Maximizing Profitability Potential Via Push Notifications

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Implementing digital fintech solutions is critical for banks seeking to grow their customer base and maximize profitability in today’s increasingly competitive industry.

To engage account holders, banks must explore digital-first communication strategies and mobile-friendly fintech products. Push notifications are an often overlooked, yet powerful, tool that enables financial institutions to proactively deliver important messages to account holders that earn higher engagement rates than traditional communication methods.

Push notifications are delivered directly through a banking app and sent to account holders’ mobile devices and can provide timely alerts from a financial provider. While push notifications can act as a marketing tool, they can also convey critical security alerts via a trusted communication channel — as opposed to mediums that are vulnerable to hacks or spoofing, such as email or SMS texts. Push notifications can be used for personalized promotional offers or reminders about other financial services, such as bill pay or remote check deposit, transaction and application status updates, financial education and support messaging, local branch and community updates and more.

Banks can also segment push notifications using geo-location technology, as long as customers get permission, to alert account holders at a time, place and setting that is best suited to their needs. Banks can customize these notifications to ensure account holders receive messages notifying them of services that are most relevant to their financial needs.

When leveraged effectively, push notifications are more than simple mobile alerts; they’re crucial tools that can significantly increase account holder engagement by nearly 90%. Push notifications can be more effective in reaching account holders compared to traditional marketing methods like email or phone calls and receive engagement rates that are seven times higher.

Boosting customer engagement can ultimately have a significant impact on a bank’s profitability. Studies show that fully engaged retail banking customers bring in 37% more annual revenue to their bank than disengaged customers. Enhancing ease of use while offering greater on-demand banking services that consumers want, banks can leverage push notifications to encourage the use of their banking apps. Enabling push notifications can result in a 61% app retention rate, as opposed to a rate of 28% when financial providers do not leverage push notifications.

Bank push notifications come at a time when consumer expectations for streamlined access to digital banking services have greatly accelerated. In a study, mobile and online access to bank accounts was cited by more than 95% of respondents as a prioritized banking feature.

This focus forces financial institutions to explore fintech solutions that will elevate their customers’ digital experience. Traditional institutions that fail to innovate risk a loss of market or wallet share as customers migrate to technologically savvy competitors. U.S. account holders at digital-only neobanks is expected to surge, from a current 29.8 million to 53.7 million by 2025.

Banks should consider adding effective mobile fintech tools to drive brand loyalty and reduce the threat of lost business. Push notifications are a unique opportunity for banks to connect with their audience at the right moments through relevant messaging that meets individual account holder needs.

Real-time and place push notifications can also be a way for banks to strengthen their cross-selling strategies with account holders. They can be personalized in a predictive way for account holders so that they only offer applicable products and services that fit within a specific audience’s needs. This customization strategy can drive revenue while fostering account holder trust.

To gain insight on account holders’ financial habits and goals, institutions can track user-level data and use third-party services to tailor push notifications about available banking services for each account holder. Institutions can maximize the engagement potential of each offer they send by distributing contextually relevant messaging on services or products that are pertinent to account holder’s financial needs and interests.

Push notifications are one way banks are moving toward digital-first communication strategies. Not only do push notifications offer a proactive way to connect with account holders, they also provide financial institutions with a compelling strategic differentiator within the banking market. Forward-looking financial institutions can use mobile alerts to strengthen account holder relationships, effectively compete, grow their customer base and, ultimately, maximize profitability.

7 Key Actions for Banks Partnering With Fintechs

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A longer version of this article can be read at RSM US LLP.

Many banks are considering acquiring or partnering with existing fintechs to gain access to cutting-edge technologies and remain competitive in the crowded financial services marketplace.

There are many advantages to working with fintech partners to launch newer services and operations, but failing to properly select and manage partners or new acquisitions can have the opposite effect: additional risks, unforeseen exposures and unnecessary costs. Partnership opportunities may be a focus for leadership teams, given the significant growth and investments in the fintech space over the last decade. Consumer adoption is up: 88% of U.S. consumers used a fintech in 2021, up from 58% in 2020, according to Plaid’s 2021 annual report; conventional banks’ market share continues to drop.

Planning is everything when partnering with or acquiring a fintech company. Here are seven key actions and areas of consideration for banks looking for such partnerships.

1. Understand your customers on a deeper level: The first step before considering a fintech partner or acquisition is to understand what your consumers truly want and how they want those services delivered. Companies can pinpoint these needs via surveys, customer focus groups, call centers or discussions and information-gathering with employees.

Organizations should also explore the needs of individuals and entities outside their existing customer bases. Gathering data that helps them learn about their customers’ needs, lifestyle preferences and behaviors can help banks pinpoint the right technology and delivery channel for their situation.

2. Understand leading-edge technological advancements: While fintech partnerships can give a traditional bank access to new cutting-edge technologies, leaders still need to understand these technologies and the solutions. This might involve helping teams gain fluency in topics such as artificial intelligence that can improve credit decisioning, underwriting processes and fraud detection, automation that speeds up service delivery responses and customer onboarding, data analysis and state-of-the-art customer relationship management tools and more.

3. Prepare for culture shock: Fintechs, particularly those in start-up mode, will be used to operating at a different pace and with a different style than typical banks. Fintechs may behave more entrepreneurially, trying many experiments and failing often and fast. This entrepreneurial mindset has implications for how projects are organized, managed, measured, staffed and led.

4. Take a 360-degree view of risk: Fintechs may not have been subject to the same strict compliance as banks, but as soon as they enter a partnership, they must adhere to the same standards, regulations and controls. Any technology-led, third-party partnership comes with the potential for additional risks in areas such as cybersecurity, data privacy, anti-money laundering and myriad other regulatory compliance risks. Banks need to have a solid understanding of the viability and soundness of the fintech they might partner with, as well as the strength and agility of the leadership team. They should also ensure the new relationship has adequate business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

From vendor selections and background checks to mutual security parameters and decisions around where servers will be located, all potential exposures are important for banks to assess. A new fintech relationship could open new avenues for outside threats, information breaches and reputation damage.

5. Don’t underestimate the management lift needed:Acquiring or partnering with a fintech or third-party vendor involves significant management work to meet customer needs, keep implementation costs in line and merge technologies to ensure compatibility between the two organizations.

Employees at each company will likely have different approaches to innovation, which is one of the major benefits of teaming up with a fintech company; your organization can rapidly gain access to cutting-edge technologies and the overall agility of a startup. But management needs to ensure that this union doesn’t inadvertently create heartburn among employees on both sides.

6. Build ownership through clear accountability and responsibility: A fintech partnership requires management and oversight to be effective. Banks should consider the ownership and internal staffing requirements needed to achieve the full value of their investment with a fintech organization.

Don’t underestimate the time and effort needed to develop and deploy these plans. Based on the automation levels of the solution implemented, these resources may need dedicated time on an ongoing basis for the oversight and operations of the solution as well.

7. Stick to a plan:While in a hurry to launch a service, leadership teams may gloss over the whole steps of the plan and critical items may fall off. To combat this, banks should have a robust project plan that aligns with the overall innovation strategy and clear definitions around who is responsible for what. A vendor management program can help with this, along with strategic change management planning.

Balancing the demands of innovation with a thorough and thoughtful approach that considers customer behaviors, risks, resources and plans for new solutions will make fintech partnerships go as smooth as possible. Institutions would do well to incorporate these seven key areas throughout the process of a potential third-party partnership to ensure the maximum return on investment.

6 Tactics to Win Customer Engagement

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One topic that’s commonly discussed in financial institution boardrooms is how to serve customers and meet their expectations. This topic is especially pertinent now that consumer expectations are at an all-time high.

Bank consumers want delightful, simple customer experiences like the ones they get from companies like Uber Technologies and Airbnb, and they’re more than willing to walk away from experiences that disappoint. As a result, financial institutions are under immense pressure to engage and retain customers and their deposits. Bankers cannot afford to stand idly by and watch a generation of customers increasingly lean on fintechs for all their financial needs.

Fortunately, your financial institution can take action to win the battle for customer engagement — some are already doing so with initial successes. Incumbents like Bank of America Corp. use financial assistants powered by artificial intelligence to assist customers, and fintechs such as Digit offer an auto savings algorithm to help people meet their financial goals. These efforts and features bring the disparate components of a consumer’s financial life together through:

  • An intense focus on the user experience.
  • Highly personalized experiences.
  • “Do it for me” intelligent features.
  • The right communications at the right time.
  • Intuitively-built and highly engaging user interfaces.

How can your bank offer experiences like these? It comes down to equipping your financial institution with the right set of data and tools.

1. Data Acquisition: Data acquisition is the foundation of customer experience.
The best tools are based on accurate and comprehensive data. The key here is that your bank needs to acquire data sourced not only from your institution, but to also allow customers to aggregate their data into your experience. The result is that you and your customers can see a full financial picture.

2. Data Enrichment: Use data science to make sense of unstructured data.
Once your bank has this data, it’s critical that your institution deploys an enrichment strategy. Advanced data science tactics can make sense of unstructured and unrecognizable transaction data, without needing to add data scientists to bank staff. Transforming these small and seemingly unimportant bits of the user experience can have a huge overall effect.

3. Data Intelligence: Create personalized and timely user experiences from the data.
By consistently looking at transactional data, data intelligence tools can identify different patterns and deliver timely, unique observations and actionable insights to help consumers improve their financial wellbeing. These are the small, but highly personalized user experiences that fintechs have become known for.

4. Data Productization: Provide a user interface with advanced pre-built features.
One of the most difficult things for a bank to pull off is data productization. The right tooling and advanced, pre-built features allow banks to unite data and analysis and encapsulate it into intuitively designed digital experiences. This way, consumers can engage naturally with your bank and receive relevant, personalized products and services they need from you. Digital notifications can be part of your strategy, and many customers opt in to receive them; case in point is that 90% of the customers using a Goals-Based Savings application from Envestnet opt into notifications.

5. AI Automation: Utilize AI to enhance self-service capability.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask someone to cancel a check at anytime? Or type in a question and get the answer on the spot? Tools like AI-powered virtual assistants with an automation layer make it simple for consumers to do all this and more, wherever they are. Financial institutions using the Virtual Financial Assistant from Envestnet have automated up to 87% of contact center requests with a finance domain-specific AI.

6. Trusted Partners: Leverage partner to compete.
Competing with fintechs often means, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” But leveraging trusted partners is a tried and true strategy. Your bank’s partner could be a traditional financial institution you’ve pooled assets with to create and embed financial technology deep into your experience. It could be a fintech focused on business-to-business capabilities. Or it could be a partner offering world-class data aggregation as well as analytics and innovative tools to enhance your customer experience.

Fintechs have done a phenomenal job at connecting the disjointed components of consumers’ financial lives through amazing customer experiences. Your financial institution can do the same. By using the right data and tools and partnering up, your bank can deliver the personalized experiences consumers expect, delight and empower them to take control of their finances and future.

5 Ways Banks Can Keep Up With Consumer’s Digital Demands

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As technology progresses, more financial institutions will face scrutiny from consumers seeking features powered by advanced digital banking platforms.

Consumers are actively searching for banks that value them by giving them remote, customized experiences. Many banks have seen record growth in digital banking usage in recent years, according to a Deloitte Insights report. While this might create a challenge to many financial institutions, it can also be an opportunity to further build relationships with consumers. Below are five things banks should do to proactively respond to customers’ digital needs in their next stage of growth.

1. Analyze Consumer Data
Gaining real-time insights from consumer data is one way banks can start improving customer experiences. Analyzing data allows banks to see how, when and where consumers are spending their money. This data is a gold mine for creating custom approaches for individuals or recommending products that a consumer could benefit from. This electronic trail of customer information can ultimately lead to more personalized financial strategies, better security features and more accurate insights as to what digital banking features will be needed in the future.

2. Humanize The Digital Experience
Financial Institutions are being given a chance to humanize their digital banking platforms. Banks can build and strengthen relationships with their consumers by customizing their mobile experience — right down to the individual. Listening to feedback and valuing a customer’s experiences can create productive and useful relationships. It is important to take a customer-centric approach, whether in-person or through digital platforms. Financial institutions can use consumer purchase history to create custom reward offerings — like 10% off at their favorite coffee shop or rewards on every purchase — that lay the foundation for a bespoke, valuable experience.

3. Understand Digital Trends
According to Forbes, 95% of executives say they are looking for new ways to engage their customers. Financial institutions that remain complacent and tied to their legacy systems can expect to fall behind their competitors if they do not keep up with advancing digital trends. Consumers increasingly shop around and compare account offerings and benefits; they are choosing customizable, digital solutions. Banks that don’t, or refuse to, keep up with digital trends will lose these relationships. As technology expands, so do the needs of consumers —it is up to banks to keep up with those needs.

4. Utilize Advance Card Features
Technology’s rapid advancement means that the digital features that banks can take advantage of have also advanced. Consumers want features that correspond with their everyday financial management strategies and spending. Virtual cards with state-of-the-art security features are just one of the many digital solutions available to banks. Adjustable settings, like the ability to block and unblock merchants, create family hubs, set spending limits for individuals and family members, are just a few of the ways that banks can differentiate their card programs.

5. Keep Evolving
Many banks use legacy systems that are outdated, expensive and difficult to uproot. This technology strategy holds them back from being on a level playing field with their competitors. However, partnering with fintechs that can integrate with their current systems is one way that banks can keep up with digital trends — without the upfront cost of installing an entirely new system.

According to a FICO study, 70% of U.S. bank customers report that they would be “likely” or “very likely” to open an account at a competing provider if that provider offered services that addressed their unmet needs. Today, consumers do not just prefer digital banking: They expect it. Banks that cannot provide their consumers with customizable digital options are at a disadvantage.

The Rise of the Subscription Society: Three Important Takeaways for Banks

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revenue-8-11-17.pngSubscription services are spreading like wildfire with huge leaps in subscription rates. Amazon Prime saw a 22 million household jump in 12 months, with 85 million Americans currently subscribed. Spotify started in 2011 with just 1 million subscribers and now, just 6 years later, has grown to 50 million paid subscribers. Then there’s Netflix, which just announced it has over 100 million total subscribers, about half of them in the U.S.

Success like this illustrates the subscription model isn’t merely a transactional structure, but has become the way for modern consumers to purchase (i.e. access to and use of product in reasonable installment payments as opposed to buying a product outright and owning it). Banks looking to make their products more attractive to consumers can use these companies’ successes as a model for their own service offerings.

So what makes the subscription-based model so compelling?

High Value, Low Cost
Subscription models provide a high amount of value at a lower cost than purchasing a product outright.

Take Amazon Prime, for example. Members are able to gain access to a large, discounted marketplace of products, free or discounted shipping that will deliver most purchases directly to their doors in under 48 hours, access to video streaming, music streaming, book libraries and personalized recommendations for just $10.99 per month (or discounted to $100 a year if they prepay in advance). These savings not only help the consumer save but also indirectly result in the development of healthier financial habits through Amazon’s network of discounts.

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Spotify’s high value, low cost model offers the ability to pay a low monthly fee for access to unlimited music streaming as opposed to paying for each song individually or buying the DVD.

And a bank is taking notice of and acting on this subscription success. To make the Spotify subscription even more valuable, it has teamed with Capital One to reduce the monthly fee by 50 percent for 50 million potential customers, if the monthly payment source is a Capital One credit card.

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Personalized Experience
Subscription services are also usually molded around the subscriber’s habits and preferences to deliver a personalized experience. Personalization ensures value is relevant to individual subscribers, as these services usually offer a wide library of products to ensure they’re universally appealing and accommodate various consumer needs.

This is another example where Spotify delivers. The service includes a so-called Discover portal dedicated to helping users find new music they would enjoy based on their streaming history and even delivers custom playlists on a weekly basis. Netflix and Amazon Prime also create a personalized list of recommendations and display them prominently on their websites so that users are immediately greeted by a relevant experience.

Banks have tremendous access to customers to provide relevant and timely offers and personalized deliverables to encourage engagement that goes beyond just traditional transactional experiences.

Convenience and Instant Access
In today’s technology-rich culture, consumers have come to expect instant access to the services, information and products they need. The subscription model was purposely built around providing convenience and immediacy.
In the not-so-distant past before Netflix, consumers would have to visit a video store or a movie theater if they wanted to watch a title on demand. More recently, they could order movies on demand from their cable or satellite providers, but this required purchasing titles individually and was often costly.

However, with video streaming services like Netflix, consumers now have a whole library of movies and TV shows to stream on demand whenever they want and they don’t have to purchase each title separately. Instead, they have access to Netflix’s full library for only $7.99 per month, which is about equivalent to purchasing one title.

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Banks, of course, do have online and mobile banking products. What banks haven’t been able to do is fully monetize, with recurring revenue, this convenience and instant access. The next logical step is to find what new, non-traditional services can be instantly delivered through online and mobile platforms that customers will pay for.

The subscription model that delivers value, personalization and instant access can be successful for banks looking to build a more marketable brand and a larger and steadier stream of revenue. Amazon Prime, Spotify and Netflix are clearly examples of top performers of this model, but banks need to search out ways they can make their products more attractive and provide a value-rich, relevant and convenient experience for their customers.

Bold Leadership Required: Innovating From the Outside In

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In this video, Thomas Jankovich, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, outlines four aspects of a successful approach to innovation, including bold leaders who can make the decisions required to transform the bank and shepherd the organization through the process. He also explains the key mistake that institutions too often make.