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eMoney’s financial planning app, cryptically named Project Avocado, is currently in testing with the firm’s employee base, WealthManagement.com has learned. The “alpha” version, or first iteration to be deployed outside of a development framework, has been put through its paces since early February, said Chad Porche, VP and head of UX design at eMoney. It’s currently deployed to “hundreds” of eMoney employees and the expectation is that it will be in the hands of eMoney’s “beta” group of pilot advisor firms before July.
The test deployment, which coincidentally overlapped with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent restrictions on business openings and the movement of Americans, created unexpected data for the financial planning software developer. The app seeks to modify user behavior, in the form of spending decision “challenges” that are executed without human intervention.
One of those challenges was to spend less money dining out, a nudge that quickly lost relevancy as the reality of the...