The H&W Story
A History of Intelligence & Innovation
In the late 2000s, H&W founder Laura Varas sees a gap between the short-term obsession with Baby Boomer IRA rollovers vs. what has worked in line and staff roles at leading companies. Varas seeks a competitive advantage for financial services firms through broader access to more holistic data on the needs, wants and purchasing behaviors of all the consumers behind all the money. Her vision: an integrated view across distribution channels – deliver forward-looking, more sophisticated frameworks for earning the loyalty (hearts) and therefore money (wallets) of diverse customer segments.
First market sizing segments total market
into households and investable assets.
The first Portrait of U.S. Household Wealth calculates total market opportunity in households and the investable assets they control. Initially calculated with 36 cells, Portrait today uses 156 cells, allowing the sizing of total addressable markets for any product or target, based on 1,000s of options to combine demographic, behavioral or attitudinal definitions, going far beyond government data.
Company is founded after well-received publication on emerging behavioral segments.
Funded by a handful of pre-orders from visionary firms, the Capturing the Hearts & Wallets of Peak Accumulators report was a hit with senior leaders and their organizations who believe end customer wants and money behaviors matter to innovation. Hearts & Wallets LLC is formed in December with revenue from the 2010 report.
First advice/guidance experiences are benchmarked for a cross-industry customer hypothetical.
The first benchmarking round yields dramatically varied results, showing the value of analysis of factors that drive advice/guidance experiences. Experience managers across the industry ask to see results of their experiences. Today, Inside Advice® Benchmarking is the most robust, trusted methodology for measuring cross-industry design and delivery of advice/guidance experiences and now contains 300+ fields on results, capabilities and positioning for 100s of experiences for 10 standardized customer hypotheticals.
IQ™ Dataminer software pilot enables clients to quantify attitudes and behaviors for segments.
Inspired by purchasing pattern data on consumer-packaged goods, the initial release of IQ™ Dataminer offers basic segmentation functionality for the household mode of IQ™ Database to clients across functional areas. Today, IQ Dataminer makes reliable customer-reported purchasing pattern data – who buys what, where, at what price, and how they feel about it – available for companies to provide saving, investing and financial advice solutions.
The first responsive report expands access to market intelligence throughout organizations.
Responsive technology for H&W Trends™ reports enables purchasing pattern data and insights to be distributed to throughout organizations. Users can dive deep into topics across all three H&W databases, with robust measurement reporting for centers of excellence. Today, as many as 500 users across multiple functions at client companies consult H&W resources to inform product innovation, strategy, marketing communications, segment management and other purposes.
The methodology behind Inside Advice® Grid is codified in software, allowing for comparisons of corporate portfolios of advice/guidance experiences.
Discovering how results from advice/guidance experiences compare is now supported by software to streamline the process for determining the Inside Advice® Grid category of experiences based on market practices. Data visualization techniques improve presentation of a growing number of fields covering results, capabilities and positioning to support experience designers, financial planning engineers, distribution leadership and field execution in developing and delivering advice/guidance experiences.
IQ™ Dataminer adds purchase patterns by store and product.
Like any other consumer purchase decisions, purchases of saving, investing and financial advice solutions occur through products and stores. New data visualization techniques and user interface features make independent research of the 4 modes of IQ™ Database – household demographics, attitudes and behaviors; store purchase patterns; investment product purchase patterns; and money movement – accessible to users across various functions, sophistication levels and business goals.
EQ™ Vault puts forward-looking qualitative insights at the fingertips of innovation, communications and strategy functions.
Explore Qualitative™(EQ™) Database’s strong track record of predictive success comes from the simple fact that studying the unmet needs of end consumers reveals what is likely to happen in the future because, in a competitive market, someone eventually launches something to meet those needs.
Hearts & Wallets becomes H&W.
The company adopts the day-to-day name of H&W, modernizing the logo and branding to reflect the firm’s trajectory of innovation and leadership in wealth management. H&W continues its dedication to the highest-quality data for solutions to help households of with their wealth, retirement and financial lives and high-touch client service to support the success of our clients. The legal name of the company remains Hearts & Wallets LLC.