A taboo around talking about money combined with a lack of financial education means many students aren’t confident in their spending choices, and don’t understand how to begin building a foundation for a healthy financial future. Studies have shown people are more comfortable talking about marriage problems, mental health, race, sex, and politics than money, and nearly 60 percent of students say they cannot describe what a credit score is.

Boro, as part of its mission to empower students to secure a healthy financial future, is launching MyBoro to bring students out of the dark and give them the insights and information they need to make informed financial decisions.

All the new features are the direct result of feedback from college students:

• Student-Friendly Spending Analysis - Users connect their bank account to the app and Boro’s machine learning-powered proprietary technology provides personalized insights to help them see how much they're spending by category, like Subscriptions, Bills, Clothes, Gas & Transportation, Restaurants, Food & Drink, and more.
• Individualized Recommendations - The app tracks how that spending increases or decreases month-to-month, and makes personalized recommendations on how students can reduce those costs, while also warning them when they are nearing pre-set spending goals.
• Peer Comparisons - The app’s “StackUp Comparisons” feature benchmarks students’ spending against their peers’. For example, the app would tell a college senior at DePaul University exactly how his or her spending on rent as a portion of income compares to other college seniors in Illinois, and later, at his or her school.
• Affordable, Low-Interest Loans - MyBoro users will have access to BoroCash, low-interest loans of up to $2,000 that students can use for daily living expenses. Unlike credit cards, BoroCash loans have fixed term limits, meaning borrowers fully pay off their loans on a controlled schedule, preventing them from being trapped in cycles of debt.
“Money should be accessible, engaging and fun -- it doesn’t have to be scary and guilt-inducing," says Hao Liu, CEO and co-founder of Boro. “We built MyBoro specifically for college students, so there’s no jargon, everything is in their language and tailored to what they care about. We’ve tested it with thousands of beta users and seen high user satisfaction rates, so we know that we’re really touched a nerve here.”
MyBoro uses machine learning and natural language processing to understand users’ bank transactions and other complex financial information and translate it into insights that are easier for young people to understand.

Later this year, Boro will add additional features to the platform, including interactive quizzes, credit monitoring, and social challenges that let friends set and achieve spending goals together. Boro also plans to refine its peer comparisons so they’re increasingly localized: Students will soon be able to benchmark their spending against other students at their college and collect rewards for making smart financial decisions.

“As someone who has had to teach myself about personal finance, managing my finances has been a wild ride,” said Michael Cao, a junior at Pennsylvania State University. “Boro has proven to be incredibly valuable throughout this journey, providing me with the tools, and resources I needed to become the personal finance guru I've always wanted to be.”