Commonwealth Bank updates app with new features for saving & tracking spending

Here’s a shocking statistic – more than on third of Australians are spending more than they earn each month!  Yep, you heard that right.  So in response, the Commonwealth bank is introducing new features into their app to help increase financial awareness and stability for their customers.

As is the case when a company wants to make it’s point, the CommBank did a survey to see just how well Aussies manage their money.  Not well is the upshot.

Almost half of us are not comfortable wiht our current spending, while more than half don’t have enough savings to handle a temporary loss of income.

More than one third of Australian households would be unable to find $500 in an emergency and almost half feel they are not progressing with their financial goals.

In a smartphone dominated app controlled world there has to be an app for that?

Well – to be clear, there are, Pocketbook is amazing Aussie app that links to your bank accounts and can help remind you of regular bills and alert you to overspending.  Likewise, Acorns is a cool app that rounds up your spending and takes those few cents here and there and turns them into dollars – and more.

But, how do you bring those concepts to the masses?

CommBank has four new app functions.  Transaction Notifications which gives you immediate updates on daily spending.  Spend Tracker which gives a month-to-date summary of your credit card activity and intelligently compared to to your average for the past three months to help you understand any differences.

Savings Challenge also looks at your last three months and helps you understand if you’re doing better, while Savings Jar takes the Acorns approach and rounds up any transactions for saving.

Pete Steel, Executive General Manager of Digital, Commonwealth Bank said:

“We’ve been working with our behavioural economists and other industry experts to pave a path toward financial wellbeing solutions. While we will always want to deliver convenience for customers, we also want to be able to provide them with the tools they need to better manage their money,”