Digital banking has transformed financial services, making them faster and more accessible than ever before. Yet, this convenience comes at a cost, with personal connections diminishing. Branch visits are nearly obsolete, making it harder for banks to sustain meaningful engagement with their customers, to the detriment of trust and loyalty.
To address this, banks need a new model that integrates financial services with health and wellness. Swiss digital health platform dacadoo asserts that by doing this, institutions can connect with customers in ways that go beyond transactions, fostering daily interactions and deeper relationships.
The engagement challenge
Historically, banking loyalty often stemmed from familiarity. Many people stayed with the same bank their parents had chosen, thanks to limited options and convenience.
The rise of digital banking has shifted this dynamic. Automated services and declining branch visits have created a significant engagement gap.
To a younger, digitally native generation, banks can feel like faceless utilities, with differentiation coming down to fees and interest rates. To counter this, banks must create daily touchpoints that cultivate relational connections, rather than relying solely on transactional interactions.
Health is wealth
The relationship between health and financial wellness is more profound than it may appear. Healthier individuals tend to make better financial decisions.
A McKinsey report on employee health highlights that prioritising well-being improves productivity and reduces stress-driven mistakes. Mentally sharper and less stressed customers are more likely to make rational, long-term financial choices.
Additionally, reducing healthcare spending frees up disposable income. In markets like the U.S., healthcare costs take up a large portion of household budgets.
Banks that help customers improve their health indirectly support better financial outcomes. Daily engagement is also enhanced when banks integrate wellness principles into their apps. This creates reasons for customers to interact with the platform beyond financial transactions, positioning banks as partners in overall well-being.
Lessons from digital health engagement
Banks don’t need to reinvent engagement from scratch. The digital health sector has perfected methods for high-frequency, personalised engagement.
Platforms such as dacadoo’s Digital Health Engagement Platform (DHEP) use gamification to make activities like walking or sleep tracking rewarding. Daily, weekly, or monthly challenges, combined with personalised nudges, encourage small but consistent habit changes.
Research demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach. A University of Groningen study found DHEP led to a 4.9% reduction in healthcare costs in the first year and 5.3% in the second.
The frequency of use, not intensity, was key, showing that consistent engagement drives meaningful behavioural change.
Integrating DHEP into banking apps allows banks to support both financial and health goals, fostering loyalty through continuous, personalised value rather than low fees alone.
Applying engagement principles to banking
The strategies proven in digital health can be directly applied to financial services. Personalised financial journeys, gamified savings challenges, and debt-reduction plans allow banks to offer meaningful, custom-tailored guidance.
Reward and loyalty programmes can incentivise proactive financial behaviours, while cross-industry partnerships—such as with health insurers, fitness apps, or wellness retailers—can further expand value propositions.
For example, collaborating with a health insurer could allow customers to reduce premiums by maintaining high financial wellness scores.
Benefits for banks
Engagement strategies that combine financial and health wellness offer multiple advantages.
Daily app interactions increase, providing banks with richer customer insights and creating more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Banks seen as partners in overall well-being cultivate stronger brand loyalty, differentiating themselves in competitive markets.
By integrating wellness into engagement strategies, banks can develop deeper, more resilient customer relationships that go beyond price-based competition.
Future trends
Personalisation is evolving into hyper-personalisation, driven by AI. Banks will deliver highly tailored gamified experiences and recommendations that account for individual habits, goals, and lifestyle choices.
The definition of financial wellness will expand to include broader health and lifestyle considerations. Ultimately, banks will guide customers in managing both their money and their overall well-being.
How dacadoo can help
dacadoo’s Digital Health Engagement Platform (DHEP) provides banks with a proven approach to improving customer health and engagement.
The platform is adaptable to retail banking, allowing institutions to implement next-generation engagement strategies quickly.
By integrating DHEP, banks can transform from transactional utilities into meaningful partners in customers’ daily lives, supporting financial and health goals simultaneously.
Read the full blog from dacadoo here.
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