Understanding PiggyVest Users Before Building Solutions
In this article, I will be presenting my findings from my survey with 2 PiggyVest users, and a follow-up interview with one of them, with a view to understanding their pain points and recommending future product improvements.
What is PiggyVest and How Does it Work?
PiggyVest is Nigeria’s largest online savings and investment platform. It was founded in 2016 as PiggyBank, before rebranding as PiggyVest in 2019. The platform currently has over 6 million users, and disbursed ₦1.3 trillion to users in 2015, according to TechPoint Africa.
PiggyVest is a unique fintech company operating in the Nigerian financial space. Most popular fintechs in Nigeria offer a range of services from savings, investments, bills payments to utilities and even virtual card services. However, PiggyVest has stayed true to its mission of helping Nigerians build a savings and investments culture, and stay committed to it. Thus, PiggyVest’s main product offerings revolve around these two objectives. In sum, its main features include Flex Naira, Flex Dollar (flexible wallets), SafeLock (locked savings), Piggybank (automated savings), Target Savings, HouseMoney (rent savings), GetIt (savings for purchases), and Investify (investments).
PiggyVest has over 6 million users, drawn from a wide range of demographics. In my view, students, householders, entrepreneurs, and 9–5ers use PiggyVest to keep money for the rainy day, save for emergencies, invest, grow their income, earn interest on rent money, and save towards purchases. I expect that its core users are working class Nigerians who desire to build more savings discipline than a regular bank account gives them. Both of my respondents managed their savings in a traditional bank before they found PiggyVest.
Understanding PiggyVest’s User
My persona, Joseph, is a set-and-forget saver, and combines what both respondents told me. The image below gives a quick summary of his background, behaviour, goals, pain points and motivations.
Mapping the User Journey
Joseph’s journey has 5 stages, from signing up on PiggyVest to taking money out. The map shows what he does, how he likely feels, and where things go wrong at each stage.
The Biggest Pain Point
The most problematic stage is stage 4, checking in on progress. It is the stage where Joseph either stays engaged or drifts away.
The survey showed that both respondent’s last visit was a passive check. Respondent A wanted to “check my account balance” and Respondent B simply answered “Interest”. It is interesting to find that Respondent B joined to build a savings habit, but now hardly used the app, rated it 3 out of 5, and said nothing would make it better.
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This finding is crucial because PiggyVest promises a lasting savings habit. However, if check-ins feel like reading a number and closing the app, users may stop topping up and return only to withdraw. The evidence I would need to find the root cause include:
- How often users open the app, and what they do in each session, from 1 month to 12 months after joining.
- Deposit frequency over time for each joining group, to see when people stop adding money.
- How many users pause or never restart their automated Piggybank plans.
- Whether users on a Target Savings plan stay active longer than users on other plans.
An incidental pain point was occasional challenges with deposit or withdrawals, mentioned by Respondent B. However, that same user cited PiggyVest’s prompt response to demand as a positive. Thus, this has a lower priority.
Recommended Improvement
I recommend turning the balance screen into a progress check-in. When Joseph opens the app, he should see three things instead of just a number:
- Progress towards his goal. E.g “You have saved ₦100,000 of your ₦500,000 rent goal.”
- Interest earned in that month
- One small next step. For e.g. a suggestion to raise the automated amount by ₦5,000.
One metric I would track is the percentage of people who topped up their savings or increased their automated PiggyBank savings.
Lessons and Conclusions
The biggest lesson I have learned is that the most important problem might not be the one users complain about. Focusing on the withdrawal problems seems like the easy way out, but the strongest signal in this short survey is from a user who had no complaints but had quietly stopped engaging with the platform.
Additionally, I have learned practically that satisfied is not the same as engaged. A 3 out of 5 rating and “Nothing” as a suggestion can hide a user who is drifting away. Product managers must always look at behaviour, not just feedback.
