credit while fueling loan growth and loyalty.

Spiral: Growing Deposits Through Purpose and Savings

In today's market, deposit growth is harder to sustain. Rate chasers come and go, certificate of deposits (CDs) are expensive, and Americans are saving at historically low rates. With 1 in 4 Americans holding under $1,000 in savingsand the average savings rate at just 4%, financial institutions are under increasing pressure.

Spiralhelps institutions turn this challenge into a competitive advantage by weaving savings and charitable giving directly into the digital journey. Account holders can save more and make a difference by rounding up card purchases, automating personalized savings, and donating to local or national nonprofits - all within their mobile banking application (app). The result: richer, more lasting engagement that connects everyday transactions to effortless savings, personal values, and community impact.

The numbers are compelling. Institutions using Spiral have seen up to a 15% increase in monthly core depositsthrough personalized savings experiences, along with 30% more monthly card transactionsdriven by roundups and giving. Adoption of the roundup feature often reaches double-digit levels within the first year, translating into millions of incremental transactions and deposits per institution.

When integrating Spiral into Alkami's online banking experience, financial institutions can choose local nonprofits to feature, set matching donation campaigns, and personalize experiences for both consumers and businesses. With built-in support for adoption and marketing, including playbooks, templates, and customizable quizzes, Spiral makes it simple to deliver these impactful experiences at scale. By combining savings with purpose, Spiral empowers financial institutions to grow deposits, deepen relationships, and stand apart as the institution of choice.

Unifimoney: Modern Investing for Account Holder Engagement and Growth

Wealth management has traditionally been reserved for high-balance account holders, leaving everyday investors without accessible options. This may lead to outflow of balances as account holders search for a solution outside their current credit union or bank. Unifimoneyis changing that by delivering fully integrated investing through the digital banking experience, offering access to stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), robo-advisory portfolios, and even alternative assets like crypto and metals - all embedded in the Alkami digital banking experience.

In a webinar with Radiant Credit Union, leaders shared how Unifimoney is helping them attract younger, digital-first account holders while deepening engagement across all age groups. Radiant has already seen 12-13% account holder adoption, a strong signal that demand for digital investing extends beyond traditional demographics. Even older account holders are exploring self-directed investing and crypto through the platform's easy-to-use interface.

A key differentiator: Unifimoney is designed so that investment funds flow back into the financial institution. When account holders sell investments, the proceeds are deposited directly into their financial institution's accounts, helping institutions retain deposits and reinforce loyalty. Radiant also highlighted the smooth implementation process, supported by Unifimoney's staff training and dedicated Alkami Client Success Manager. Comprehensive training ensures staff know how to support inquiries without needing to be licensed advisors, while Unifimoney provides direct investment guidance and support.

The platform's flexibility allows banks and credit unions to complement or extend existing wealth management programs. For institutions without a program in place, Unifimoney can serve as the primary investing solution. For those with in-person advisors, it acts as a feeder by helping account holders start their investing journey and preparing them for more personalized guidance as their portfolios grow.

By making investing accessible, even in small amounts like $5 through fractional shares, Unifimoney helps institutions reinforce loyalty, grow deposits, and deliver the modern financial experiences account holders expect.

Greenlight: Making Family Financial Wellness a Growth Driver

A recent survey found that 93% of financial institution leadersview improving family financial literacy as a business priority, and 88% have observed rising demand.This growing need has created a mandate for financial institutions, but building such tools in-house is daunting.

Financial wellness is no longer just an individual journey; it's a family affair. Parents today face profound stress, with52% citing money as their top daily worry. Beyond bills, many parents struggle with teaching their kids about money management; 38% say it's the hardest life skill to pass on, harder even than teaching online or physical safety.

Greenlightsolves this by offering a turnkey, integrated platform that plugs seamlessly into Alkami's Mobile Banking Platform.With Greenlight, institutions can deliver interactive, app-based experiences that help kids learn saving and budgeting, while giving parents peace of mind.

By meeting this need, institutions not only reduce stress for families but also create multigenerational loyalty. This also helps institutions stand out in a crowded market where big banks rarely offer family-specific tools. The result is a win-win: families gain confidence and control, while institutions earn multigenerational trust and differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

Chimney: Turning Digital Banking Into the Cornerstone of Homeowner Wealth

Homeownership is the largest source of wealth in the U.S., yet many financial institutions still leave this part of the financial picture to third-party platforms. Chimneyis changing that by delivering property intelligence as a part of everyday banking.

By bringing property data into the experience, institutions can:

• Deliver real-time visibility into property value and equity
• Deliver personalized education that encourages decisive action
• Use predictive analytics to identify lending opportunities early

The result is a more comprehensive approach to financial wellness. By equipping account holders with real-time visibility into their property value and equity, along with personalized education and actionable insights, Chimney supports them to make informed choices. For banks and credit unions, this translates into lasting and timely growth opportunities.

By delivering home value tracking and insights natively through digital banking, financial institutions can reach homeowners with timely, personalized offers such as home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) or mortgage refinancing. Even when the mortgage isn't held with the institution, Chimney can surface property data to financial institutions, creating an opportunity to win that relationship with a competitive offer. This approach not only increases loyalty but also drives new lending growth.

Uptiq: Empowering Small Businesses With Embedded Guidance

Small business owners juggle every financial decision, from paying employees to planning for growth. Yet too often, legacy business banking solutions stop at balances and transactions - leaving owners without the insights they need to manage cash flow, forecast risk, or understand credit eligibility. The result is that many small and medium-sized businesses are operating without the insights they need, even as cash flow challenges account for the majority of business failures.

Uptiqreframes business banking by embedding analytics and automation within the digital banking experience. With daily-refreshed data from banking, accounting, and ecommerce systems, Uptiq equips relationship managers and underwriters with tools to be proactive partners. For business owners, this means clearer visibility, smarter decisions, and fewer manual headaches.

The impact is measurable: institutions have seen results such as:

• Increased product-per-account-holder ratios within months
• Stronger balance growth through targeted outreach
• Higher retention among businesses that engage with insights

By turning fragmented data into actionable guidance, Uptiq helps financial institutions strengthen partnerships, streamline operations, and grow deposits while helping small and medium-sized businesses with the clarity and confidence to thrive.

Array: Embedding Credit & Identity Wellness Into Everyday Banking

In one deployment, 96% of account holders adopted Identity Protect,and personalized outreach drove a 3x increase in personal loan volume. These results highlight the power of embedding credit and identity tools in digital banking platforms.

Arrayenvisions a financial wellness experience that is no longer an afterthought, but a daily reality. Imagine Jasmine: she checks her balance, reviews her credit score, gets alerted about a recurring charge, and receives a student loan reminder - all in one app. Behind the scenes, embedded tools like credit monitoring, identity protection, and personalized credit-building accounts are quietly working to keep her financial life secure and on track.

For most consumers, this experience is far from the norm. Fragmented tools across multiple apps create blind spots, leaving account holders vulnerable to fraud, disengaged from their financial institution, and missing opportunities to improve their financial standing. By building proactive credit and identity wellness into daily banking, institutions can close these gaps, offering account holders clarity, control, and peace of mind in a seamless environment.

What Financial Institutions Can Do Next

Partner Month showcased the power of collaboration to make financial wellness more accessible and actionable. By integrating fintech-driven tools directly into banking platforms, financial institutions can position themselves for both near-term opportunities and the long-term shifts shaping engagement, deposit growth, and lending.

• Audit Your Ecosystem:Identify gaps where account holders rely on outside apps and uncover opportunities to bring those solutions in-house.

• Prioritize Embedded Tools: Roll out solutions in phases, starting with the areas that address the most pressing account holder needs, such as credit, family banking, or home lending, while planning for longer-term opportunities in investments, small business, and identity.

• Leverage Real-Time Insights:Use data and automation to deliver next-best actions, streamline onboarding, and support both consumers and small businesses.

• Promote Financial Wellness:Provide consistent resources and education across branches, digital channels, and staff to build financial confidence.

• Measure and Evolve: Track adoption and return on investment (ROI) with analytics, refine offerings with live data, and use those insights to prepare for larger initiatives, such as including task forces, pilots, and readiness planning for 2026 and beyond.

Focusing on the right tools at the right time helps institutions strengthen relationships today, while collaboration with trusted fintechs ensures digital strategies are built for what's next and deliver proven outcomes.