Product execution mock interview: measuring success of a bank app (w/ FinTech PM)

🎥 This PM mock case interview features Eva Morgenstein, JPMorgan PM focused on payments products, as the candidate answering a product execution/analytics question focused on identifying the best success metrics to use for measuring the success of a bank app.
There are tons of great examples on how to approach a PM execution question in here, including good, clarifying questions to ask, examples of data that can help prove/disprove hypotheses, and invaluable insider interviewer's tips.
🎬 Video Sections:
00:00 Intro
00:38 Interview start
02:16 Revenue metrics
05:26 User adoption metrics
07:18 Mobile vs. desktop
10:03 Defining transactions
14:35 User feedback
16:45 Sweet spot
18:40 Logins
21:20 Prioritization
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#productexecution #PMinterviews​ #FinTechPM #metrics #RocketBlocks

[@anand_dalvi]

Attributing revenue from chime debit card (which is the dominant way to use chime account balance to spend on merchant purchases) to chime mobile app is grossly incorrect - especially when the dominant use case is that users of these debit card add that debit card to apple or google pay and use those means to pay using their phones (in which chime app is not involved). Much of this interview is a good one, but this mis-attribution (especially when it is not explained upon a specific question) is a type-1 mistake. This revenue is attributable to the business overall, just like the revenue from yield on saving account (the second point that the interviewee makes which is equally applicable here) . A better way would have been for the interviewee to accept this as correlation (weak one at that, and certainly not causation) and focus on adoption of mobile app related talking points.

[@LALITMITTAL1604]

Cool, would have been even better, if we would ask this question in initial phase itself "Why a bank would need a banking app in first place ?" and derive the success factors from there. Having an App would largely bring more convenience to users who were earlier not part of banking ecosystem or were associated with bank but transacting at lower frequency. This means Bank is looking at onboarding new users at a faster rate and higher conversion rate and also jump in transactions per user. which helps in availability of capital for the bank and also increase in revenue ( assuming some %age of transaction size). Thus, 2 metrics become important - 1) Acquisition - Onboarding conversion rate, TAT and %age onboarding via app compared to other channel ( Like physically visiting branch to open account etc) 2) Engagement - Number of transaction per user per time period, Average latency while performing any activity on App, %age transactions offline vs App ( Visiting branch and filling forms etc.) Comparing offline vs App metrics would clearly make a case for Bank to keep investing more and more in App in future. P.S. - Offline channel might not be applicable for all the geographies

[@ashmait]

yeah, she didnt ask enough clarifying questions at start, but asking why a bank needs an app in first place is too direct a question and the interviewer might pose the question back at the interviewee. Here she covered this by saying that since bank is for profit entity, she wants to look at how the app helps bank derive revenue. she could have also looked at how app can help save costs for the bank by pushing more customers to digital channels from physical and hence requiring lesser staff at bank branches, lesser branches, etc.

[@e.w.6470]

Wonder why we should focus on revenue? a fintech startup should focus on growth or adoption while an established bank should focus on customer satisfaction.

[@IamMC939]

I haven't seen the entire mock interview but right within the 1st minute itself, there are several red flags for me. The interviewee made several assumptions here and brought in Chime as an example for revenue generation as the metric. It would be good to first clarify what this app does, who it is targeted for and then go through the user journey for discovering/using this app by that user segment and then extrapolate what it means to be successful. By making assumptions quickly and jumping to conclusions, it misses some critical steps. Honestly, I probably would have made the same mistakes but after going through several mock interviews and examples, now I know better :) Applaud the effort in making this video.

[@e.w.6470]

Same. I only watched a few minutes. Critical parts are missing. The goal would be totally different for a startup vs an established bank.

[@DivyangSaxena]

great to the point interview! not sure if retention was mentioned - that would be great to track as well for longer term success - probably like a 1 month retention?

[@ashmait]

I think she covered that as part of the users not logging in for 2 weeks, that would mean users going to churn

[@Marco7288RM]

I think this interview misses a key point: cannibalization. If an app has 1M transactions daily and another 250k, the vast majority of people would say the first one is better...but that's not necessarily the case. What if 950k of those 1M transaction would have happened on other channels anyways, while out of the 250k 200 are new business? So, she laid down a pretty interesting framework, but missing this pivotal concept makes the most of metrics useless. And what if the first one costed 1M be developed and needs a staff of 50 engineers to be mantained, while the second costed 100k and needs only 10 people?? Would you still say the 1st one is more successful?

[@DrFunkBlast]

Why would the chime app be required to link a chime card to 3rd party payment services, ie Apple Pay? Don’t believe the chime app would be involved.

[@mkiamehr1981]

This interviewee seemed to be an experienced person in the industry and she provided an interesting discussion of the metrics that really counts in practice. However, she started her discussion from the end point of the experience i.e. revenue for the company. I think it would have been more useful to start with acquisition, then engagement etc.