Money 20/20 USA: Hopper’s Adi Soloducho on Closing the Cardholder Loyalty Gap

Audi Solodcho joins us now here on the ground at Money 2020 in Las Vegas, the VP of Corporate and Enterprise Commerce at Hopper Technology Solutions. Nice to see you here today. Thanks for sitting down with us.

Thank you for having me today.

Of course, a lot of people certainly know Hopper as a travel booking app. Talk to me more specifically about what Hopper technology solutions is really all about.

Yeah. So great question. HTS Hopper Technology Solution is the B2B arm of Hopper as we know and love. What we do with HTS is that we work with leading banks and brands to power and build a technological layer that helps them to sell travel and integrate with their loyalty programs.

It's amazing. Who are some of the banks that you are actively partnering with? And give me some examples of really the core services that you're helping to provide.

Yeah, so we are working with a lot of banks, leading banks across the globe. Uh in North America, we have RBC, Royal Bank of Canada. We have Capital One in the States. We have Newbank from Brazil, Commonwealth Bank of Australia. We have SMBC in Japan. All of these banks and more represent about 877 million card holders across. And this is representing roughly, we're talking about 4.2 trillion dollars in sales. So talking about some scale and what we help them is to bring better travel and reward experiences to the card holders.

You've talked about a growing so-called loyalty gap between a lot of banks, a lot of these institutions, and the customers. Walk me through what those pain points, those frustrations actually look like for far too many customers.

Yeah, so our research shows that 67% of these card holders are frustrated with their current programs. They've outgrown them. They show frustration such as high fees and not enough value for what they're paying for. And this is exactly that gap, is that space between what card holders want versus what they're getting today.

How are credit card rewards evolving from, let's say, airline points, which might be a point of contact that a lot of people are familiar with, to an overall shopping, travel experience, so much more that maybe they're eligible for, they may not even realize.

Yeah. So we are seeing this really big evolution and a new era of competition involved in front of our eyes. If in the beginning, airline and card was one, it then became that card became a platform, but today as you also mentioned, card is an ecosystem. Full place that offers to the card holders one experience and one place when they can have dining and experiences and travel and everything is redeemed in one place. So that's the bar that we now need to meet.

You also offer some core products. I think these are really interesting. One is cancel for any reason. Another one, flight disruption assistance. That's going to ring a lot of bells for a lot of people who wish they knew about it. Why are these so important to not only banks, but really the customers that they serve as well, Audi?

Yeah, there is so much anxiety around travel these days. 87% of customers report that they are concerned, like heavily concerned about their flight getting disrupted. Basically, they're looking for a better experience, and that's exactly what the Fintech products are here to offer. It's the ability to cancel your reason and greater flexibility if plans change and a solution if the flight is disrupted.

What results are you actively seeing from banks who are using your underlying technology right now?

So, we do see that loyalty drives a huge, uh, flywheel. Um, for travel users, we see 70% lower churn, and 50% of them are coming back to place another booking within six months. So it's not just getting them to get the card, but giving them more reasons to keep using the card, and this is truly the opportunity.

Amazing. And finally, where do you still see some of the biggest untapped growth opportunities for the part of the financial services industry that you specialize in?

Yeah, so AI is obviously an emerging and a big thing happening these days. And we see a big need for solving for that hyper personalized offers. Card holders looking for something that would match their needs and their preferences and their habits. And the banks that can really leverage the AI power solutions that we offer would close that gap, would bridge that gap that we're seeing, and would truly move the needles in terms of the performance and the impact that we'll see.

Audi, really grateful for a few minutes of your time. I know it's a busy schedule for you here at Money 2020. Thanks for sitting down with us today.

Thank you so much for having me.