The Carson Group, headquartered in Omaha, will be the first financial services company to offer its investment clients and RIA partners access to Money+, a high-interest, FDIC-Insured mobile banking product developed exclusively for financial advisors by Galileo, a Chicago-based technology company.
“Last year, Americans paid billions in bank fees while getting the bare minimum rate of return on their deposits,” Galileo CEO Clay Wilkes said in a press release. “In partnership with financial advisors … we’ve launched a scalable, sustainable banking solution that puts people before profit and offers market-based rates.”
Galileo Money+, a division of Galileo Processing, allows financial advisors to compete for the $10 trillion in low- or no-interest U.S. bank deposits by offering their customers supercharged, white-labeled accounts for spending and wealth accumulation, featuring market-based interest rates tied to the Effective Federal Funds Rate.
The accounts includes online and in-store shopping and access to 32,000 no-fee ATMs; a mobile app for moving money, including paying bills; and FDIC insurance – all at no monthly service fee.
Galileo Money+ customers will automatically have two types of accounts, which will be custodied with Galileo’s program partner, The Bancorp Bank. The Galileo Money+ Spending Account, which currently offers 1.24 percent APY interest, is for everyday financial activities, such as purchasing groceries or paying bills, while the Galileo Money+ Reserve Account, currently offering 2.00 percent APY interest, is for wealth accumulation.
Carson Group will begin offering Galileo Money+ accounts in the third quarter, and is launching new technology of its own even sooner.
Carson CX (Customer Experience) is based on an award-winning product design developed by Mineral Interactive, a company Carson acquired last year. By utilizing the Carson CX “single pane of glass” dashboard, advisors can perform a broad range of functions, from linking to outside accounts that enable them to view the full picture of a client’s whole balance sheet, to providing a live status of current advisor and client to-do lists.
The Carson CX technology features multiple integrations, account views, client goals, and interactive tools to improve advisor communication and help demonstrate the intangible value they provide to clients. It also includes Carson’s RTQ (Risk Tolerance Questionnaire), which enables advisors to create a risk tolerance profile for each client that they can reference in presenting financial information to them.
Carson CX went through a series of intense beta testing with partner advisors. It will now be rolled out to each of Carson’s partner firms over the next few weeks.