Once Stagnated, Banks Are Refreshing Checking Accounts to Compete

Written by

Once a staid and basic product offering, banks are reinvigorating consumer checking accounts.

A number of banks, taking a page from the challenger bank playbook, are adding features to their accounts to please consumers: early access to a direct-deposited paycheck, free overdraft and short-term loans. These changes attempt to match the offerings from financial technology platforms such as Chime and Current, which have been growing exponentially and attracting billions in venture capital funding.

The default consumer checking account is easy to take for granted. Most banks offer them without cost to customers in exchange for a deeper relationship such as a monthly direct deposit or a minimum balance. The hope is that a customer is profitable through noninterest fee income such as debit card interchange fees or through other products the bank can cross-sell to the customer.

But the Durbin amendment, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, reduced interchange income for banks with more than $10 billion in assets. The Durbin amendment made checking accounts less profitable while digital account opening made it easier for consumers to open an account with a competitor. Checking accounts stagnated, says Alex Johnson, director of fintech research at Cornerstone Advisors. Joining the fray were online-only neobanks like Chime, Digit and Varo Bank, N.A., a fintech that received approval for a bank charter in July 2020 and now has $403 million in assets. They customized their checking accounts with valuable features to gain new customers — including customers willing to pay for some features.

“Investments in digital are not the same as investments in deposits, but they were treated as the same a lot of times,” Johnson says. “Banks said ‘We’re keeping pace, we let people open up these accounts on their phone.’ That’s great, but … are you doing anything new to improve the value proposition there? The answer is no.”

Now, a number of banks are reconsidering their deposit offerings to drum up interest from new customers and deepen relationships with existing ones. Many of them leverage technology, require direct deposit information and are consumer friendly, helping customers avoid overdraft fees. Capital One Financial Corp. and SoFi Technologies— a fintech that has applied to acquire a community bank — offer access to direct deposits paychecks two days in advance, following Chime’s lead. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group launched a feature called “Low Cash Mode” within its digital wallet in April; Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington Bancshares rolled out a cash advance product in June for checking account customers with a history of monthly deposits. The offering from the $125.8 billion bank takes a page from Varo’s Varo Advance product and is addition to the bank’s overdraft grace period. Ally Financial, which has $181.9 billion in assets, did away with overdraft fees altogether.

The intense focus on reinvesting in deposit products relates directly to the importance of primacy. Consumers define their primary bank as the institution that holds their checking account, versus the institution with the car loan or mortgage, says Mike Branton, a partner at StrategyCorps.* StrategyCorps works with banks to add services to checking accounts using a subscription model.

Measuring primacy — the number of households or customers that genuinely consider an institution to be their primary one — is hard for banks. Branton says many banks don’t have a set definition or use a definition based solely on banking behavior, such as account balance or debit card swipes; others look at the sheer number of other accounts linked to a checking account. StrategyCorps uses a financial definition for primacy that considers banking behavior and account activity in terms of revenue generation: Primary customers generate $350 or more a year for their bank.

That kind of revenue can be a tall order when banks have offered free checking for decades. Results from cross-selling may prove elusive. But free doesn’t have to be a showcased feature of checking accounts, especially if customers think the services and benefits are valuable. Digit, a fintech that helps customers save money by analyzing their spending and automatically moving funds when they can afford it, charges $5 a month. The fintech Current charges $4.99 per month for a premium account, which includes up to $100 in overdrafts and early access to direct deposits such as paychecks, a benefit for low- and moderate-income Americans who are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

“Products are more important than ever,” Branton says. “I think what banks are learning from the pandemic is that because people are not coming in the branch and experiencing the human touch as frequently, but are interacting with the banking product, they must make their products better than ever.”

*Bank Director founder Bill King is also a founding partner of StrategyCorps.

Three Things You Missed at Experience FinXTech

Written by


technology-9-11-19.pngThe rapid and ongoing digital evolution of banking has made partnerships between banks and fintech companies more important than ever. But cultivating fruitful, not frustrating, relationships is a central challenge faced by companies on both sides of the relationship.

The 2019 Experience FinXTech event, hosted by Bank Director and its FinXTech division this week at the JW Marriott in Chicago, was designed to help address this challenge and award solutions that work for today’s banks. Over the course of two days, I observed three key emerging trends.

Deposit displacement
The competition for deposits has been a central, ongoing theme for the banking industry, and it was a hot topic of conversation at this year’s Experience FinXTech event.

In a presentation on Monday, Ron Shevlin, director of research at Cornerstone Advisors, talked about a phenomenon he calls “deposit displacement.” Consumers keep billions of dollars in health savings accounts. They also keep billions of dollars in balances on Starbucks gift cards and within Venmo accounts. These aren’t technically considered deposits, but they do act as an alternative to them.

Shevlin’s point is that the competition for funding in the banking industry doesn’t come exclusively from traditional financial institutions — and particularly, the biggest institutions with multibillion-dollar technology budgets. It also comes from the cumulative impact of these products offered by nondepository institutions.

Interestingly, not all banks struggle with funding. One banker from a smaller, rural community bank talked about how his institution has more funding than it knows what to do with. Another institution in a similar situation is offloading them using Promontory Interfinancial Network’s reciprocal deposit platform.

Capital allocation versus expenses
A lot of things that seem academic and inconsequential can have major implications for the short- and long-term prospects of financial institutions. One example is whether banks perceive investments in new technologies to be simply expenses with no residual long-term benefit, or whether they view these investments as capital allocation.

Fairly or unfairly, there’s a sense among technology providers that many banks see investments in digital banking enhancements merely as expenses. This mindset matters in a highly commoditized industry like banking, in which one of the primary sources of competitive advantage is to be a low-cost producer.

The industry’s justifiable focus on the efficiency ratio — the percent of a bank’s net revenue that’s spent on noninterest expenses — reflects this. A bank that views investments in new technologies as an expense, which may have a detrimental impact on efficiency, will be less inclined to stay atop of the digital wave washing over the industry.

But banks that adopt a more-philosophical approach to technology investments, and see them as an exercise in capital allocation, seem less inclined to fall into this trap. Their focus is on the long-term return on investment, not the short-term impact on efficiency.

Of course, in the real world, things are never this simple. Banks that approach this decision in a way that keeps the short-term implications on efficiency in mind, with an eye on the long-term implications of remaining competitive in an increasingly digitized world, are likely to be the ones that perform best over the long run.

Cultural impacts
One of the most challenging aspects of banking’s ongoing digital transformation also happens to be its least tangible: tailoring bank cultures to incorporate new ways of doing old things. At the event, conversations about cultural evolution proceeded along multiple lines.

In the first case, banks are almost uniformly focused on recruiting members of younger generations who are, by habit, more digitally inclined.

On the flipside, banks have to make hard decisions about the friction that stems from existing employees who have worked for them for years, sometimes decades, and are proving to be resistant to change. For instance, several bankers talked about implementing new technologies, like Salesforce.com’s customer relationship management solutions, yet their employees continue to use spreadsheets and word-processing documents to track customer engagements.

But there’s a legitimate question about how far this should go, and some banks take it to the logical extreme. They talk about transitioning their cultures from traditional banking cultures to something more akin to the culture of a technology company. Other banks are adopting a more-tempered approach, thinking about technology as less of an end in itself, and rather as a means to an end — the end being the enhanced delivery of traditional banking products.

The Secret to Lifelong Relationships With Generation Z

Written by


customer-12-14-18.pngGeneration Z consumers are positioned to be a significant force in the financial marketplace. This population group will soon begin graduating from college, earning disposable income, and making decisions about managing their finances.

This opportunity is of interest to many financial institutions that will compete for the loyalty of Gen Z customers for the next several years.

Banks that have been active in education lending have well-established relationships with the Gen Z market as customers already, which offers them an advantage. While being a trusted student loan provider is a start, financial institutions that wish to create lifelong customers must build on the initial relationship with technology-enabled products and individualized experiences the Gen Z consumer has come to expect.

The Gen Z Opportunity and Challenge
The impact of Gen Z on the financial services marketplace must not be underestimated. There were approximately 61 million members of Gen Z in the US in 2015, or about 19 percent of the U.S. population. This percentage is expected to grow to 25 percent by 2020.

While both the Gen Z and millennial generations have grown up in an environment shaped by technology, these groups are very different in their approach and use of financial services.

Gen Z has never known a world without smartphones, social media, or on-demand delivery of products and services. Adobe, Inc. has estimated that nearly half of Gen Z consumers are connected online for 10 or more hours per day and their preferences are strongly influenced by social media.

They are likely to conduct many of their daily activities on mobile devices. Also, while Gen Z members reportedly recognize that large financial institutions can offer products and services using advanced technology, they are less trusting of traditional banks than older customers. Approximately 75 percent of the Gen Z population surveyed said they trust traditional banks (as compared with digital payment solutions) – still a strong preference, but less than the 92 percent reported by baby boomers.

How To Win Gen Z Consumers
To win the loyalty of Gen Z, banks should focus on the following areas:

Invest in digital products and a best-in-class user experience. Gen Z consumers are accustomed to conducting business via mobile devices. So any services you offer—credit and savings products, investment services, or access to account information—it must be available online 24/7.

Some day, chatbots based on artificial intelligence (AI) will likely be an important way to connect with Gen Z consumers.

Focus on the right products. Understand which financial products and services resonate with Gen Z consumers. Research by Javelin, a strategy and consulting firm, shows 51 percent of Gen Z-ers do not plan to apply for a credit card, but they do start thinking early about retirement, according to a 2017 study by the Center for Generational Kinetics. For these reasons, your institution may make more headway by cross-selling savings accounts or retirement programs to your student loan customers.

Use social media. Gen Z members rely heavily on social media, so target your digital marketing to genuine influencers on those platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

Foster a spirit of community. Research shows Gen Z members seek community. Being involved in your community through philanthropy, hosting career fairs and educational events are ways banks can appeal to Gen Z consumers.

Market in an age-appropriate manner. Make sure your marketing campaigns are designed and written in a way that will resonate with the Gen Z audience. Since Gen Z values experiences, one idea to consider is a travel rewards program layered on a promotion for a savings account or debit card.

Credit unions, banks and other financial institutions have originated approximately $90 billion in private student loans. That represents a lot of potential for Gen Z borrowers to become life-long customers if you build on those relationships with the right products and services, technology, social media and marketing.

How You Can Foster an Entrepreneurial Environment

Written by


entrepreneur-8-8-18.pngGone are the days of bank employees repetitively completing their tasks. A productive day in today’s banking environment consists of collaboration and teamwork to solve challenging problems.

Community banks and credit unions need to deliver on two industry trends to succeed: 1) managing interest rate, compliance, and regulatory risks, and 2) adapting with technology and products to compete against a decline in branch visitors, check volume, and cash transactions. The question is, how?

The answer is new ideas. Managers and leaders must cultivate an entrepreneurial environment where employees are not afraid to share them, because they are the future of the banking industry.

1. Refine the team
Leader Bank itself is an entrepreneurial venture started in 2002 with $6 million in assets. After spending the first six years focusing on implementing traditional methods, we began shifting our hiring practices to include employees with little or no banking experience but that had a lot of potential for creative problem solving. Today, almost 40 percent of our employees (excluding loan officers) are new to the banking industry.

By not hiring solely based on education and experience, and focusing more on potential, we have seen some of our most successful periods of growth to date.

2. Listen to customers
New ideas often present themselves as customer issues.

Take this example: A landlord customer encounters legal complications with his tenant’s security deposit, so to avoid future issues he assumes a greater risk by no longer requiring security deposits. Identifying this real-world problem led to the creation of a new security deposit platform that manages compliance headaches for landlords.

3. Pursue lopsided opportunities
All ideas come with upsides and downsides, but as we all know, the best ideas are asymmetrical, meaning the upsides outweigh the downsides.

A great example is when we developed our rewards checking product.

Before developing the product, we knew we not only wanted to grow deposits but also reward our customers for using us as their primary bank. We analyzed the downside versus the potential upside before deciding to move forward.

The downside vs. the upside
A downside is best kept small and finite. It’s something you would be comfortable with if it actually happened.

With our rewards checking product, the only real downside we could foresee was lack of participation. There is always a risk with a new product or process that the client may not fully adopt it.

However, in this particular situation, the upsides significantly outweighed our fear of failure.

To start, we developed Zeugma in-house. We had existing employees working on it, to keep our cost of investment low. It gave us control of the product features, which allowed us to differentiate leading to strong growth in deposits.

Assessing the upside vs. downside
With any new idea, senior management and the board will want to know what the downside is, and if it is limited. That limitation is finite and can be articulated, then odds of approval increase.

When trying to measure the downsides relative to the upsides, there are questions we ask to lean one way or the other:

  • Is the total potential financial loss greater than the cost of the project?
  • Could the project cause significant reputational damage?
  • Does the project require additional resources?
  • Does the project effort need significant interdepartmental coordination?

If the answers are “no,” then the idea likely carries low risk and can move quickly.

There are also additional ways to mitigate risks throughout the launch process of any new idea.

Start a focus group
There is no better way to see how a new idea works before launching full-force than experimenting with beta groups. Testing the product with hand-selected, vested people first helps gives managers an idea how customers will use the product and understand pitfalls before going live.

Conduct weekly meetings
Weekly meetings are great for adapting procedures as necessary throughout the development and launch process. Teams from product development to marketing can share ideas on how to develop and grow the product to its utmost potential.

Maintain strong financial tracking
Tracking every penny will ease the anxiety that comes along with the development and launch process of any new idea. Start a shared spreadsheet among involved employees and enter in the income and expenses along the way. If the financial budget is kept in check, it is easier to plan where to allocate future expenses.

Also don’t forget to track success, including each new customer acquired or deposit gathered.

Moving forward
Banks are inherently risk-management institutions, which is why understanding the downsides of new ideas is so important.

Transitioning a financial institution to an entrepreneurial, spirited workforce takes time, patience and dedication. Every idea, whether a success or a failure, is a stepping stone to the next. Over time, even in a highly regulated industry like banking, a culture of energy and entrepreneurship can be a competitive advantage.