How financial institutions can use SKU-level data to support customers during tax season
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Economic relief efforts stemming from the pandemic for both consumers and businesses will make the 2021 tax season more complicated than ever before.
With 1 in 3 Americans completing their own taxes (and this number will likely climb due to the cost of hiring an accountant), most are preparing their finances now for the season ahead. Unclear guidelines on how to handle additional tax breaks, subsidy programs, and WFH tax credits are among a few of the key challenges that consumers will face.
Make a normally stressful tax season easier on customers
Tax season is already painful for small businesses but with so many additional variations of the applications for Covid-19-related relief programs, it will be even more of a burden for them to document and ensure they’re adhering to all requirements.
The same can be said for segments of customers who have been laid off or have transitioned to self-employment in the wake of the pandemic. With more than 39 million in the U.S. having lost their jobs and millions more now permanently transitioned to a work-from-home or remote work model, customer expectations of their financial institutions have quickly heightened. Now more than ever, consumers and businesses need their financial institutions to support them with tailored financial insights and solutions.
Knowing that this tax season will come with added stress, financial institutions have an opportunity to provide greater assistance to their customers. One way is to help consumers and businesses easily track and manage their expenses with tools like digital receipts.
For consumers, this helps them claim office equipment as tax write-offs, and for businesses, this allows them to more easily decipher between personal and business expenses without the hassle and time associated with digging through and organizing both paper and email receipts. Every little bit helps during what will be an incredibly complicated tax season, especially as many small businesses and consumers try to file themselves for the first time.
Support customers using insights from SKU-level data
Banks and credit unions can use tools like digital receipt and expense management to support and serve this segment even more meaningfully. By partnering with an SKU-level data expert, institutions can dig deeper than the transactional data currently available to uncover key spending habits and behaviors through contextual insights. These insights can then be leveraged to identify previously overlooked ways to save and make every dollar go further.
There are several examples of those who already have, including Bank of America’s Virtual Assistant Erica alerting users when they’ve been double charged for a purchase and Lloyds partnering with Minna to alert customers when they’re overspending on subscriptions or have been double charged. Customers will appreciate every bit of support that institutions can provide and helping them navigate the upcoming tax season is a strong place to start.