Unlocking 35% More Value With Emotional, Community-Focused Branding

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Effective strategy leverage branding and marketing to make an emotional connection with your audience. Research shows your financial brand will have a 35% higher lifetime value if it makes an emotional connection. That’s 35% more value — not from technology, rates or even the customer journey. Just from branding. It’s that powerful and should be central to your bank’s strategic plans.

According to analytics platform FICO, 52% of consumers are more likely to open an online bank account than before the Covid-19 pandemic; Forbes notes that nearly eight in 10 consumers now prefer to bank digitally. Those numbers can’t be ignored in your strategic branding plan.

To stay competitive and release untapped opportunities, forward-thinking financial leaders are introducing incremental innovations that can bring updated tools and efficiencies to market quickly. They are also entering niche markets and offering targeted niche products and services for specific communities, along with tailored branding that helps deliver sizeable results.

Redefine Community With Real Client Data
Community is no longer a physical construct. Banks can take advantage of this by bringing new products to market that serve specifically defined communities with branding that galvanizes these customers to action. Niche financial products and brands resonate in groups defined by their profession, culture, passion or any other identify demarcations.

To help identify a customer segment that’s a natural fit for your financial institution, first consider your own analytics. Often, incisive data analysis can reveal patterns like a high concentration of consumers in particular fields or stages of life that can benefit from tailored services that your institution can provide.

Leverage Niches to Your Advantage
More than a few community banks have chosen to invest in niche opportunities, from full-service banking experiences to bespoke products that serve specific needs. For example, Greenwood, an offering from Coastal Community Bank, a $3.1 billion bank based in Everett, Washington, is tailored for customers who identify as members of the African American and Latinx communities or seek to support them.

Greenwood’s “financial movement” offers incentives such as automated meal donations linked to account creation, spare change round-ups that benefit charities and monthly small business grants to Black- and Latinx-owned businesses. This community reinvestment, combined with personal financial education tools and requisite security and convenience, makes for a powerful branding package to Greenwood’s audience.

Watseka, Illinois-based IF Bancorp launched Hitched in 2021, marketing its digital brand to help newlyweds build shared financial strength. Solutions such as shared savings, collaborative goal setting and financial education for couples help this unique community of consumers build their financial future together. Hitched partnered with popular wedding sites like WeddingWire and leveraged bold, eye-catching design to make a splash as a new banking brand.

To appeal to young Generation Z consumers, Holyoke, Massachusetts-based PeoplesBank developed ZYNLO,. ZYNLO offers mobile-optimized account opening, early access to direct-deposited paychecks, daily balance alerts and 24/7 customer support. To market these offerings, ZYNLO partnered with social media influencers in home renovation, dining out and finance for endorsements that resonated with young consumers.

Try All Ideas, Big and Small
Finding your bank’s niche does not have to mean fully reinventing your brand. Financial brands that identify niche markets can start building brand loyalty by providing new, digital solutions to their shared problems. Transformation can start with something as simple as one new or reimagined service, branded for a specific community. Implementing micro-innovations to serve them can power change for now and beyond.

As financial institutions look to modernize their decision-making processes and build strong brands, it’s important to consider the evolving concept of community in the digital age. By identifying and targeting specific groups of consumers with tailored services and branding, financial brands can build relationships and drive growth in the digital marketplace.

It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel to appeal to niche customers. But it is necessary to understand their needs and provide functional solutions. Start by solving their biggest problem and delighting them with services that speak to them with ongoing micro-innovations that reinforce loyalty to your brand.

A Safecracker Explores the Nature of Security

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Dave McOmie starts every job staring down a locked door.

McOmie has been a safecracker for more than 50 years, having gotten his start watching a local locksmith help out a neighbor. He became the locksmith’s apprentice and quickly discovered the work of safecracking: breaking into vaults and safes for customers that had become inadvertently locked out of them.

That took him into the world of banking. Vaults have been a mainstay feature of bank branches, but anyone who has worked in a branch will know there are other physical safety mechanisms that occasionally lock up: lockers, cash safes, undercounter units and ATMs. He’s worked on all of them and knows the stakes: Whatever is behind that locked door is important, and someone wants it.

“When the bank or credit union cannot get into their vault, that situation tends to escalate quickly,” he says. There’s usually some urgency to the situation: Someone needs a wedding ring, a passport or a will, and there’s a tight timeline. McOmie is under pressure to open the vault. “[I]t’s stressful when you have an entire family sitting in the lobby, waiting to retrieve their passport so they can go to the airport. … You don’t want to be the reason they didn’t make their flight.”

In facing these locked and secured doors, McOmie says it’s key to prepare and research in advance. A mistake can trigger other safety mechanisms in a vault, quickly shutting down his entire progress. He carefully documents his progress and the products he works on to make the next job easier. 

“It’s all about the challenge and the conquest. You’ve got a locked door in front of you. What’s the problem? How can you overcome it? And can you do it efficiently? And quickly?” he says. 

McOmie joins Bank Director to discuss how he became a safecracker, how he approaches a locked door problem and what trends in bank branching mean for vaults, physical security and the future of safe cracking. Listeners interested in learning more about his experience can read his memoir “Safecracker: A Chronicle of the Coolest Job in the World,” which includes his experience opening the musician Prince’s vault at Paisley Park.

This episode, and all past episodes of The Slant Podcast, are available on Bank Director.com, Spotify and Apple Music.

Banks Are Letting Deposits Run Off, but for How Long?

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In September, the CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp, Tim Spence, said something at the Barclays investor conference that might have seemed astonishing at another time. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based bank was letting $10 billion simply roll off its balance sheet in the first half of the year, an amount the CEO described as “surge” deposits.

In an age when banks are awash in liquidity, many of them are happily waving goodbye to some amount of their deposits, which appear as a liability on the balance sheet, not an asset.
Like Fifth Third, banks overall have been slow to raise interest rates on deposits, feeling no urgency to keep up with the Federal Reserve’s substantial interest rate hikes this year.

Evidence suggests that deposits have begun to leave the banking system. That may not be such a bad thing. But bank management teams should carefully assess their deposit strategies as interest rates rise, ensuring they don’t become complacent after years of near zero interest rates. “Many bankers lack meaningful, what I would call meaningful, game plans,” says Matt Pieniazek, president and CEO of Darling Consulting Group, which advises banks on balance sheet management.

In recent years, that critique hasn’t been an issue — but that could change. As of the week of Oct. 5, deposits in the banking system dipped to $17.77 trillion, down from $18.07 trillion in August, according to the Federal Reserve. Through the first half of the year, mid-sized banks with $10 billion to $60 billion in assets lost 2% to 3% of their deposits, according to Fitch Ratings Associate Director Brian Thies.

This doesn’t worry Fitch Ratings’ Managing Director for the North American banking team, Christopher Wolfe. Banks added about $9.2 trillion in deposits during the last decade, according to FDIC data. Wolfe characterizes these liquidity levels as “historic.”

“So far, we haven’t seen drastic changes in liquidity,” he says.

In other words, there’s still a lot of wiggle room for most banks. Banks can use deposits to fund loan growth, but so far, deposits far exceed loans. Loan-to-deposit ratios have been falling, reaching a historic low in recent years. The 20-year average loan-to-deposit ratio was 81%, according to Fitch Ratings. In the second quarter of 2022, it was 59.26%, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In September, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors enacted its third consecutive 75 basis point hike to fight raging inflation — bringing the fed funds target rate range to 3% to 3.25%. Banks showed no signs of matching the aggressive rate hikes. The median deposit betas, a figure that shows how sensitive banks are to rising rates, came in at 2% through June of this year, according to Thies. That’s a good thing: The longer banks can hold off on raising deposit rates while variable rate loans rise, the more profitable they become.

But competitors to traditional brick-and-mortar banks, such as online banks and broker-dealers, have been raising rates to attract deposits, Pieniazek says. Many depositors also have figured out they can get a short-term Treasury bill with a yield of about 4%. “You’re starting to see broker-dealers and money management firms … promot[e] insured CDs with 4% [rates],” he says. “The delta between what banks are paying on deposits and what’s available in the market is the widest in modern banking history.”

The question for management teams is how long will this trend last? The industry has enjoyed a steady increase in noninterest-bearing deposits over the years, which has allowed them to lower their overall funding costs. In the fourth quarter of 2019, just 13.7% of deposits were noninterest bearing; that rose to 25.8% in the second quarter of 2021, according to Fitch. There’s a certain amount of money sitting in bank coffers that hasn’t left to chase higher-yielding investments because few alternatives existed. How much of that money could leave the bank’s coffers, and when?

Pieniazek encourages bank boards and management teams to discuss how much in deposits the bank is willing to lose. And if the bank starts to see more loss than that, what’s Plan B? These aren’t easy questions to answer. “Why would you want to fly blind and see what happens?” Pieniazek asks.

What sort of deposits is the bank willing to lose? What’s the strategy for keeping core deposits, the industry term for “sticky” money that likely won’t leave the bank chasing rates? Pieniazek suggests analyzing past data to see what happened when interest rates rose and making some predictions based on that. How long will the excess liquidity stick around? Will it be a few months? A few years? He also suggests keeping track of important, large deposit relationships and deciding in what circumstances the bank will raise rates to keep those funds. And what should tellers and other bank employees say when customers start demanding higher rates?

For its part, Fifth Third has been working hard in recent years to ensure it has a solid base of core deposits and a disciplined pricing strategy that will keep rising rates from leading to drastically higher funding costs. It’s been a long time since banking has been in this predicament. It’s anyone’s guess what happens next.

Capitalism with a Conscience

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In this edition of The Slant Podcast, Julieann Thurlow, CEO of the $691 million Reading Cooperative Bank in Massachusetts and vice chair of the American Bankers Association, discusses the bank’s new retail banking apprenticeship. Like many of its peers in the cooperative banking movement, Reading Cooperative is owned by its customers and was founded in 1886 primarily to help working families buy homes. And there are some interesting parallels between that mission and the work it’s doing today in the city of Lawrence. The bank has been on a years-long journey to establish a branch in Lawrence, where it will offer check cashing services as part of a broader appeal to the city’s unbanked.

This episode, and all past episodes of The Slant Podcast, are available on Bank Director, Spotify and Apple Music.

Modernizing Your Retail Banking Business

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The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the decline of traffic in most banks’ retail branches, leading many organizations to reexamine the cost of their branch services and the ultimate viability of their branch-based services. Bank boards and executive teams must address the changing operating risks in today’s retail banking environment and assess the potential strategic risks of both action and inaction.

Speculation about the impending death of branch banking is nothing new: industry observers have debated the topic for years. As customers have become more comfortable with online banking, banks experienced a sizeable drop in in-person transactions. Regulatory changes, social trends and the growth of fintech alternatives exacerbated this development, leading many banks to cut back or centralize various branch-based activities. Between June 2010 and year-end 2020, branch offices have decreased by more than 16,000, or 16.7%, according to a Crowe analysis of report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The pandemic also introduced important new challenges. Many banks had already shifted the focus in their branches, but greater consumer acceptance of remote and self-service options clouded the role of the branch even further. At the same time, pandemic relief programs produced a wave of liquidity, which hid or delayed the recognition of fundamental challenges many bankers expect to face: finding new ways to continue growing their core deposits at an acceptable cost.

So far, banks’ responses to these challenges have varied. Some banks — both large and small — have accelerated their branch closure plans. Others have notified regulators that they do not plan to reopen branches shuttered during lockdowns. But some banks actually are adding new offices as they reconfigure their retail banking strategies. What is the underlying strategic thinking when it comes to brick and mortar locations?

Developing and Executing an Effective Strategy

There is no one-size-fits-all approach, of course. Closing a majority of branches and becoming a digital-only organization is simply not appropriate for most banks. Nevertheless, many aspects of the physical model require innovation. Directors and executive teams can take several steps to successfully modernize their retail banking strategies.

  • Rethink branch cost and performance metrics. Banks use a variety of tools to attract deposits, sell products and build relationships, which means conventional performance metrics such as accounts or transactions per employee, cost per transaction or teller transaction times often are inadequate measurements.

A branch’s contribution also includes the visibility it provides as a billboard for the bank, access to and support for the specialized products and services it can deliver and the role it plays in establishing a community presence. Management teams need to develop tools to determine and measure the value of such contributions to the bank and its product lines, as well as their associated costs. Branches are long-term investments that require longer-term planning strategies and tactics.

  • Identify customer expectations. One factor contributing to the decline in foot traffic is what customers experience when they visit a branch. Although branch greeters can establish a welcoming atmosphere, such encounters often succeed only in a nice greeting — not necessarily in service.

Because customers can perform most banking business online, banks must ascertain why customers are visiting the branch — and then focus on meeting those needs. Ultimately, customers must leave the branch feeling fulfilled, having accomplished a transaction or task that would have been more difficult outside the branch.

  • Execute a coordinated digital strategy. Having a digital strategy means more than updating the bank’s website, streamlining its mobile banking interface or even partnering with a fintech to offer new digital products. Such catch-up activities might be necessary, but they no longer set a bank apart in today’s digital landscape or improve profitability and growth.

Beyond technology, banks should consider how their digital strategy and brand identity align and how that identity ties back to customers’ expectations. Traditionally, banks’ brand identities were linked to a specific geographic location or niche audiences, but brand identity also can reflect other communities or affinity groups or a particular service or product at which the bank is especially adept. This identity should be projected consistently throughout the customer experience, both digitally and in person.

Although most banks should not abandon their branches altogether, many will need to reevaluate their market approaches, compare opportunities for improved earnings performance and consider reimagining their value proposition for in-person services. Strategies will vary from one organization to the next, but those that succeed will share certain critical attributes — including a willingness to question conventional thinking and redeploy resources without hesitation.

Once Stagnated, Banks Are Refreshing Checking Accounts to Compete

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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.

What Banks Can Learn From Retailers to Grow Loans

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If success leaves clues, retail has dropped plenty of golden nuggets to help the banking industry refine its credit application process and increase customer loyalty.

While banks have come a long way with online and mobile features, credit and loan application procedures are still stuck in the early 2000s. Often, the process is unnecessarily bogged down by false pre-approvals and lengthy forms; bank processes drive how customer obtain loans, instead of by their individual preferences.

Savvy lenders have already adopted alternatives that curate an express, white-glove approval process that incorporates customer loyalty. It’s more of a catalog of options available any time the consumer wants or needs something. Companies like Amazon.com and Delta Air Lines don’t work to predict consumer’s every desire; instead, they empower the customer to shop whenever and wherever, and proactively offer them options to pay or finance based on their data. Consumers join loyalty programs, earn points and build profiles with companies; they can then apply for credit online, over the phone, in store — wherever it makes the most sense for them. If they provide the correct information, they typically find out whether they are approved for credit in 60 seconds or less — usually no heavy paperwork to complete, just verbal confirmations and an e-signature. Retailers have given consumers a sense of ease and confidence that endears them to a brand and inspires loyalty.

Banks, on the other hand, seem convinced that customers are monolithic and must be instructed in how to shop for loans. But they have much more consumer data and more lending expertise than retailers; they could go even further than retailers when it comes to extending loan offers and services to customers in a variety of formats.

For instance, a bank should never have to deny a customer’s loan application. Instead, they should have enough data to empower the consumer with personalized access to loans across multiple product lines, which can go further than a pre-approved offer. These guaranteed offers can eliminate the application process and wait time. It gives the consumer insight into their personal buying power, and instant access to loans where and when they need them. The process doesn’t require a lengthy applications or branch visit, and removes the fear of rejection.

What Keeps Banks from Offering Customers a Faster Process?
It’s not a completely failed strategy that banks throw multiple offers at a consumer to see which one sticks. Some consumers will open the direct mail piece, complete the forms online and receive approval for the credit line or loan they have been offered. That’s considered a successful conversion.

Other consumers won’t be so lucky. The quickest way to upset a consumer who needs a line of credit or loan for personal reasons is to send them an offer that they were never qualified to receive. It’s cruel, unjust, wastes the consumer’s time and jeopardizes any loyalty the consumer has for your bank. Your bank already has readily available data to ensure that consumers receive qualified loans — there’s no reason to disappoint a customer or prospect.

Additionally, consumers increasingly reward personalization, and the sense that an institution understands them. A survey from Infogroup found that 44% of consumers are willing to switch to brands that better-personalize marketing communications. And a recent survey from NCR finds that 86% of people would prefer their bank have greater access to their personal data, compared to big tech companies like Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google. This is up 8%, from 78%, in a similar study in 2018.

Personalizing messages and offers is something retail brands do well; consumers are open to and increasingly expect this from their banks. This is a bank’s best strategy to stay ahead of retailers’ loan products: showing customers how well you know them and deepening those relationships with fast, guaranteed offers.

The U.S. economy is expected to expand more rapidly later this year, through 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. This is a far cry from the doom and gloom projected late last year. Banks looking to capitalize on the growth will have to adopt a more on-demand strategy from their retail brethren. The loyalty from customers will be sweet.

Scaling Quality Customer Service in the Pandemic Era

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Since February 2020, the pandemic has reshaped everyone’s daily reality, creating a perfect storm of financial challenges.

In early March 2020, the economy was thriving. Six weeks later, over 30 million U.S. workers had filed for unemployment. The pandemic has exacerbated already–crushing consumer debt loads. At the end of the first quarter, nearly 11% of the $1.54 trillion student loan debt was over 90 days past due. Emergency lending programs like the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program have not been renewed.  

Guiding consumers, especially millennials and Gen Z, to financial wellness is critical to the future of financial institutions. These demographics bring long-term value to banks, given their combined spending power of over $3 trillion.

But the banking support system is straining under incredible demand from millions of consumers, and it feels broken for many. Consumers are scrambling for help from their banks; their banks are failing them. With hold times ranging from 20 minutes to three hours, compared with an average of 41 seconds in normal times, customers are having an increasingly aggravating experience. And website content isn’t helping either. Often too generic or laced with confusing jargon like “forbearance,” customers can’t get advice that is relevant to their unique situation and  make good financial choices.

All this comes at a time of restricted branch access. Gone are the days when customers could easily walk into their local branch for product advice. Afraid of coronavirus exposure, most consumers have gone digital. Moreover, many branches are closed, reduced hours or use appointments due to the pandemic. No wonder digital has become an urgent imperative.

How can community banks scale high-quality service and advice cost-effectively in the pandemic era and beyond? The answer lies in a new breed of technology, pioneered by digital engagement automation, powered by artificial intelligence and knowledge. Here is what you can do with it.

Deliver smarter digital services. AI-automated digital self-service enables banks to deliver service to more customers, while lowering costs. For example, next-gen chatbots are often just as effective as human assistance for solving a broad range of basic banking queries, such as bill payments, money transfers and disputed charges. The average cost per agent call could be as high as $35; an AI-powered chatbot session costs only a few pennies, according to industry analysts.

Provide instant access to help. The next generation of chatbots go beyond “meet and greet” and can solve customer issues through AI and knowledge-guided conversations. This capability takes more load off the contact center. Chatbots can walk customers through a dialog to best understand their situation and deliver the most relevant guidance and financial health tips. Where needed, they transition the conversation to human agents with all the context, captured from the self-service conversation for a seamless experience.

Satisfy digital natives. Enhancing digital services is also critical to attracting and keeping younger, digital-native customers. Millennials and Gen Z prefer to use digital touchpoints for service. But in the pandemic era, older consumers have also jumped on the bandwagon due to contact risk.

Many of blue-chip companies have scaled customer service and engagement effectively with digital engagement automation. A leading financial services company implemented our virtual assistant chatbot, which answers customer questions while looking for opportunities to sell premium advice, offered by human advisors. These advisors use our chat and co-browse solution to answer customer questions and help them fill forms collaboratively. The chatbot successfully resolved over 50% of incoming service queries.

The client then deployed the capability for their IT helpdesk, where it resolved 81% of the inquiries. Since then the client has rolled out additional domain-specific virtual assistants for other functional groups. Together, these virtual assistants processed over 2 million interactions in the last 12 months.

The economic road ahead will be rocky, and financial institutions cannot afford to lose customers. Digital engagement automation with AI and knowledge can help scale up customer service without sacrificing quality. So why not get going?

Exploring Customer Service in the Pandemic Age

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Banks across the country are grappling with the right approach to branch banking as the Covid-19 pandemic lingers.

Management concerns surrounding logistics and safety must give way to longer-term considerations aimed squarely at the bottom line. Executives need to contemplate the future of their branch operations and  business model, incorporating the guidance that large-scale pandemics may persist in some shape or form in the future. Read on to explore key considerations relating to the long-term implication of pandemics on customer service delivery.

Will customers ever come back into our branches? How will that impact our bank?
Branch visits have irrevocably changed. A recent study asked consumers to rank their preference of seven different banking channels, before, during and post-pandemic. Six months after the start of the pandemic, branch banking has settled into sixth place. The study predicts “a rapid decrease in the importance of the physical branch as customers become more habituated to the use of digital, which is a behavior that will linger long term.”

Jimmy Ton, senior vice president and director of digital channels at Irvine, California-based First Foundation Bank, agrees. “For those who adopted digital services during this time, they’ll probably stick with them. It takes 60 days to form a habit and people have been reconditioned during the pandemic. There’s no reason to believe they will abandon these services,” said Ton.

Novantas highlights another concern. “The branch network’s competitive advantage for sales has been eliminated overnight, possibly forever. Although sales were already shifting away from branches, they will now need to be even more digital.”

Banks must prepare for a permanent, significant reduction of branch visits. They should discuss this impact on their business models and what changes, internally and customer-facing, will need to occur.

Highly personalized service is our hallmark. How can we possibly digitize that?
Many banks have long leveraged high-touch customer service as a differentiator when competing with national banks. This was often delivered through branch networks and sales teams — until now.

Bankers have witnessed pandemic-induced migration to digital channels. But this is no time to celebrate;  J. D. Power shows overall satisfaction has declined as customers transition from branch to digital channels. That’s because banks have so far been unable to replicate the personalized nature of in-branch experiences digitally.

But it can be done.

Think of it this way: branch staff can glance at a screen filled with information about the customer sitting in front of them to personalize the conversation. That same data can be used to craft a personalized conversation, delivered via email or text message instead. Both methods communicate to the customer that you know who they are, and can offer ways to help them.

Digital engagement platforms offering deep personalization delivered via individualized websites, text messages, video and online chats exist today. They deliver a positive, digital experience with minimal effort, even for data-challenged banks.

“A significant chunk of interactions can move to digital. A great parallel is what we saw happen with telehealth, moving routine physical in-person appointments to virtual ones,” said John Philpott, a partner at FINTOP Capital. “It’s a great example of how professional conversations can be digital; banks can absolutely do the same.”

Banks should plan to shift all or a significant portion of sales and service delivery away from their branch networks and to digital engagement and sales platforms that are ideally powered by insightful data to hyper-personalize the experience.

Strategically speaking, what else should we consider?
With branch-based account opening limited and most banks flush with cash, the pressure for new deposits has lessened. Now is an opportune time to focus on the existing customer base to minimize attrition and boost profitability of those relationships.

Ted Brown, CEO of Digital Onboarding, founded the company based on the idea that opening a new account does not mean you’ve established a relationship.

“[The ] number of new checking accounts is the wrong metric to obsess over,” Brown said. “Are your customers fully utilizing the products and services they’ve signed up for? Are they turning to your bank to satisfy additional needs? Starting with Day One, successful onboarding — and continuous engagement thereafter — increases product usage, cross-sell success and ultimately drives profits.”

Zeroing in on customer engagement and retention, instead of new customer growth, may be a smart, strategic and profitable move in the current environment. Responsible bank leadership must contemplate what changes and investments they will need to make to stay relevant with customers post-COVID 19.

The Illusive Hunt for Revenue

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Fintel.pngThe operating environment for banks is becoming increasingly inhospitable. Rising credit costs and falling interest rates threaten to squeeze profitability in a vice grip unless banks find new revenue sources.

This is why Bank Director’s second annual Experience FinXTech event and awards, hosted virtually at the beginning of May, highlighted fintech companies that are helping banks grow their top lines.

The event brought together bankers and technologists for demonstrations and conversations about the present and future of banking.

As a part of the event, Bank Director crowned fintech winners in seven categories, including Best Solution for Customer Experience, Best Solution for Loan Growth and Best Solution for Revenue Growth.

Fintel Connect won the final category: Best Solution for Revenue Growth.

The Canada-based company amplifies a bank’s marketing campaigns by leveraging an affiliate network of publishers and social influencers, as we explain on our FinXTech Connect platform, which profiles hundreds of tried-and-true technology companies serving the banking industry.

A selling point is that, instead of paying for clicks or impressions, customers of Fintel Connect only pay once a lead converts into an actual customer.

Canada’s EQ Bank has been working with Fintel Connect for years, using it to manage media affiliates — bloggers, interest rate aggregators, etc. EQ attributes the service with boosting customer acquisition “fairly substantially,” with between 5% and 10% of EQ’s new customers now coming through it.

Nest Egg was a runner-up in the category of Best Solution for Revenue Growth. The Philadelphia-based company enables banks to offer high-quality, fully digital investment services in order to increase customer affinity.

OceanFirst Financial Corp., a $10.5 billion bank based in Red Bank, New Jersey, liked Nest Egg so much that it invested in the company.

OceanFirst has recommended Nest Egg’s semi-automated money management tool to retail clients for about a year, with assets under management growing from $0 to $43 million over that time. The service is already cash flow positive for OceanFirst.

The last finalist for this category was Flybits, a fintech company based in Toronto.

Mastercard has been working with Flybits for a year now. They’re still in the early stages of implementing its product, which helps provide contextualized offers to end users of their cards for the purpose of driving usage.

The trajectory has been a positive one for Mastercard, leaving the company optimistic that working with Flybits will help their clients — mainly banks — increase card usage and associated fee income.

One reason Mastercard chose to work with Flybits is because of the way it deals with data. All data is tokenized, with Flybits only selectively accessing the data it needs. There are any number of ways for banks to grow revenue. These are three of the best, according to experienced panel of judges convened to choose the winners at Bank Director’s 2020 Experience FinXTech.