Wells Fargo: Redesigning the Gen Z Banking Experience
Updated: Mar 17
Executive Summary
This study explores how Gen Z thinks, feels, and behaves when it comes to banking. Through a mixed-methods approach combining in-depth interviews with five participants and a survey of 112 respondents, we set out to understand what this generation actually needs from a financial institution before any brand relationship can form.
What we found goes deeper than product preferences or digital habits. It's a story about autonomy, trust, identity, and what it means to feel seen by an institution that has historically made many communities feel invisible. This research was the strategic groundwork before any creative decisions were made.
Challenge
This project began as a capstone assignment for Wells Fargo, focused on developing a Gen Z targeted branding campaign to help the bank “define the relationship of the future” with young consumers.
As Wells Fargo faces growing pressure from fintechs and neobanks offering digital-first experiences, they asked us to identify how Wells Fargo can build a deeper, more meaningful relationships with Gen Z across channels, content, and brand experience — supported by primary and secondary research.
Strategy
Shifting Toward a UX Research Approach
Instead of approaching this solely through a marketing lens (e.g., campaign messaging or media strategy), I reframed the problem as a behavioral and experiential question:
How does Gen Z actually experience banking today — and what do they need, expect, or struggle with when forming a relationship with a bank?
A UX research lens allowed me to go deeper than campaign inspiration. It let me explore the underlying mental models, trust dynamics, relationship expectations, and behavioral patterns that must inform any authentic, long-term Gen Z strategy — whether marketing, product, or service design.
Centering Diverse Voices
This study built on initial secondary research into Gen Z financial trends through a mixed-methods approach combining in-depth qualitative interviews with a structured online survey.
We prioritized interviews with People of Color to ensure the study was grounded in diverse lived experiences and to surface the kinds of pain points, systemic barriers, and cultural nuances that broader datasets often miss.
Those qualitative insights allowed me to explore the 'why' behind specific financial behaviors, which I then used to design a comprehensive survey for Gen Z participants of all races to quantify how widespread those patterns are across the entire generation.
Each methodology was designed to explore four dimensions of the Gen Z banking experience: how they choose a financial institution, how they stay informed and think about their financial future, what their day-to-day banking behaviors actually look like, and what they want and expect from a banking relationship long term.
Interviews N = 5 participants
Ages: 18–24
Ethnicities: Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Multiracial
Income: $25k to $50k
Currently in college
Location: East Coast + Southeast
Survey N= 112 respondents
Age: 18–24
Locations: U.S. respondents (matching the interview regions)
Income: <$100K
Device: Mobile and desktop
Findings:
Future Goals & Financial Constraints
Gen Z Is Building Their Future on Shaky Ground
All 5 interview participants tied their banking motivations to real, upcoming milestones. College, a first car, an apartment. Concrete goals with price tags attached. Survey data tells the same story: financial stability tops the list at 25%, followed by homeownership at 22%, and vehicles at 15%.
"It was a goal of mine to have a down payment on a house by the time I was 30, but that's also including things like being in my residency, making money, having a sound savings plan. I should be pretty set in life and working towards that goal."
— Fatima
But they're pursuing those goals with limited income. 55% of our respondents haven't earned a college degree yet, and 51% are currently employed, and therefore navigating financial independence without much of a safety net.
That uncertainty breeds caution. A genuine fear of being penalized for one wrong move. Within our survey, 79% named "fund's safety" as a top need. Because for Gen Z, a surprise fee isn't just an inconvenience, it can derail a plan they've been working toward for months.
We heard this directly in how participants make banking decisions. Fatima and Safiya both explicitly need products that don't penalize low balances. Safiya switched to a Chase student account after TD started charging her fees she couldn't absorb. Travis grew up in a family that didn't tracked fees and interest closely, and as a result is more vigilant.
Learning & Support Experience
Human Guidance Shapes Their Experience
For most of our interviewees, getting a first bank account wasn't a solo experience. It was a family affair.
I had guidance, my parents. We tried to figure out which bank was in plenty numbers over here, it was Chase. And my parents also bank with Chase, they were like, this is a good bank.
— Elise
And while financial influencers might seem like a natural fit for a digitally native generation, 67% don't follow them, citing distrust, hidden agendas, and not knowing where to start. When it comes to financial guidance, Gen Z turns to family first at 56%, then friends, 45% and Youtube at 37%. Banks come in last at 15%.
And yet, for many, financial learning isn't neglected out of apathy. It's deprioritized out of necessity. Life is full, and for a generation still in school, working entry-level jobs, and building independence, financial tasks often get pushed to the back burner.
"All I'm trying to focus on right now is school. I forget that I have a real life outside of school."
— Fatima
"I just use YouTube because I'm not trading currently because I don't want to lose money. I cannot lose sleep and jeopardize school. My main priority right now is school."
— Elise
The motivation is there. The bandwidth isn't always. That distinction matters for how banks think about reaching this group.
Digital Behavior & Product Expectations
Digital Is Table Stakes. Human Help Still Anchors Trust.
Gen Z isn't choosing between digital and in-person banking. They're choreographing both. Day-to-day, they manage money through fast, intuitive apps across multiple accounts. But when something goes wrong — fraud, confusion, a high-stakes decision — they want a human to lean on as 73% of respondents said they'd be willing to travel up to 10 miles for exceptional service or shared values.
“With online banking, you're never seeing a person…you don't feel like you need to see a person....When it comes to having issues and needing someone to lean on, its important there's proper access to customer service lines that are going to help you address the problem.”
— Aliyah
When asked to rate features that matter most for a positive banking relationship, "Safety of funds" and "Trust" ranked highest, with 64% and 59% rating them "very important" respectively. Transparency and satisfying individual needs followed closely. Unified digital experience, while expected, ranked near the bottom — not because it doesn't matter, but because it's already the baseline.
Autonomy, Identity & Belonging
The Push for Space
For many of our participants, banking wasn't just about money. It was about ownership. Quiet, personal ownership.
Safiya wants her own financial space, separate from her husband. Aliyah removed her mother from her account the moment she turned 18. Charmaine is working toward becoming the sole owner of her long-term savings. None of these are dramatic declarations. They are quiet, deliberate acts of self-definition.
"I'm 23 years old... I don't like him[my husband] seeing everything that I spend."
— Safiya
"My mom wanted to come with me to open my checking account so that she can be put on it too. I guess to micromanage me, who knows."
— Fatima
Gen Z isn't rejecting their families. They're carving out space within those relationships, and they're looking for a bank that understands the difference.
The Barrier Nobody Talks About
The problem is the system wasn't built with this in mind. As minors, both Aliyah and Fatima were locked out of their own accounts, unable to act independently or access their own funds. Charmaine was denied financial products because she lacked traditional income, despite having savings.
"But since I was under 18, it was very limited as to what I could do. I wasn't even able to call without having her there. So if I called, they would say we need to get her on the line as well."
— Aliyah
These are not UX problems. They are policy and eligibility constraints that land as exclusion. Gen Z is ready to be treated as capable adults. The institutions they're walking into aren't always ready to meet them there.
Identity Isn't a Feature. It's a Filter.
Once safety and trust are established, Gen Z asks a different question: who are you, and do your values match mine? 67% want to learn from someone who shares their identity or background. 60% say sustainability and community impact matter to them. But both only activate after the basics are proven.
"I have a responsibility and duty to myself to progress in life. So something quick that supports any type of African American institution, I would always do it."
— Fatima
That's not brand loyalty. That's identity in action. For Gen Z, community investment isn't a campaign. It's the final test of whether an institution actually deserves their trust.
Trust & Institutional Behavior
Trust Isn't Given. It's Earned.
64% of respondents say safety of funds is very important, and 59% say trust is very important. But when we asked about Wells Fargo specifically, the open-ended responses told a sharper story.
While the most frequent response was the functional term "Bank" (29%), likely the byproduct of the questions vagueness and the survey's length, the deeper qualitative data revealed a stark divide. Although the overall sentiment was nearly split—18% negative to 16% positive—the specific word choices were visceral. On one hand, a portion of respondents associate the institution with being "reliable," "stable," and "trustworthy".
On the other it's countered by a vocal group that views the brand through a lens of deep suspicion, using terms like "fraud," "corrupt," and "shady". These reactions were often aggressive, suggesting that for nearly one-fifth of respondents, the brand remains synonymous with a lack of integrity. These polarized responses highlight a significant gap between the bank's intended image and public perception.
What's notable is what didn't matter much. Only 17% rated brand legacy as very important. For Gen Z, history doesn't buy goodwill. Behavior does.
This tracks with what we know about the generation more broadly. Research shows only 34% of Millennials and Gen Z trust banks, and Gen Z in particular is known to call out hypocrisy and performative gestures when they see them(Lidstone, 2019)(Baines, 2021). A polished campaign or a carefully worded apology won't move the needle. Visible, consistent action will.
“If they provide a service, like classes for financial literacy, that's taking out time from their day... having instructors for classes, costs money. That is good enough to me. Even if they're not genuine, at the end of the day, the community is benefiting.“
- Elise
Gen Z isn't waiting for institutions to become perfect. They're watching to see if the work actually gets done. Across our interviews, Aliyah, Travis, and Safiya each described, in their own words, what real repair looks like: A clear explanation of what went wrong, genuine ownership without excuses, concrete changes going forward and tangible actions that prove the commitment is real.
Where the Data Led Us
5 interview participants. 112 survey respondents. What emerged wasn't a list of features to build or campaigns to run. It was something more foundational: a clear picture of what Gen Z actually needs from a financial institution before any brand story can land. These weren't product recommendations. They were the strategic guardrails we carried into every campaign conversation that followed. Here's what the research was telling us.
Gen Z needed banking built around life moments, not financial products.
The research kept returning to the same pattern. When participants talked about money, they never talked about it in the abstract. They talked about the apartment, the car, residency, the move. Savings and credit weren't goals in themselves. They were tools to unlock something real. That distinction matters enormously. A bank that leads with products will always miss this audience. The entry point has to be the life event, not the financial vehicle.
What that looked like in practice: goal-oriented experiences built around real transitions. First Apartment. First Car. Residency and Relocation. Visa and Immigration Move. Each one combining the tools that milestone actually requires, with a clear path forward and the option of a real human in the loop when the stakes feel high.
This model has precedent. Davivienda in Colombia wrapped product and financial education around how young people actually live and spend and Maya in the Philippines built gamified in-app missions that move users toward saving and credit use, not just payments driving both engagement and trust. Neobanks like Chime already let users set named goals and auto-move money. The insight wasn't new. But for Wells Fargo, applying it with that level of specificity was.
The guidance gap wasn't about access. It was about trust.
The resources exist. The content exists. What Gen Z is missing isn't information. It's a source that feels like it's actually on their side. Banks rank last as a learning source not because they lack content but because they lack credibility in this space. The medium isn't the problem. The relationship is.
What the data pointed to was something more contextual and human than a content strategy. Guidance layered directly onto real moments. A micro-lesson when opening a credit card. A plain-language explainer when paying less than a full balance. A gentle flag before a scheduled payment conflicts with a low balance. Not a help center. Guidance that arrives exactly when the decision is happening. And when the stakes feel too high for an app to handle, a clear frictionless path to a real person, with language that normalizes not knowing. "A lot of people ask this. Let's walk through it."
Beyond the app entirely, the data pointed to community. The preference for learning from someone who shares your background isn't a content preference. It's a trust preference. Davivienda embedded financial education inside gaming culture on Twitch and TikTok, using voices Gen Z already trusted in spaces they already inhabited. Bank of Montreal built a Discord library out of hundreds of hours of streamed money conversations. Coast Capital used a card game to make financial conversations feel human and low stakes. The throughline is the same: the learning follows the trust, never the other way around.
It's not about credibility. It's about connection.
The moment a bank charged a participant in a vulnerable moment, the relationship didn't weaken. It ended. Signaling what this generation believes financial institutions are actually for. And it shaped how we thought about the campaign's emotional territory. You can't build a brand story about partnership and support while the product is quietly penalizing people for having $5 in their account. The message and the experience have to match.
That meant the campaign couldn't ignore the fee conversation. BNPL(Buy Now, Pay Later) providers like Klarna and Afterpay have captured significant wallet through their transparency, making their products feel less predatory. That's the bar Wells Fargo is being measured against whether they know it or not. And simply eliminating fees isn't enough. Most banks are already moving there.
What actually rebuilds trust is predictability. Knowing what's coming before it hits. Contextual alerts before harm happens. Fee previews before a transaction goes wrong. One-tap options to course correct. The campaign needed to reflect a bank that works with you before things go wrong, not one that apologizes after.
Belonging starts with autonomy, and autonomy has to be built into the structure.
The data revealed a clear progression. Before Gen Z can feel like they belong somewhere, they need to feel like they own something. That desire for financial independence wasn't abstract. It showed up in every interview as something specific and personal. The push to separate from a joint account. The need for a financial space a partner can't see into. The frustration of being denied products despite having savings, simply because the system wasn't designed to recognize their reality. These experiences don't just create friction. They signal to a young person that this institution wasn't built with them in mind.
That's why structural change has to come before brand story. Eligibility policies that exclude young adults without explanation, transition flows that are opaque or nonexistent, and flat denials with no path forward aren't neutral. They actively undermine the relationship before it begins. WARC's post-COVID research shows challenger banks that designed specifically for underserved segments found inclusion to be a genuine competitive advantage, not a charity position. And when things have gone wrong historically, as they have for Wells Fargo specifically, the path back isn't a campaign. It's consistent, transparent, demonstrable behavior over time. Gen Z described repair clearly: ownership, honesty, and something concrete that follows. Not forgiveness granted easily, but trust rebuilt deliberately. Only once that foundation exists does the deeper layer of identity and community become available. Who the bank stands with. Whose stories it tells. Whether its values match theirs. That's not where the relationship starts. But it's where it goes deepest.
Where This Leaves Us
What this research kept returning to, across every interview and every survey response, was something simpler than we expected. Gen Z doesn't want to be managed by their bank. They want to be met by it. That distinction, small as it sounds, has enormous implications for how financial institutions show up in their lives. This study was our attempt to understand what being met actually looks like for this generation.
There's more to come. This is one piece of a larger study, and I'm still working through the data. If there's a finding, a participant thread, or a question this article raised that you want to see explored next, drop it in the comments. I'm actively sequencing what gets published, and your curiosity will shape that. In the meantime, if something in here challenged your thinking or made you approach the problem differently, we'd love to know.
All participant names have been changed to protect their privacy. The stories are real. The details are real. The names are not.
This work was made possible with the help of a few tools worth mentioning: Zoom/PlaybookUX for interviews, SurveyMonkey for quantitative data, Dovetail and R Programming for synthesis and tagging, Excel for data organization, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for research support and writing assistance.
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