Welcome back to our podcast series! For those that want to subscribe in your app of choice, you can now find us at Apple, Spotify, or on RSS.
In this conversation, we chat with Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner - Chief Marketing Officer at MoneyLion, a FinTech company providing financial access to Middle America. She is accountable for brand building, customer acquisition, and customer retention efforts on both the business’s B2C and B2B sides of the business.
Prior to joining MoneyLion, Mrs. Milner was instrumental in the digital transformation of Walmart, where she served as the marketing leader for the CEO’s top-priority projects. She led the launch of Walmart’s highly- anticipated membership program, Walmart+; the expansion of its Online Grocery business during the Covid-19 years; the relaunch of its award-winning omnichannel mobile app; and the growth of its then-nascent consumables e-commerce business. She joined Walmart after its acquisition of the digitally-native men’s clothing brand Bonobos, where she led the company’s redesign of its marketing engine, as well as its efforts to reposition the brand to be unapologetically progressive and inclusive. Earlier in her career, Milner held brand management and retention-marketing roles at Nestle and Gilt Groupe and was a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.
Cynthia is part of the 2023 International Women Forum fellowship class, was named a CSA Top Women In Tech in 2020, as well as a Brand Innovators Women To Watch in 2021. Milner holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Universidad Iberoamericana, in Mexico City.
1’16”: Charting a Career Journey: From Brand Marketing to Digital Transformation
8’49”: Industry Insights: Navigating Diverse Sectors and Targeting Personas
13’47”: Marketing at Scale: Strategies for Diverse Business Verticals
17’00”: The Evolution of MoneyLion: From Inception to Digital Banking, touching on its core value proposition
25’09”: The Unfolding Story of MoneyLion: Deciphering the Growth and Valuation journey Amidst evolving Fintech Market Trends
28’14”: Financial Literacy Engagement in the App: Content, Evolution, and User Value
31’30”: Content Discovery and Revenue Mix: Driving Engagement and the Core Economic Model
35’12”: Financial Influencers and Regulatory Considerations: Balancing Content Quality and Compliance
40’09”: The Future of MoneyLion: Company's Strategic Focus in the Coming Years
41’30”: The channels used to connect with Cynthia & learn more about MoneyLion
Sneak Peek:
Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner: …a year and a half ago, we had a suite of first party products that were very innovative when they launched, and the way that we describe them is these are, and they still exist, they are premium, affordable financial products. What do I mean by premium affordable? These are products that wealthy people used to get access to for decades, but because the financial industry was set up in a way that the incentives were to serve the people with the biggest bank account. If you didn't have a lot of money, you couldn't have a managed wealth account. Nobody was going to manage your money if you have very little money to invest in the stock market.
So, we have a wealth account that has no fees, that you can start with really low minimums. Or for example, if you have a lot of money, a lot of people will give you a cash advance and not charge you an interest rate. But if you don't have a lot of money, try to find that. Well, we launched Instacash. Or if you wanted a bank account, if you would go to a traditional bank account, you would sometimes end up with overdraft fees. So, we created a safety net connecting Instacash with your RoarMoney accounts. So, if you needed cash to bridge a gap, we could give you that cash and you didn't have to have overdraft fees.
These are all premium products that were historically only available for people with a lot of money, and we made them available for everyone. And we were able to do it because number one, we don't have branches, so we don't have the big expenses that the traditional banking industry has. But more importantly, number two, we are using the newest technology. We don't have the legacy technology that a traditional bank has to update and connect with new tools. We started being a technology company, and using technology we are able to…
If you would like to access the full transcript, subscribe below.
Shape Your Future
Wondering what’s shaping the future of Fintech and DeFi?
At the Fintech Blueprint, we go down the rabbit hole in the DeFi and Fintech world to help you make better investment decisions, innovate and compete in the industry.
Sign up to the Premium Fintech Blueprint newsletter and get access to:
Blueprint Short Takes, with weekly coverage of the latest Fintech and DeFi news via expert curation and in-depth analysis
Web3 Short Takes, with weekly analysis of developments in the crypto space, including digital assets, DAOs, NFTs, and institutional adoption
Full Library of Long Takes on Fintech and Web3 topics with a deep, comprehensive, and insightful analysis without shilling or marketing narratives
Digital Wealth, a weekly aggregation of digital investing, asset management, and wealthtech news
Access to Podcasts, with industry insiders along with annotated transcripts
Full Access to the Fintech Blueprint Archive, covering consumer fintech, institutional fintech, crypto/blockchain, artificial intelligence, and AR/VR
Finance is being pulled apart by the forces of frontier technology. From AI, to blockchain, crypto and DeFi, to mixed reality, chatbots, neobanks, and roboadvisors — the industry will never be the same. Here is the blueprint for navigating the shift.
Finance is being pulled apart by the forces of frontier technology. From AI, to blockchain, crypto and DeFi, to mixed reality, chatbots, neobanks, and roboadvisors — the industry will never be the same. Here is the blueprint for navigating the shift.
