6 Digital Strategies Banking Must Learn from the Oura Ring

What I'm talking about today is a $300 wearable that does things that most financial institutions can only dream about. And once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it.

We're not talking about a major leap in technology. We're not even talking about an engagement with money. What we're talking about is the ability to take data and bring it to the consumer — so they're engaging on their own behalf, proactively, because they want to, not because you're pushing information out to them.

As I talk to the industry, I hear the same thing: customer engagement, personalization, AI. This device does all three, for $6 a month.

The challenge is, we may not lose the customers if we don't have it. What we're gonna lose is engagement, we're gonna lose passion, we're gonna lose trust — because the customer expects us to bring more to the table than this little titanium ring called the Oura.

So I got my Oura ring about a year ago. What's interesting is, I was skeptical. I was thinking, you know, I've had fitness trackers before, tracked what I was doing, but I got bored with it. It only gave me data and told me how many steps I had, or how hard I worked out. And that was good, but it didn't tell me what to do with it.

The first morning I woke up after putting the ring on, I realized this is a completely different device. Instead of giving me just data — and, by the way, the Oura ring tracks 50 different metrics — but instead of just those metrics, it gave me intelligence. It went further. It told me what to do with the information I was getting.

This intelligence makes it more of a health marker, as opposed to just a device. It really shows me the why, or what if, or what does it mean? That's the level of data and insights that you get everywhere but you don't get in banking. And it's what we're looking to provide. And it's all personalized, on the most micro level — just me.

So let me tell you a little bit about Oura. They sold more rings last year than they had done in the history of the company. But it's not just everyday people. They have a very high penetration of people with chronic conditions who use the ring to monitor how they're doing to fight those chronic conditions. You have engaging conversations with the app to say, "Here's what I gotta work on, how do I get better at this?"

But when you put this other level of data — outside information — on top of all the information you already have with the Oura device itself, you really have a powerful tool to make yourself better. And at the end of the day, aren't we all trying to do that in one way or another? And aren't we all trying to do that with our financial lives as well as our health?

So, why am I standing in the middle of a botanical garden, in the middle of the desert? It's because it can teach us something. The cactus around me do not wait until drought hits to look for water. They continue to look for water all the time, and store it. They prepare for what's coming, even though they don't know when it's going to get there.

Isn't this what we're trying to do in banking? Allow our customers to prepare for the unknown future? To give them enough information, to give them enough insight, to allow them to be completely ready financially — in much the same way that all these cactuses don't die because they're ready to thrive even during drought conditions.

What does this all mean to banking? Let me give you six different ideas that you can implement almost immediately.

Number one: How about a financial readiness score? A score that's delivered daily to every one of your customers, to tell them how financially ready they are for what's coming down the road. We have the data — we just aren't delivering the insights to help the consumer. Let's talk to them about a bill that's coming up that they need to be prepared for. Maybe their balance level is going down to a place we know is gonna cause a problem. Or maybe it's time to access some credit to make ends meet. Let's give people a financial readiness score every day, so when they wake up and check their Oura ring, they also check their financial readiness score.

Strategy two: The Oura ring doesn't wait until you get sick — it prepares you to avoid sickness. We are more than happy to tell people when they've had an overdraft, or when a payment is due. We need to be able to prepare them for that NSF, or that credit that they need.

Strategy three: Build a subscription so that the consumer knows you're continually looking at their data to build insights and education over time. This can include not just the financial readiness score and financial preparedness, but also insights and tools that they can use to get better. It's that next level that the Oura Ring provides — "Here's your rankings, here's what you need to do about it, here's some education on how people adjust their readiness."

Strategy four: It's not about products, it's about the platform. Oura has now built a platform that includes blood tests integrated within their ecosystem. They're not doing the blood tests themselves — they're integrating partners within their overarching platform. Why don't we build more partnerships, across the industry and outside the industry, that can help the customer with their financial wellness and also allow the consumer to use tools outside of your financial institution to make banking better?

Strategy five: Take financial wellness into the enterprise. This is one thing that Oura's done very well. They took the Oura ring into the enterprise — "How about getting these for everyone who works with you, so that they can become healthier?" It becomes part of their healthcare plan. Why don't we do that on the financial side? We know that financial wellness is one of the things that can really throw people off kilter in the workplace if they're not financially ready. It's gonna impact their work environment. So why don't we make this part of what a company can offer their employees to make them more financially fit and more financially ready?

Number six: Work for the daily life, not for the episodic adventures. What I mean by that is, Oura actually realized that only 5% of people were using their device as a fitness tracker. On the other hand, 95% were engaged with the sleep score. So what did they do? They built their entire platform around the 95% that used it regularly. For me, it's the one thing I look at first in the morning — to see how I did with sleep. What can we do to make it so the consumer continually looks at their financial wellness score on a daily basis, as opposed to simply when they get in trouble?

How does Oura compare to most digital banking initiatives? It's not the technology. It's not the data. It's the commitment. Overall, what we've seen is digital transformation initiatives that end up being just incremental improvements. How many of us can actually say we're making the customer's life better every single day?

This is what Oura does. It actually makes the customer's life better every single day, to the degree that the customer actually engages on their own behalf, every day. They're not pushed any messages — they actually search them out.

So what are three things you can do Monday morning to make banking better for your customers?

Number one: You have a lot of data. What are you delivering back to your customers from an insight perspective, from a knowledge perspective, from a teaching perspective, from a wellness perspective?

Number two: If they were to wear a wellness ring about financial wellness, what would you be delivering daily so that they come back and try to engage with you proactively?

Number three: Are you truly keeping your customers out of trouble and improving their financial wellness incrementally every day? Are you looking out for them? Are you being empathetic to their needs? Do you even know what their needs are?

We don't need agentic AI. We just need a commitment, from the top down, to make banking better for every single customer — in the way that my Oura ring makes daily life better for me.