Nationwide’s Spire is sorry for the inconvenience
In January 2020, Spire went live in Texas. Launched by Nationwide, “Texas was the perfect first location to make Spire available to customers,” according to Scott Liles, who back then was Spire’s lead executive and as of November 2020 is the President and Managing Director at ACAMS (Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists).
Liles isn’t the only one to work on Spire and to no longer work at Nationwide. Scott Sanchez who “launched, incubated, and initially scaled Spire”, and Nimbl (a mobile business to help people get out of debt) is now the Product Innovation Officer at Deluxe.
In a statement to Coverager made in December of last year, Nationwide shared the following in regards to Nimbl:
“In December 2019, Nationwide launched Nimbl as a solution to help consumers get out (and stay out) of debt and to pursue a future of financial wellness. However, after eight months of in-market testing, we informed users that Nimbl would come to an end and we would be working on the next phase of possible solutions. As of September 21, 2020, all Nimbl accounts were closed and connections to financial institutions were automatically disconnected.”
Today, we’re getting mixed signals in regards to how operational Spire really is. Its phones are working. Understanding in what states Spire is available remains a challenge.
According to its site, Spire is live in Texas. “Right now Spire is only available in Texas. We’re working on expanding our coverage area so please check back soon!” According to Avi’s conversation with a Spire representative that took place yesterday, Spire isn’t currently available in Texas, and according to my conversation with Victoria (another Spire representative), Spire is available in Texas. For a digital brand, this is far from a digital experience and Nationwide is going to extremes to make sure prospects give up before they give their coverage a try.
According to SimilarWeb Spire’s app on the Apple store hasn’t been downloaded between July and December 2020, and its app on Google Play has been downloaded about 65 times between November to December. According to another source – MixRank – the app on Google Play has been downloaded 257 times since launch.
Finally, the last social media activity by Spire took place around Halloween. It’s scary how you can work on a brand for nine months to later neglect your baby.
Nationwide didn’t respond to our request for comment.
