TORONTO’S MOGOLOUNGE: JUST DON’T CALL IT HIPSTER — OR A BANK
Visitors entering the MogoLounge located on Toronto’s trendy Queen Street West strip are greeted by a message board bearing the quote: “A Lannister always pays his debts.”
It’s all part of a brandbuilding exercise by Canadian financial technology company Mogo, which aims to educate consumers and help them to achieve a debtfree existence by offering a suite of carefully designed financial products. Mogo has no branches — all business is carried out online — but the sleek and hip MogoLounge space serves two purposes. It’s a means of building visibility for the fintech upstart, targeting a high concentration of millennials who have taken up residence in the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood, identified by Mogo research as a cohort that simply doesn’t value the experience offered by traditional banks. It’s also a laboratory for the company. By interacting with visitors and customers, the company aims to finetune its user experience to maximum satisfaction.
The lounge opened to traffic in April. When I arrived at the lounge anonymously, MogoLounge’s assistant manager Matt Kanagarajah came across as anything but a pushy salesperson. Instead, he offers me a tour of the space. One wall displays the company’s jet black Mogo Platinum Prepaid Visa card. Another is loaded with Mogo swag, including branded water bottles, T-shirts and other items offered to customers. Visitors can sit comfortably in lounge sofas and access free Wi-Fi, or thumb through a volume from a bookcase containing a series of books on financial education. Several iPads allow a visitor to become a customer using an online application in just a few minutes. Oh, and there are no lineups — or tellers.
“We pride ourselves on speed and customer experience,” says Kanagarajah. “If you want to become a customer, or we call it, a Mogo-Member, it shouldn’t be a complicated process. If you want to apply for a loan to pay down your credit card debt, we’ll let you know if you’re approved in three minutes.”
The space will also host special events featuring prominent artists, influencers and creators, some of whom will team up with Mogo to create unique swag and provide limited edition custom designs for the MogoCard.
There will also be financial fitness “Adulting 101” events led by Mogo financial fitness coach, Chantel Chapman.
Chapman notes that while achieving personal fiscal fitness is important, it doesn’t need to be a dull and uninspiring journey. The adulting events are a funfilled mash-up of financial literacy and anything from wine tasting to doit-yourself makeup and skin-care trends taught by YouTube beauty specialists.
A report released last year by McKinsey offered some sobering news for traditional brick-andmortar banks: they could lose up to 60 per cent of retail profits to fintech start-ups over the next nine years. Mogo has already begun that revolution, recently surpassing 200,000 members as it works toward its goal of a million customers by the end of 2018.
“Millennials don’t want the inconvenience of having to spend time in a cold bank branch,” says Chapman. “I’ve read a stat that says 71 per cent of millennials would rather go to the dentist than visit their bank branch and as a millennial, I couldn’t agree more. Our smartphone is our bank branch and that’s why Mogo aims to make that online experience as comfortable and engaging as possible while bringing the brand to life in a fun way through the Lounge.”