10 Steps That Banks Can Take to Drive Their Digital Future

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More than a dozen years ago, I managed digital banking at a community bank.

Back then, keeping up with available digital solutions for customers meant attending our core system and digital banking provider’s user meetings and conferences. The major limitation we experienced was that we could only deploy technology readily integrated into our core and digital banking systems. If we brought in technology that wasn’t already integrated, we would be paying for the integration — paving the way for our competitors. In at least one situation, the rollout failed because our provider could not get the technology to scale.

Due to high costs and technical expertise, most community-based banking organizations have had to settle with being mostly buyers of technology. In contrast, many larger banks are viewed as builders of technology, despite the fact, that many of the larger financial institutions that have developed digital banking technologies in-house were net buyers as well.

With the growing adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs), banks are no longer limited to the binary choice of being a buyer or a builder of technology. Organizations that were previously constrained by integration limitations can finally own their own digital experiences — not by buying technology outright, but by building relationships with fintech firms. Increasingly, fintechs have shifted from wanting to disintermediate banks to partnering with them to provide the digital products, services and experiences that retail banking customers demand.

The biggest hurdle to taking advantage of these opportunities to partner with fintech firms as a way to manage your institution’s digital future is changing legacy mindsets in the community bank space. How do bank executives move from thinking of themselves as a “buyer of technology” to focusing on orchestrating and building partnerships?

Here are ten general steps to start this journey:

  1. Define explicit business objectives: Program goals, metrics of success, etc.
  2. Assign the person(s) responsible: Ideally, this should be driven by the CEO as the ultimate strategist for the bank, but day-to-day can be managed by a chief information or marketing officer, head of digital or another executive.
  3. Identify addressable gaps: Stay away from shining objects by identifying real gaps in the bank’s capabilities and addressing customers’ needs that the bank can close with a partner’s technology.
  4. Create a program to identify possible partners for each gap: This can be done through literature reviews, participating in conferences, innovation hubs, research firms or consulting partners, among others.
  5. Decide between build, invest or partner: Executives should categorize each partner into three options — build/customize a solution with them, invest in them for more strategic control and oversight or partner in the traditional contractual sense for the use of their product/service. A partner may fit more than one of these categories.
  6. Evolve resource allocation: Partnerships require organizational commitment, such as funding, networking opportunities and ongoing support.
  7. Build required technology and infrastructure: Develop the capabilities required to support your bank’s growing ecosystem, including APIs, cloud infrastructure, sandboxes and agile practices.
  8. Adjust planning practices: Fintech speed is counted in days or weeks, not months or years as banks tend to use. Apply agile thinking to planning, budgeting and testing.
  9. Iterate processes: Internal processes, such as vendor management, should support continuous iteration based on results. Additionally, banks should remain open to working with fintech firms to mature their processes.
  10. Revisit metrics: Make sure your bank is measuring successes and making appropriate adjustments.

Available technologies — such as APIs and cloud platforms — allow banks to step away from the shadow of their core providers. Banks now have an opportunity to own their digital futures and, more importantly, the digital experiences they offer their customers. Strategic partnerships allow financial services organizations of all sizes to compete and serve the needs of consumers by successfully leveraging the latest technology.

How Embedded Compliance Plays the Game to Win, Not Break Even

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Imagine a game where your team can’t score points and there’s no such thing as winning. All you can do is meticulously follow the rules; if you follow them well enough, then your team doesn’t lose. Most banks approach compliance with this survival mindset and it shows.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, compliance expenses account for 7% of banks’ non-interest expenses. The majority of that spend is typically directed at headcount distributed across siloed operational functions — using equally siloed technology — to get the job done during the last leg of a transaction. The best that can be said for this approach is that it achieves baseline compliance. The worst? It prevents institutions from investing in transaction data management strategies that deliver compliance while simultaneously driving efficiencies and business growth that show up on the bottom line. This scenario becomes more untenable with each passing year: Increasing compliance complexity drives up costs, and that diversion of investment erodes a bank’s ability to compete.

Banks can choose to play the game differently, by viewing compliance as an integrated part of the data management process. Solutions that leverage application programming interfaces, or APIs, provide a mechanism for technology components to communicate with each other and exchange data payloads. Outside of this approach, transaction data resides in bifurcated systems and requires extra handling, either by software or human intervention, to complete a transaction and book the right data to the core. Having the same data in multiple systems and rekeying data dramatically increase an institution’s risk profile. Why make it harder to “not lose” the game when banks can leverage API-first solutions to ensure that data is only collected once and passes through to the touchpoints where it’s needed? The key to unlocking this efficiency is a compliance architecture that separates the tech stack from the compliance stack. Otherwise, banks are obliged to wait for code changes every time compliance updates are pushed.

Mobile enablement is now as critical for a bank’s success as any product it offers. The customers that banks are trying to reach have no practical limit to their financial services options and are increasingly comfortable with contact-free experiences. According to studies from J.D. Power & Associates released this year, 67% of U.S. bank retail customers have used their bank’s mobile app and 41% of bank customers are digital-only customers. Given historical trends, those numbers are expected to only increase.

Compliance represents an opportunity to remove friction from the mobile banking experience, whether offered through an app or a website. Traditional PDF documents are designed for in-branch delivery and are a clumsy fit for the mobile world. Responsive design applies to compliance content no less than it applies to mobile apps; content needs to adjust smoothly to fit the size of the viewing screen. The concept of “document package” is evolving to the point where a “compliance package” should be constructed on responsive design principles and require minimal user clicks to view and acknowledge the content.

An embedded compliance solution should treat optimized mobile channels as table stakes. To survive and thrive in this environment, institutions need to be where their customers are, when they are there. Traditional banker’s hours have officially gone the way of the dodo.

Embedded compliance can also enhance bank data security in the event of a breach. It is difficult to overstate the reputational damage that results from a data breach. Embedded compliance offers critical safeguards for sensitive customer information, bolstering an institution’s overall security profile. Legacy compliance or document-prep solutions often require duplicate data entry and expose customer personal identifiable information to the inherent data breach risks that come with multiple databases scattered across technology platforms. Look for solutions that do not store PII data, and instead offer bi-directional integrations with your platform.

Increasing demand for digital engagement provides banks with opportunities to rethink their technology stacks. Management should evaluate each component for its potential to address a myriad of business needs. Compliance solutions can sharpen or dull a bank’s competitive edge and should be considered part of a strategic plan to grow business. Who knows, maybe someday compliance will actually become “cool”? A dreamer can dream.

The API Band-Aid

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Years before the Covid-19 crisis pushed the banking industry headfirst into a digital-forward ecosystem, many financial institutions felt stuck in place. While a few front-runners were making technological headway with modernized, adaptive core technologies — such as Deland, Florida-based Surety Bank, with $183 million in assets — many banks were tied to on-premises, decades-old systems. 

Still today, replacing the core — the backend system that processes all transactions — hasn’t become mainstream as a way to upgrade a bank’s technology. Instead, much of the industry seems to be moving toward a variety of outside solutions. 

And one of the most popular solutions has become application programming interfaces (APIs). In Bank Director’s 2021 Technology Survey, 63% of banks report using APIs.

APIs function as passageways between software systems that facilitate data exchanges; in simpler terms, they allow systems to talk to each other. Layering APIs on top of legacy core systems allow them to interact with disparate third-party technology companies almost instantly, among other capabilities.

Finzly, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based alternative core provider, advocates that banks not break their core contracts. The company’s Director of Marketing Suja Ramakrishnan says, “The core has been designed for certain functions. Let’s allow it to do what it is made to do and build a new innovation layer on top of it to let [the bank] do what it wants to do.”

Finzly integrates with a bank’s existing core via API calls. It’s hosted on Amazon Web Services, so no on-site installation is required. Once integration is complete, a bank can access Finzly’s products, as well as ancillary technologies that handle payments, account opening, foreign exchange and commercial business needs. “Alternative cores are breeding grounds for innovation,” Ramakrishnan adds.

U.S. legacy cores aren’t standing on the sidelines, watching foreign fintechs provide the technology their bank clients are asking for.

To retain their customers and poach new ones, some of the leading providers — Jack Henry & Associates, FIS and Fiserv — have all invested in API and similar functional technologies to be included in their technology stacks. Jack Henry’s jXchange, FIS’s Code Connect and Fiserv’s Communicator Advantage are the providers’ way of offering real-time communication capabilities with selected third parties not included in their core contract. 

But these API marketplaces come with a catch.

Tom Grottke, managing director at Crowe LLP, notes that banks can’t self-select the third parties they want to work with and go to market the next day. The providers are the ones to vet, certify and onboard the services they want to offer to their bank clients. “They [legacy core providers] are more open than they have been, they’ve added more functionality … but it’s not an open architectured marketplace,” he explains.

While banks are still wondering how they can add more digital features and services, Grottke says banks have realized that they won’t have to change the core to find those answers. 

There may be many advantages to replacing legacy cores, but it appears that many banks are content in using APIs as a Band-Aid to temporarily fix a longstanding problem. And with core conversion costly, replacing the core could be daunting for many banks. APIs buy a bank more time in figuring out their long-term core strategy.

A Pandemic-Proof Process Transformation Game Plan

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Initiatives without execution are dreams that never become plans.

At MX, we’re helping banks use financial data to improve the financial lives of more than 30 million people. Banks need a secure foundation to build on at a time when profits have stalled, laying the groundwork for ways to increase revenue, offset losses and impact to your bottom line.

To get a better understanding of what financial institutions are focusing on, we recently surveyed more than 400 financial institution clients for their top initiatives this year and beyond. We believe these priorities will gain even more importance across the industry. The top five initiatives are:

  1. Enabling Emerging Technologies, Continued Innovation
  2. Improving Analytics, Insights
  3. Increasing Customer Engagement
  4. Leveraging Open Banking, API Partnerships
  5. Strategically Growing Customer Acquisition, Accounts

But identifying the initiatives to prioritize is merely the first step. Banks need to align their top initiatives throughout their organization to lay down the project’s foundation. Sustainable transformation is not accomplished by simply plugging in a new technology or process. True transformation requires a shift in the way the organization operates day to day. Without a commitment to changing the way you do business your efforts will be stunted and you will not achieve the outcomes promised in the initial business case.

The first thing banks need to do is ensure that their organizational goals translate top down, from executive leadership through department levels, all the way to individual contributors. If certain priorities don’t align from top to bottom, it’s important to address these outliers right away to ensure everyone is moving ahead in the same direction.

Banks will also want to make sure they’re effectively tracking their performance against the company strategy and organizational vision through Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and department metrics. Look at the top initiatives in the industry and see how they align within your bank’s own organizational goals.

This practice might reveal that that not all initiatives work together. Three critical questions to ask during this process are: Are we focused on understanding and solving the needs of our customers? How do we shift priorities to align with where we should be going as an organization? Where is overlap or conflict of priorities between all stakeholders?

Here’s a brief overview of how banks can create a game plan to guide their process transformation:

1. Align OKRs With Vision
Break down your bank’s vision into objectives. This can be anything from helping employees develop the right skills to acquiring the right technologies and so on. From there, break those objectives down into quarterly Objectives and Key Results and translate them across each department and individual employee.

2. Specify Metrics
Ensure your bank has the right metrics in place for measuring your OKRs. The more clarity your bank can get around what you’re measuring and why, the easier it will be to understand if your efforts’ progress and success.

3. Find Champions
Identifying champions within your organization is a great way to move things forward. These critical stakeholders will be just as motivated as you to get certain things done. If you’re considering new technologies or new programs, work with them to translate the need and opportunity to the executive suite.

4. Identify Trusted Partners 
Now’s the time to lean on trusted partners for support. Your customers are actively looking to you for alternative digital solutions to manage their money. Instead of going at it alone and trying to build everything in-house, it may be faster to partner with financial technology firms and other third parties that can get your products to market more efficiently.  

At MX, we’re working closely with our partners and clients to ensure they have the tools they need to optimize their digital experiences and complete their top initiatives, even in these challenging times. Banks must create comprehensive strategies around their digital channels and offerings, so they can continue to lead during uncertainty and change. This is a valuable opportunity for all of us to be better to one another and to the communities we serve.

A New Opportunity for Revenue and Efficiency

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Intelligence-Report.pngIn 2017, Bank Director magazine featured a story titled “The API Effect.” The story explained how banks could earn revenue by using application programming interfaces, or APIs, and concluded with a prediction: APIs would be so prevalent in five years that banks who were not leveraging them would be similar to banks that didn’t offer a mobile banking application in 2017.

Today, the banking industry is on a fast track to proving that hypothesis.

Banks are hurtling into the digital revolution in response, in no small part, to the outbreak of Covid-19, a novel coronavirus that originated in China before spreading around the globe. The social distancing measures taken to contain the virus have forced banks to operate without the safety nets of branches, paper and physical proximity to customers. They’re feeling pressure to provide up-to-the-minute information, even as the world is changing by the hour. And they’re grappling with ideas about what it means to be a bank and how best to serve customers in these challenging times.

One way to do so is through APIs, passageways between software systems that facilitate the transfer of data.

APIs make it possible to open and fund new accounts instantly — a way to continue to bring in deposits when people can’t visit a branch. They pull data from call centers and chat conversations into systems that use it to send timely and topical messages to customers. And they enable capabilities like real-time BSA checks — an invaluable tool for banks struggling to process the onslaught of Paycheck Protection Program loans backed by the Small Business Administration.

All those capabilities will still be important once the crisis is over. But by then, thanks to the surge in API adoption, they’ll also be table stakes for banks that want to remain competitive.

In short, there’s never been a better time to explore what APIs can do for your bank, which is the purpose of this FinXTech Intelligence Report, APIs: New Opportunities for Revenue and Efficiency.

The report unpacks APIs — exploring their use cases in banking, and the forces driving adoption of the technology among financial institutions of all sizes. It includes:

  • Five market trends driving the adoption of APIs among banks
  • Actionable API use cases for growing revenue and creating efficiencies
  • A map of the API provider landscape, highlighting the leading companies enabling API transformation
  • An in-depth case study of TAB Bank, which reimagined its data infrastructure with APIs
  • Key considerations for banks developing an API strategy

To learn more, download our FinXTech Intelligence Report, APIs: New Opportunities for Revenue and Efficiency.

Three Ways to Break the Mold of Digital Banking

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digital-9-9-19.pngCommunity banks should look for ways to make their digital banking experience stand out for consumers in the face of increasingly commoditized offerings.

Most community banks in the United States are focusing on enhancing the digital experience for their customers, making sure they offer most, if not all, of the features that the top five banks offer. However, most community banks are doing the exact same thing, creating digital banking experiences that look and feel eerily similar.

These banks are using the same technology, the same channels and the same process workflows. Outside of the bank’s branding, it can be difficult to tell what differentiates one digital bank from another.

While these similarities help ensure that customers don’t switch banks for one down the street, it’s not preparing institutions to hold their own against new competitors. Challenger banks like N26 and Chime are creating a new, different experience for users — and quickly taking over the market.

Creating a differentiated experience for users takes more than new features or an updated interface. It comes down to banks being able to build for the future with a platform that can be scaled and easily integrated — a platform built on APIs.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, provide the flexibility and customization that is often lacking in banking. APIs allow banks to work with a wider pool of partners to build a more-personalized experience at a fraction of the development cost. APIs have enabled three trends and transformations that allow for differentiated community banking: real-time payments, true any-channel offerings and personalized user experiences.

Real time transactions
JPMorgan Chase & Co. recently launched real-time payments, which allows customers to instantly execute provider payments. This move creates urgency for other large institutions to implement similar offerings. But delivering this real time experience could require some midsize banks to undergo a complete digital transformation and create a technical infrastructure that can support real-time interactions: one built with an API-first architecture.

Any-channel
Any-channel, or omni-channel, means delivering the same services across multiple channels. But true, any-channel technology should focus on a platform that allows institutions to adopt any-channel — regardless of what that looks like in the future — while maintaining a single experience.

With an API-first architecture, multiple channels don’t translate to redundant development work. Instead, banks can focus on iterating on the overarching experience and translating that to each separate channel. Any-channel becomes less of a never-ending goal and more of a strategic vision.

The Ideal User Experience
Consumers not only want the same experience across channels — they want a seamless experience. Banks using an API approach can build workflows and processes that update automatically, so that users who start an application online can finish that process in the branch, on their mobile app or over the phone. APIs allow banks to build an experience around the user, not the channel.

When banks focus on the user experience instead of the channel or feature, the options are endless. Any number of micro-services can be integrated into a custom experience that is specific to the bank’s audience.

Just Holding On, or Thriving?
Most banks do a great job at maintaining their online experiences in their current states: their clients won’t leave because their competitors offer the same digital experience. But when it comes to acquiring new customers, it’s a different story.

New, digital-only banks are quickly taking wallet-share from consumers with sleek and personalized user experiences. Only those banks using APIs will have the ability and agility to keep up with the competition.

Winners Announced for Bank Director’s 2018 Best of FinXTech Awards

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awards-5-10-18.pngThe cultural and philosophical divides between banks and fintech companies is still very apparent, but the two groups have generally come to agree that it’s far more lucrative to establish positive relationships that benefit each, as well as their customers, than face off on opposite ends of the business landscape.

The benefits of collaboration in the fintech space, which manifest themselves in the form of improved efficiency and profitability, has led to a growing number of partnerships between banks and fintech firms. This year Bank Director and FinXTech selected 10 finalists in three categories—Best of FinXTech Partnership, Startup Innovation and Innovative Solution of the year—for its annual Best of FinXTech awards. The three category winners highlight some of the most transformative and successful partnerships between banks and fintechs that have improved operations, experience and profitability for both.

The awards were presented at Bank Director’s FinXTech Annual Summit, held May 10-11 at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Startup Innovation:

Radius Bank and Alloy

Radius, an $1.1 billion asset bank headquartered in Boston, has been on a dedicated track to become an online-only retail bank since Mike Butler took over as CEO about 10 years ago. But Butler and his executive team knew that Radius’ customer acquisition and onboarding process was inefficient. The demand was there, but the bank’s internal onboarding processes couldn’t keep up, and the attrition rate was high.

Overhauling that process led Radius to Brooklyn, New York-based Alloy, a firm still in its relative infancy. Butler and the Radius board of directors knew that this was a risky play because Alloy was still a young startup company and they would be entrusting it to digitize its customer onboarding process, a critical move that aimed to make the process more efficient and reduce drop-offs. The bank had to bring together several departments, from data to marketing, and get them all on the same page.

It had to be just right to make their model succeed—and so far it has worked. The bank has reduced its technology cost to open an account by 50 percent, and seen a 30 percent increase in its application conversion rate. Radius also has seen a steep downward trend in fraudulent account openings, an issue that’s become increasingly prevalent with online banking.

But even with significant technology investments and improvements, there was still considerable human productivity invested in some of the bank’s core functions. Some 30 to 40 of every 100 incoming retail account applications were being tapped for manual review. With some 1,000 applications coming in each week on average, the calculus there is pretty clear about the expense the bank faced with reviewing those applications. Alloy’s technology automates much of the review process using decision engines, and has reduced that manual review by 98 percent.

Alloy’s technology automates most of the process and has reduced dropped applications on the consumer side and the human capital expense for the bank. Now, just three or four of every 100 applications on average are pinged for manual review.

Most Innovative Solution of the Year:

CBW Bank and Yantra Financial Technologies

Who would have thought a former Lehman Brothers executive and her husband with a technology pedigree that includes a stop at Google would somehow elevate a tiny bank and fintech firm in rural Kansas to national prominence?

While maybe not a possibility completely in the left-field bleachers, the partnership between CBW Bank and Yantra Financial Technologies has drawn significant attention from both the banking industry and the tech world. Suresh Ramamurthi, the CEO of Yantra and chief technology officer for the bank, and his wife, Suchitra Padmanabhan, the president and CEO of CBW, together turned the near-failing bank around after they purchased it in 2009, mostly with personal savings.

The bank, with just $33 million in assets, has maintained is rural core deposit base in the tiny town of Weir, but also launched a revolutionary global marketplace for some 500 application programming interfaces, or APIs, that enable tech firms and other companies, like those in the health care space, to experiment with finding efficiencies and maintain compliance at the same time.

Using Ramamurthi’s technological expertise, the bank developed the APIs whose application can range from developing new products that are compliant with regulatory requirements to helping the institution or fintech scale up their operations, or simply improving the bank’s core operating system.

The APIs were also applied to CBW’s own digital banking platform, which has drawn nationwide clients, including popular fintech firms like Moven and Simple, as well as companies in the health care industry.

The bank then published the APIs publicly, working with Yantra in the Y-Labs Marketplace. Common APIs results in streamlined interoperability, like a payments solution, for example, between multiple businesses in multiple industries. More than 100 companies have signed up with the Marketplace to use the APIs, including other fintechs and companies outside of financial services.

It has also allowed the bank to enhance its own digital offerings, which Ramamurthi says will result in a new app later this year that will reshape how mobile banking works.

Best of FinXTech Partnership:

Citizens Financial Group and Fundation

For two decades, Citizens Financial made business banking loans using a manual process that was heavy on the paper. But this is an extremely inefficient way of doing business and the bank’s leaders wanted a faster and less costly way of underwriting loans, particularly with new fintech marketplace lenders coming into the market—whose technology gave them a big competitive advantage.

Providence, Rhode Island-based Citizens, one of the country’s top-20 banks at $152 billion in assets, worked with Fundation, a Reston, Virginia-based credit solution provider, to reinvent how it makes small business loans, rolling out in March a new credit delivery process for small-business loans and lines of credit up to $150,000.

“This is the future,” says Jack Murphy, president of Business Banking at Citizens. The new system has automated nearly all of the decision-making for the bank, which Murphy says makes it easier on both bankers and customers alike. Bankers aren’t spending hours reviewing applications, and customers can complete the application on their own time, even in the car, Murphy jokes. The bank still controls the credit policy, which ultimately determines if a manual review is necessary.

But the partnership didn’t come about overnight, and took many months of due diligence and conventional vetting before it was finalized. The bank took a deliberate approach to ensure it was making a good decision.

“There’s not a bank today that’s not thinking about fintech and what are the right ways to go about executing a strategy around digital technology,” Murphy says.

Finalists

The following partnerships were also recognized among finalists for the three top awards:

  • MVB Financial Corp. and BillGO
  • TCF Bank and D3 Banking Technology
  • U.S. Bank and SpringFour, Inc.
  • USAA and Clinc
  • Seacoast Bank and SmartBiz Loans
  • ChoiceOne Bank and Autobooks
  • Pinnacle Financial Partners and Built