Recently, I had the opportunity to be exposed to a new (well, new for me anyhow!) free financial website/tool called Cinch Financial. As such, today, I wanted to share a little about some of the features it offers, as well as my opinion on its real-world utility.
What is Cinch Financial?
From what I can tell, Cinch has three primary functions/features with which users can engage on the site:
- First, it allows individuals to upload copies of their personal bills and/or account statements.
- The documents are then reviewed by someone at Cinch, and they issue personal recommendations back to the user on if/how they can save money based on their current state.
- Second, the team at Cinch has taken the time to review the myriad thousands of banking, credit cards, auto insurance, home insurance, and mortgage account providers out there, and whittled the confusion down to providing less than 5-10 top picks (called Cinch Picks) for users.
- This is quite powerful, as in my opinion, there is a high degree of information overload that often prevents individuals making decisions to reach their financial goals.
- Third, users can get personalized recommendations for the financial products mentioned in #2 above by answering 5-10 very simple and quick questions about their specific financial situation.
- With both #2 and #3, the interface allows you to input a current product you are using, and it will provide an estimate of how much you can save or how much more you can earn with another product.
- Although I have not yet tried the 1st feature (uploading a statement/bills), I was able to try out the 2nd and 3rd. Below is screenshot of what this section of the website looks like.
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Personalized Recommendations for Financial Products
In my opinion, my favorite feature of the site was the interface that provides personalized recommendations for financial products that can most benefit me.
Banking
After clicking on the button indicating that you want to get a personal recommendation for banking financial accounts, you will then be taken to easy-to-interface with screens (only 1 question per screen!) where you answer the following questions:
- What is your zip code?
- The biggest drawback for the personalized recommendations is that Cinch currently only covers the following states for local financial products and providers: MA, NY, TX, IL, and CA.
- How much do you direct deposit monthly?
- How much do you spend on your debit card monthly?
- Will you use the bank account as a primary checking account or an extra account?
- Do you want access to a local bank branch?
- What ATM features do you want?
- Do you want overdraft protection?
- Rank several account features in order of importance
After answering these questions, you will be taken to your personalized bank account recommendations. Below is an example of what one of the recommendation screens looks like:
I really liked how it shows on the screen the results recommended for me, and it clearly spells out how much in fees I would pay with no direct deposit.
One thing I would like to have seen were more local recommendations and/or ways individuals can get a checking account for free, without direct deposit or a minimum balance.
Credit Cards
Overall, I thought the credit cards section of Cinch was probably the strongest feature available right now. To get personalized recommendations, you answer the questions below:
- Why are you looking for a new credit card?
- How much do you spend per month on your card?
- What kind of rewards would you prefer receiving?
- Do you spend more than $500 each month in specific listed categories?
- Estimated credit score?
After answering these questions, I was taken to a screen with my top 3 credit card picks. Shown below is a screenshot of one of the cards selected for me.
I really liked how it spells out how much I can increase my cash back rewards compared to my current favorite card (Chase Freedom). It was also refreshing to see that the three cards selected for me were ones that I hadn’t heard of. This was cool because I definitely have a habit of going to CreditCards.com every once and a while to see if there are any good looking new cards.
Auto Insurance
The auto insurance section of the site was about on par with utility as the banking section. You input some really quick information about yourself and your car, and then it lists top picks for auto insurance for you.
As with the credit card feature, it estimates the amount you could save by switching from your current auto insurance provider. An example screenshot of the auto insurance section interface/result is shown below:
Lastly, it is nice that the system saves your information that you input for 1) future use and 2) for other recommendations (ie you input your credit score range for home mortgage recommendations, and the system carries that information over if you were looking for recommendations for auto insurance).
Home Insurance and Mortgages
Overall, I thought that these two sections were the weakest / least robust of Cinch’s offerings. For home insurance, there were pretty limited choices that surfaced while searching. For mortgages, I thought that the recommendations weren’t as useful because the system did not list specific details of the potential mortgage I could qualify for from each specific provider that popped up.
How Much Does Cinch Financial Cost To Use?
Cinch is currently totally, 100% free.
I was also intrigued to find out that they do not currently try to monetize their site in order to maintain objective advice. It will be interesting to see how they decide to start making money (i.e. through affiliate linking like CreditCards.com, banner ads, or by charging for personalized recommendations in the future).
Bottom Line
So, what’s the bottom line here with Cinch Financial?
Overall, I would give it the thumbs up for folks to try out and see if they can either find new useful financial products or save some money vs. their current ones! It is free, after all, so what do you have to lose?
