The news: Ally Financial launched a fee-free rewards program, Loyally, for all Ally banking or auto customers regardless of account balance, per a press release. 

The program forgoes point systems and minimum-balance requirements in favor of direct perks: subscription benefits for services like Spotify, Instacart+, and Calm, cash bonuses for referrals, and VIP access to concerts. 

Zooming out: While competitors often use perks to reward deeper or more lucrative customer relationships, Ally is taking the opposite approach by extending benefits to customers regardless of their balances or spending. 

But it isn’t alone in marketing rewards to the everyday customers: USAA uses rewards to strengthen customer relationships, offering up to 5% cash back on essential spending like gas and groceries through its suite of no-annual-fee credit cards.

Implications for banks: Loyally's subscription perks target younger consumers—48% of Gen Zers and half of millennials said they would switch banks or financial providers for free access to their favorite subscriptions, per Bango. 

Offering perks like free trials to Calm Premium without requiring a membership fee or certain level of investable assets puts a concrete value in front of those customers.

But there’s risk to the strategy as well. Ally has 9.6 million customers and $200 billion in assets, and offering perks for potentially every customer will be a sizable expense (though presumably a non-zero share will never opt in). 

The question is whether the customers it acquires and retains from these rewards will outweigh that cost.

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