Banking for the New Generation

How Businesses Should Think about Gen Z and Money

The days of legacy financial institutions are numbered, or at least if they continue to innovate and brand themselves at their current pace. By 2026, there will be 82 million consumers that identify with the generation born between 1996 and 2010. This creative, technologically savvy, and highly educated cohort of consumers are demanding change in the financial world. How do I know? Because I’m one of them.

Now that I’ve revealed myself, let’s switch from “them” to “we”. As a generation, we’ve grown up in a troubled and unpredictable world. Pitted against the threat of climate change, gun violence in our schools, and recent economic uncertainty, we have embraced our innovative and creative spirit. It looks like many of these problems will be handed to us, so let’s start finding ways to solve them.

A big difference we’ve seen compared to our parent’s generation before us is the way we think about money. First, it’s digital. Numbers on a screen, Venmoed to friends, transferred between accounts, gone after an online purchase. Most of the money we interact with can’t be held or put in our pockets. I don’t think I’ve ever written a check.

While our relationship with money is certainly different than the generations before us, we still think about ways to grow our wealth…