The Next Frontier for Financial Services: Life-Cycle Event Platforms

Worldwide, there is a clear trend towards embedding various services into a single digital customer journey (see my blog "The Rise of Intelligent Ecosystems: What It Means for Financial Institutions" – https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-rise-of-intelligent-ecosystems-what.html). This has led to the emergence of embedded platforms, product and service marketplaces, and even super-apps that combine multiple offerings into one cohesive app experience.

While these embedded journeys are increasingly comprehensive, they currently revolve around the purchase of a single product or service. For example, planning a holiday can now be done in one flow—booking flights, hotels, public transport, car rental, and insurance. Similarly, buying a home can involve a streamlined process for property evaluation, mortgage arrangement, insurance, and the actual purchase.

However, life also includes a few significant, life-changing events that most people experience—each involving a chain of interlinked administrative services and product acquisitions. Currently, very few platforms offer an end-to-end experience for these complex milestones. This is the next layer of consolidation: integrating multiple smaller customer journeys into one overarching flow that guides users through these rare but impactful life events. Due to their complexity and the fact that people only go through them a few times in their lives, proper guidance is not a luxury but a necessity—to avoid costly mistakes or overlooked steps.

A platform that manages the full scope of such life-changing events—including coordination with government and institutional administration—would be extremely powerful.

Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to play this role as life-cycle event managers, because they:

Have large customer bases with frequent digital engagement (e.g. through mobile apps).
Are already seen as trusted advisors — critical when dealing with sensitive personal data.
Are involved in many financial and administrative aspects of such life events.
Hold verified customer data through KYC/AML processes that can be reused.

Offering a seamless, end-to-end experience brings tremendous value to customers. Many would be willing to pay for the assurance that their life event is managed properly and efficiently. For banks, it increases customer stickiness and creates strong cross- and upsell opportunities.

So, which life events could banks help manage? Here are some key milestones:

Birth of a Child
Wedding
Divorce
Buying a House
Home Move
Child Going to College
Buying a Car
Death of a Close Relative

The platform could present users with a list of key life milestones to choose from. Once a milestone is selected, a guided wizard or checklist would appear, helping the user navigate a structured sequence of steps. The interface should clearly indicate which tasks are completed, in progress, or still pending.

For each step, the bank should aim to provide a fully integrated and automated experience. However, if this isn’t feasible—due to technical limitations or timing constraints—it should offer alternatives. These could include generating a document (e.g. a PDF) for use with third parties, handling certain steps manually within the bank, or simply providing the necessary information such as explanations, contact details, or relevant links.

Let’s now explore a few life-cycle events to illustrate how this could work in practice:

Birth of a child

Declaration to government (before birth if unmarried and/or after birth)
Notification of fiscal authority and employer
Administrative requests, e.g. child benefits, birth allowance, health fund, paternity leave, maternity leave…
Creating a birth list for friends and family
Designing and sending a birth card (including address list management)
Note: This address list could be reused for other journeys or for managing banking contacts (see my blog "Payment contact management – Room for innovation" - https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2020/09/payment-contact-management-room-for.html)
Sending thank-you cards to people who contributed to the birth list
Setting up and decorating the nursery
Hospital arrangements (e.g. payments, insurance coordination)
Support with choosing a name
Financial products and services: update family insurance, add the child to hospital insurance, review birth-related reimbursements from hospital insurance, open savings accounts or plans for the child, update inheritance beneficiaries, etc.
…

Wedding

Wedding List
Wedding Venue, reception, catering, party (e.g. DJ)
Wedding Flowers
Wedding Attire (e.g. dress) and Rings
Wedding Photographer
Wedding Transport & Accommodation
Wedding Hairdresser, Make-up, Pedicure, Manicure…
Arrangements with government for administrative impact, but also for the ceremony
Coordination with religious institutions
Notification to fiscal authority and employer regarding fiscal impact
Notification of civil status change to companies (banks, telecoms, utilities, etc.)
Wedding invitations and guest list management
Thank-you notes
Honeymoon planning
Financial products and services: update insurance, inheritance beneficiaries, run tax simulations, use budget management tools

Divorce

Renting or buying a new place
Valuation of joint property and other assets
Administrative updates (government, fiscal authority, employer)
Legal arrangements for children
Notification of civil status change to companies (banks, telecoms, utilities, etc.)
Financial products and services: update or split insurances, modify inheritance designations, change account access, close or open joint accounts, adjust mortgage terms, revise car insurance, etc.

Buying a House

House search (with real estate agent integration), and info lookup (schools, shops, transport, pollution, flooding risk, etc.)
Advice on required certificates and property valuation
Coordination with notary (mortgage, deed, inheritance clauses)
Tax and cost simulations (e.g. property tax, municipal tax, notary fees, acquisition and mortgage taxes, deductions)
Renovation planning (cost estimates, contractor comparison, decoration advice, sequencing)
Financial products: mortgage, home insurance, loan protection, renovation loans, budget planning tools

Organizing a Home Move

Utility transfers: cable, phone, water, electricity, gas
Mail forwarding setup
Informing friends, family, employer, and service providers (bank, insurer) of address change
Government updates (domiciliation, tax simulation, legal cohabitation agreements)
Finding and hiring movers
Finding and hiring locksmith
Financial products and services: e.g. update mortgage status, update house insurance, housing deposit account, renovation loan offer, switch to new primary bank branch

Child Going to College

Choosing college and study direction
Applying for study grants
College enrolment
Arranging college housing
Public transport subscription
Decorating the dorm
Financial products and services: student loan, housing deposit account, savings withdrawals for tuition

Buying a car

Finding a car dealer
Requesting license plate
Government registration
Parking permit request or change (for new license plate)
Fuel/charging card or charging station setup
Comparing car insurance and financing options
Tax simulations (registration tax, annual road tax)
Cost simulation for the full car ownership journey

Decease of a close family member

Funeral service arrangement
Funeral logistics (flowers, service type, burial/cremation, memorial cards, guest list)
Notary services
Informing relevant parties (utilities, banks, insurers, subscriptions)
Social media account closure or updates
Notifications to government, health fund, and tax authorities
Applying for survivor’s pension
Succession tax calculation
Clearing out the home
Sale of belongings and property
Organ donation management (if applicable)
Financial impacts: funeral insurance, life insurance payouts, testament/will execution, trust management, asset/liability overviews, account access control, processing payments linked to the funeral, limited joint account access, mortgage insurance payout…

These examples show the sheer volume of tasks involved in major life events. They also highlight the many financial touchpoints, reinforcing why banks are well-suited to manage these journeys.

Looking ahead, one might wonder whether platforms like this will still be needed once Agentic AI becomes mainstream and capable of orchestrating such complex journeys. But even in that scenario, it will remain crucial for banks to integrate seamlessly with AI systems to ensure their services are accessible within those AI-managed experiences.

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