Three Critical Strategies for Digital Wealth, Trust Success

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strategy-7-31-19.pngThe robot (wealth advisors) are here.

The robo-advisor revolution promised to render legacy firms like broker-dealers, asset managers, and registered investment advisors obsolete.

The fear of being left behind motivated many companies across the wealth industry to respond with an open checkbook. BlackRock dropped $150 million to buy FutureAdvisor in 2015. Other firms, like JPMorgan & Chase Co., spent more than three years and millions of dollars building their own robo-advisors. And others, like Northwestern Mutual, spent $250 million to acquire and then ultimately shutter their offering.

Despite all the effort, money and time invested, these companies don’t have much to show for it. The amount of assets under management at these nascent efforts is underwhelming; when combined with ultra-low robo-fee rates, the revenue doesn’t come close to providing any real return on their upfront sizable investments.

What’s the real takeaway for banks? The problem isn’t the technology so much as it is the corresponding business strategy. When it comes to robo-advising, altering the strategy and deconstructing the technology will give banks the biggest returns on their investments. There will be benefits for the brokerage side of the bank, but even greater returns in the trust division, which typically relies on outdated processes based on paper and people.

If banks look at technology with a lens toward driving margin as well as revenue growth, the way they deploy robo-technology changes. Instead of launching robo-advisors and hoping customers stream in, a better strategy could be to become hyper-focused, using the technology in order to maximize its inherent value. Banks thinking about using digital solutions to improve their wealth and trust offerings can focus on three areas in order to get operational and revenue benefits:

  1. Eliminate paper-based trust account opening processes. Using digital trust account opening can dramatically reduce the total client onboarding time and begin the investing and billing processes sooner, accelerating the time it takes to generate revenue from a newly opened account. For example, the typical trust account takes about 40 days to get correctly opened and funded. Technology can reduce that time by 30 days, driving at least 8% more revenue with those extra days, while simultaneously decreasing the people- and paper-based costs.
  2. Automate existing smaller agency accounts. Automating processes like risk assessment, model management and rebalancing can significantly reduce the amount of time and people needed to manage those smaller, less profitable accounts. Banks can achieve higher customer satisfaction via the improved and streamlined process, as well as higher advisor satisfaction from the drastic reduction in operating time.
  3. Retain flight risk retail customers. Retail customers who do not meet the account minimums to utilize a bank’s wealth services often find wealth offerings elsewhere, taking their assets outside of your bank. By digitizing wealth offerings, banks can lower their operational costs and enable a profitable way to service smaller wealth accounts, retain more customers and increase revenue. The key is using technology to correctly segment customers to better predict when they are most likely to become a flight risk to consumer-facing robo-advisors like Betterment.

So, what should a bank do to digitize a wealth or trust offering?

Start by targeting efficiency. While you may be tempted by the siren song of new customers and revenue, the biggest short-term returns for technology always come through cost reduction and margin expansion. Find the areas of your business with the most friction and surgically target them with technology to notch meaningful gains. Once your operations are running faster and smoother, target existing at-risk customers. Yes, you’ll be repricing those deposits, but it’s always better to reprice, retain and ultimately grow deposits than it is to lose them to one of the consumer-facing robo-advisors.

How Community Banks Can Compete Using Fintechs, Not Against Them

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fintech-7-15-19.pngSmaller institutions should think of financial technology firms as friends, not foes, as they compete with the biggest banks.

These companies, often called fintechs, pose real challenges to the biggest banks because they offer smaller firms a way to tailor and grow their offerings. Dozens of the biggest players are set to reach a $1 billion valuation this year—and it’s not hard to see why. They’ve found a niche serving groups that large banks have inadvertently missed. In this way, they’re not unlike community banks and credit unions, whose people-first philosophy is akin to these emerging tech giants.

Ironically, savvy fintechs are now smartly capitalizing on their popularity to become more like big banks. These companies have users that are already highly engaged; they could continue to see a huge chunk of assets move from traditional institutions in the coming year. After all, what user wouldn’t want to consolidate to a platform they actually like using?

The growth and popularity of fintechs is an opportunity for community banks and credit unions. As customers indicate increasing openness to alternative financial solutions, these institutions have an opportunity to grab a piece of the pie if they consider focusing on two major areas: global trading and digital capabilities.

Since their creation, community banks and member-owned organizations have offered many of the same services as their competitors. However, unlike fintechs, these financial institutions have already proved their resilience in weathering the financial crisis. Community banks can smartly position themselves as behind-the-scenes partners for burgeoning fintechs.

It may seem like the typical credit union or community banking customer would have little to do with international transactions. But across the world, foreign payments are incredibly common—and growing. Global trading is an inescapable part of everyday consumer life, with cross-border shopping, travel and investments conducted daily with ease. Small businesses are just as likely to sell to a neighbor as they are to a stranger halfway around the globe. Even staunchly conservative portfolios may incorporate some foreign holdings.

Enabling global trades on a seamless digital scale is one of the best avenues for both community banks and credit unions to expand their value and ensure their continued relevance. But the long list of requirements needed to facilitate international transactions has limited these transactions to the biggest banks. Tackling complex regulatory environments and infrastructure can be not only intimidating, but downright impossible for firms without an endless supply of capital earmarked for these such investments.

That means that while customers prefer community banks and credit unions for their personalization and customer service, they flock to big banks for their digital capabilities. This makes it all the more urgent for smaller operations to expand while they have a small edge.

Even as big banks pour billions of dollars into digital upgrades, an easy path forward for smaller organizations can be to partner with an established service that offers competitive global banking functions. Not only does this approach help them save money, but it also allows them to launch new services faster and recapture customers who may be performing these transactions elsewhere.

As fintechs continue to expand their influence and offerings, innovation is not just a path to success—it’s a survival mechanism.

How Innovative Banks Are Reimagining the Core

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core-7-10-19.pngNew developments in technology have heightened bank customers’ expectations of speed, service and customization from their financial institutions—and cores are struggling to keep up.

Consumer expectations for banks are so high that it’s difficult—if not impossible—to meet them using existing core banking systems. Luckily, the landscape of core providers is growing rapidly too, and some banks are already taking the plunge.

The “Big Three” core providers as they’re known in the industry—Fiserv, Jack Henry & Associates and Fidelity National Information Services—serve just over 71 percent of U.S. banks according to data company FedFis. They’re criticized for providing poor service and lagging significantly behind smaller, more nimble fintechs when it comes to innovation. And their recent acquisition streaks have bank clients worried that it could erode service levels, reduce choice and increase cost.

James “Chip” Mahan III, chairman and CEO of Live Oak Bancshares, described the situation aptly: “It just seemed like every time we wanted to do something, it’s impossible. It’s ‘stand in line and write a big check.’ And it’s really, fundamentally, putting lipstick on a pig.”

That’s why the bank, based in Wilmington, North Carolina, invested in an emerging competitor—Finxact—and courted creators and industry veterans Frank and Michael Sanchez out of semi-retirement to take on the challenge of reinventing the core.

Finxact is an inventory management system that’s been architected from scratch on Amazon Web Services. Finxact and other alternative core providers offer three key features that banks should demand from a 21st century core processor.

Open Architecture
Nearly every core has some type of application programming interface (API) that allows its technology to connect to third-party applications, though the availability of those APIs is still tightly controlled in legacy systems.

Most challenger cores embrace open architecture—a quality that stands in stark contrast to the situation with incumbent cores. Deland, Florida based Surety Bank wasn’t able to negotiate with its legacy provider to use a third-party remote deposit capture solution.

CEO Ryan James says that was “a deal killer” because the bank does a large volume of deposits with that provider, had tailored it to their needs and had undergone examinations with it as well.

“It just was absurd that [our legacy core] didn’t even want to take that file, because they were greedy. They wanted to charge the [remote deposit] rates on that even though they couldn’t do what we needed,” he says. “That was an eye opener.”

Surety Bank eventually chose to undergo a full core conversion. It only took four months for the bank to launch on a cloud-based system from NYMBUS at the beginning of 2018.

Cloud Native
In addition to featuring open architecture, many challenger cores are cloud native. Although most legacy cores have some ability to run some of their system within a cloud environment, truly cloud-native companies offer banks greater advantages.

“There are different services that the cloud provides that will enable you to scale without drastically increasing your costs,” says Eugene Danilkis, co-founder and CEO of Berlin-based core technology provider Mambu. “That allow [cores] to have the best practices in terms of security, in terms of disaster recovery and also the sort of operations you can support.”

One of the operational advantages a cloud-native system provides is the ability to deploy updates within a day or two, Danilkis says.

Being cloud native is synonymous with scalability; a system can handle one hundred accounts as easily as it can handle one hundred thousand. This significant benefit means core providers don’t need to charge banks for each new account or service they add, and often use software-as-a-service models or other simple, transparent pricing schemes.

Configurable
Perhaps the most important hallmark of a modern core system is configurability. Modern cores give banks the ability to create their own ecosystems, workflows and bespoke financial products that differentiate them from competitors.

Banks on a core like Finxact could build a new type of savings account that automatically raises its interest rate when the balance reaches a certain level. In contrast, legacy cores only offer out-of-the-box products that can be tweaked to meet a bank’s risk appetite or other basic requirements, without changing the product.

Changing the Game
Modern core processors approach banking technology in radically different ways from legacy core providers. They’ve built new systems from scratch, instead of bolting on acquired products. They run in realtime instead of overnight batches. They look and feel like websites instead of flat green screens. They’re open, cloud-native and highly configurable—and they’re finally coming into their own. Innovative banks should explore these options now so that they can leapfrog their peers in the near future.

Potential Technology Partners

Finxact

Currently in limited use at Live Oak Bancshares and engaged in discussions with several other U.S. banks.

NYMBUS

The SmartCore platform is powering at least one community bank, and its SmartLaunch product uses SmartCore to support digital-only brands for additional institutions.

EdgeVerve

The Infosys Finacle core is used in over 100 countries and made waves in the U.S. when Discover Financial Services left Fiserv to use this core for its direct banking business in late 2014.

Smiley Technologies

The SIBanking platform is currently in use in several U.S. banks with assets up to $1.3 billion.

Thought Machine

This London-based company wrote its cloud-native Vault core from scratch. The company states that it has clients in the U.S., but is unable to identify them publicly.

Mambu

Mambu has bank clients in 15 countries. In the U.S., current clients include non-bank lenders, and the company is planning to use its latest funding round, in part, to grow its footprint in the U.S.

Mbanq

The founder of NYMBUS just joined this operation to help the company expand into the U.S. They currently serve 15 banks primarily in Europe and Asia.

Learn more about each of the technology providers in this piece by accessing their profiles in Bank Director’s FinXTech Connect platform.

A Former Regulator Shares His Advice for Boards

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regulator-6-13-19.pngDeveloping a positive relationship with regulators is important for any bank. How can banks foster this?

There’s no one better to answer this question than a former regulator.

Charles Yi served as general counsel of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2015 to 2019, where he focused on policy initiatives and legislation, as well as the implementation of related rulemaking. He also served on the FDIC’s fintech steering committee.

In this interview, Yi talks about today’s deregulatory environment and shares his advice for banks looking to improve this critical relationship. He also explains the importance of a strong compliance culture and what boards should know about key technology-related risks.

Yi, now a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, in Washington, D.C., spoke to these issues at Bank Director’s Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference. You can access event materials here.

BD: You worked at the FDIC during a time of significant change, given a new administration and the passage of regulatory relief for the industry. In your view, what do bank boards need to know about the changes underway in today’s regulatory environment?
CY: While it is true that we are in a deregulatory environment in the short term, bank boards should focus on prudent risk management, and safe and sound banking practices for the long term. Good fundamentals are good fundamentals, whether the environment is deregulatory or otherwise.

BD: What hasn’t changed?
CY: What has not changed is the cyclical nature of both the economy and the regulatory environment. Just as housing prices will not always go up, [a] deregulatory environment will not last forever.

BD: From your perspective, what issues are top of mind for bank examiners today?
CY: It seems likely that we are at, or near, the peak of the current economic cycle. The banking industry as a whole has been setting new records recently in terms of profitability, as reported by the FDIC in its quarterly banking profiles. If I [were] a bank examiner, I would be thinking through and examining for how the next phase of the economic cycle would impact a bank’s operations going forward.

BD: Do you have any advice for boards that seek to improve their bank’s relationship with their examiners?
CY: [The] same thing I would say to an examiner, which is to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Try to understand that person’s incentives, pressures—both internal and external—and objectives. Always be cordial, and keep discussions civil, even if there is disagreement.

BD: What are some of the biggest mistakes you see banks make when it comes to their relationship with their examiner?
CY: Even if there is disagreement with an examiner, it should never become personal. The examiner is simply there to do a job, which is to review a bank’s policies and practices with the goal of promoting safety and soundness as well as consumer protection. If you disagree with an examiner, simply make your case in a cordial manner, and document the disagreement if it cannot be resolved.

BD: In your presentation at the Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference, you talked about the importance of projecting a culture of compliance. How should boards ensure their bank is building this type of culture?
CY: Culture of compliance must be a focus of the board and the management, and that focus has to be communicated to the employees throughout the organization. The incentive structure also has to be aligned with this type of culture.

Strong compliance culture starts at the top. The board has to set the tone for the management, and the management has to be the example for all employees to follow. Everyone in the organization has to understand and buy into the principle that we do not sacrifice long-term fundamentals for short-term gain—which in some cases could end up being [a] long-term loss.

(Editor’s note: You can learn more about building a strong culture through Bank Director’s Online Training Series, Unit 16: Building a Strong Compliance Culture.)

BD: You served on the FDIC’s fintech steering committee, which—in a broad sense—examined technology trends and risks, and evaluated the potential impact to the banking system. Banks are working more frequently with technology partners to enhance their products, services and capabilities. What’s important for boards to know about the opportunities and risks here?
CY: Fintech is the next frontier for banking, and banks are rightly focused on incorporating technology into their mix of products and services. One thing to keep in mind as banks increasingly partner with technology service providers is that the regulators will hold the bank responsible for what the technology service provider does or fails to do with regard to banking functions that have been outsourced.

BD: On a final note: In your view, what are the top risks facing the industry today?
CY: I mentioned already the risks facing the industry as we contemplate the downhill side of the current economic cycle. One other issue that I know the regulators are and have been spending quite a lot of time thinking about is cybersecurity. What is often said is that a cyber event is not a question of if, but when. We can devote volumes of literature [to] talking about this issue, but suffice for now to say that it is and will continue to be a focus of the regulators.

Arnold & Porter was a sponsor of Bank Director’s Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference.

How Innovative Banks Keep Up With Compliance Changes

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compliance-6-5-19.pngBankers and directors are increasingly worried about compliance risk.

More than half of executives and directors at banks with more than $10 billion in assets said their concerns about compliance risk increased in 2018, according to Bank Director’s 2019 Risk Survey. At banks of all sizes, 39 percent of respondents expressed increasing concern about their ability to comply with changing regulations.

They’re right to be worried. In 2018, U.S. banks saw the largest amount of rule changes since 2012, according to Pamela Perdue, chief regulatory officer for Continuity. This may have surprised bankers who assumed that deregulation would translate to less work.

“The reality is that that is not the case,” she says. “[I]t takes just as much operational effort to unwind a regulatory implementation as it does to ramp it up in the first place.”

Many banks still rely on compliance officers manually monitoring websites and using Google alerts to stay abreast of law and policy changes. That “hunt-and-peck” approach to compliance may not be sufficiently broad enough; Perdue said bankers risk missing or misinterpreting regulatory updates.

This potential liability could also mean missed opportunities for new business as rules change. To handle these challenges, some banks use regulatory change management (RCM) technology to aggregate law and policy changes and stay ahead of the curve.

RCM technology offerings are evolving. Current offerings are often included in broader governance risk and compliance solutions, though these tools often use the same manual methods for collecting and processing content that banks use.

Some versions of RCM technology link into data feeds from regulatory bodies and use scripts to crawl the web to capture information. This is less likely to miss a change but creates a mountain of alerts for a bank to sort through. Some providers pair this offering with expert analysis, and make recommendations for whether and how banks should respond.

But some of the most innovative banks are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to manage regulatory change. Bank Director’s 2019 Risk Survey revealed that 29 percent of bank respondents are exploring AI, and another 8 percent are already using it to enhance the compliance function. Companies like San Francisco-based Compliance.ai use AI to extract regulatory changes, classify them and summarize their key holdings in minutes.

While AI works exponentially faster than human compliance officers, there are concerns about its accuracy and reliability.

“I think organizations need to be pragmatic about this,” says Compliance.ai chief executive officer and co-founder Kayvan Alikhani. “[T]here has to exist a healthy level of skepticism about solutions that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace what a $700 to $800 an hour lawyer was doing before this solution was used.”

Compliance.ai uses an “Expert in The Loop” system to verify that the classifications and summaries the AI produced are accurate. This nuanced version of supervised learning helps train the model, which only confirms a finding if it has higher than 95 percent confidence in the decision.

Bankers may find it challenging to test their regulatory technology systems for accuracy and validity, according to Jo Ann Barefoot, chief executive officer of Washington-based Barefoot Innovation Group and Hummingbird Regtech.

“A lot of a lot of banks are running simultaneously on the new software and the old process, and trying to see whether they get the same results or even better results with the new technology,” she says.

Alikhani encourages banks to do proofs of concept and test new solutions alongside their current methodologies, comparing the results over time.

Trust and reliability don’t seem to be key factors in bankers’ pursuit of AI-based compliance technology. In Bank Director’s 2019 Risk Survey, only 11 percent of banks said their bank leadership teams’ hesitation was a barrier to adoption. Instead, 47 percent cited the inability to identify the right solution and 37 percent cited a lack of viable solutions in the marketplace as the biggest deterrents.

Bankers who are adopting RCM are motivated by expense savings, creating a more robust compliance program and even finding a competitive edge, according to Barefoot.

“If your competitors are using these kinds of tools and you’re not that’s going to hurt you,” she says.

Potential Technology Partners

Continuity

Combines regulatory data feeds with consultative advice about how to implement changes.

Compliance.ai

Pairs an “Expert in the Loop” system to verify the accuracy of AI summaries and categorization

OneSumX Regulatory Change Management from Wolters Kluwer

Includes workflows and tasks that help banks manage the implementation of new rules and changes

BWise

Provides impact ratings that show which parts of the bank will be impacted by a rule and the degree of impact

Predict360 from 360factors

Governance risk and compliance solution that provides banks with access to the Code of Federal Regulations and administrative codes for each state

Learn more about each of the technology providers in this piece by accessing their profiles in Bank Director’s FinXTech Connect platform.

Avoiding Unnecessary Unclaimed Property Forfeitures and Keeping Customers

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risk-5-27-19.pngUnclaimed property issues are complex, but there are steps banks can take to help their customers maintain claims to their assets and keep their funds within the institution.

“Escheatment” is the legal term for the transfer of abandoned property to the state. Once a customer’s property is considered “abandoned” after a specific waiting period, state laws require that the bank turn over the asset to the state treasury department for safekeeping. Dormancy periods can be as short as one year, but vary by state or jurisdiction.

Banks can take four key actions that can reduce the risk that unnecessary escheatment could have on their customers’ accounts, and keep assets and deposits within the institution.

Institutions need to design processes and systems that can prevent unnecessary escheatment. Many banks lack the internal processes and technology solutions that would help minimize the risk of escheatment and often do not formalize their approach until faced with an audit, compounding an already-stressful situation.

Banks can create a culture of compliance by having policies and procedures for this process in place. They can also use technology to mitigate escheatment risk, lower the cost of the process and increase the efficiency of mitigation efforts.

However, many financial organizations lack robust systems to aid this process. For example, banks might allow certificates of deposit to be escheated because of inactivity, even though the CD owner has actively made deposits in or withdrawals from another account type. Linking customer accounts together allows the bank to assess contact activity across all holdings.

Banks can also educate their customers on the importance of maintaining accurate contact information and regular activity, which could prevent accounts from becoming dormant. Effective ways to help clients accomplish this include:

  • Providing customers with educational information when they open an account—one of the best times to educate them.
  • Adding messages on customer communications.
  • Establishing online alerts if mail has been returned as undeliverable, prompting customers to update their address when they log into their accounts.
  • Training bank employees about the risks of unnecessary escheatment so they are well-versed about unclaimed property compliance and can guide customers appropriately.

Banks should also proactively identify their customers who might be at risk for escheatment. All jurisdictions, except for Puerto Rico, have basic due diligence requirements that require banks to make a final attempt to contact owners of dormant accounts and uncashed checks towards the end of the dormancy period. But there are several steps that banks can take to identify customers at risk of escheatment ahead of the dormancy period:

  • Monitor which accounts have been inactive for 12 to 18 months and note the relationship with these customers.
  • Begin outreach campaigns early and allow sufficient time for communication, rather than waiting for the mandated due diligence process.
  • Identify deceased customer accounts that appear to be inactive, which can happen when family members are not aware that the account needs to be transferred or overlook paperwork when settling an estate.

Banks should communicate early, often and effectively with at-risk customers well in advance of the due diligence escheatment process. This process generally occurs late in the dormancy period: accounts have often been dormant for three to five years, making it difficult to find and communicate with their owners.

The process typically involves a single mailing sent to the last address of the dormant account’s owner, in hopes that they will respond. Most jurisdictions do not require due diligence mailings if the address on the account has been deemed inaccurate.

Owners that do receive and open the due diligence mailing may miss the window to reactivate their account if they do not act immediately. Customers may also think these letters are potential scams because they do not perceive themselves to be inactive or lost.

Effective ways to communicate with at-risk customers include:

  • Calling customers directly and explaining the situation before incurring the expense of a due diligence mailing
  • Using colored envelopes and company logos in customer communications.
  • Using direct mailings when time, budget, resources or the volume of accounts prevent telephone efforts.

Varying the communication techniques, changing the appearance of each mailing and customizing the specific details of the communication to the customer’s unique situation may also accelerate and increase the response rate. Proper documentation is critical–banks should retain all correspondence for control and audit purposes.

The key to preventing unnecessary escheatment is being proactive long before the state dormancy periods begin. These methods will help banks reduce the cost of compliance and retain assets and customers.

The Great Payments Opportunity

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payments-5-20-19.pngBanks have an opportunity to deepen relationships with their corporate customers facing payment challenges. One promising product could be integrated receivables solutions.

While most business-to-business payments are still done through paper check, electronic payments are growing rapidly. Paper checks remain at about 50 percent of business-to-business payments, according to the 2016 Electronic Payments Survey by the Association for Financial Professionals. But Automated Clearing House payments grew 9.4 percent in 2018, according to the National Automated Clearinghouse Association — a trend that is forcing businesses with high receivables volumes to look for ways to process electronic payments more efficiently.

Electronic payments create unique challenges for bank corporate customers. While the deposit is received electronically at the bank, the remittance and detailed payment information are typically sent separately in an email, document or spreadsheet. The corporate treasurer must manually connect, or re-associate, the remittance information to the deposit, which creates delays in crediting the customers’ account. As electronic ACH volumes increase, treasurers solve this problem by hiring more accounting staff to reconcile these payments.

Corporates also face added complexity from payment networks, which are becoming a more common way for large companies to pay their suppliers. While more efficient for the payer, this process requires treasury staff to log onto multiple payment network aggregation sites and download the remittance information. These downloaded files require manual re-association to the payment in order to credit the customer’s account, which requires adding more staff.

Corporates are also using mobile to accept field payments, like collecting payment on the delivery of goods or services, new customer orders or credit holds and collections. However, mobile payments again force treasurers to manually reconcile them. Moreover, most commercial banking mobile applications are designed for the treasurer of the business, with features such as balances, history and transfers. Collecting field payments needs to be configured so that field representative can simply collect the payments and remittance.

The corporate treasurer needs increased levels of automation to solve these challenges and problems. Traditional bank lockbox processing was designed for checks and relies on manual entry of the corporate’s payments and delivery of a reconciled file. This paper-based approach will be insufficient as more payments become electronic.

Treasurers should consider integrated receivables systems that match all payments types from all payment channels using artificial intelligence. A consolidated payment file updates the corporate’s enterprise resource planning system once these payments are processed. The integrated receivable solution then provides the corporate with a single archive of all their payments, rather than just a lockbox.

Right now, corporate customers are looking to financial technology firms for integrated receivable solutions because banks are moving too slowly. This disintermediates corporate customers from the banks they do business with. But almost 73 percent of corporate treasurers believe it is important or very important for their bank to provide integrated receivables, according to Aite.

This is an opportunity for bankers. The integrated receivable market offers many software solutions for banks so they can quickly ramp up and meet the needs of their corporate customers.

Bankers have a wide range of fintech partners to choose from for integrated receivables software and should look for one with expertise and knowledge of the corporate market. The solutions should leverage artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to process payments from any channel, include security with high availability and be easy for the bank and corporate customers to use.

Using Intelligent Automation to Bank Smarter, Not Harder

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technology-5-4-19.pngBy this point in 2019, most consumers and companies are somewhat familiar with the concept of artificial intelligence. Executives and consultants have discussed its application in financial services for years; lately, the conversations have been brisk and some organizations are doing more than just talking. Many tangible AI use cases have emerged at financial institutions of all sizes over the last 12 months, and intelligent technology is beginning to make an impact on banks’ productivity and bottom lines.

Still, AI remains a largely abstract concept for many institutions. Some of the biggest challenges these banks face in preparing and executing an AI strategy starts with having a too-narrow definition of these technologies.

Technically, AI is the ability of machines to use complex algorithms to learn to do tasks that are traditionally performed by humans. It is often misrepresented or misunderstood in broader explanations as a wider range of automation technologies — technologies that would be more appropriately characterized as robotics or voice recognition, for example.

Banks interested in using intelligent automation, which includes AI, robotic process automation, and other smart technologies, should target areas that could benefit the most through operational efficiencies or speed up their digital transformation.

Banks are more likely to achieve their automation goals if executives shift their mindsets toward thinking about ways they can apply smart technologies throughout the institution. Intelligent automation leverages multiple technologies to achieve efficiency. Some examples include:

  • Using imaging technology to extract data from electronic images. For example, banks can use optical character recognition, or OCR, technology to extract information from invoices or loan applications, shortening the completion time and minimizing errors.
  • Robotic process automation, or RPA, to handle high-volume, repeatable manual tasks. Many institutions, including community banks with $180 million in assets up to the largest institutions in the world have leveraged RPA to reduce merger costs, bundle loans for sale and close inactive credit and debit cards.
  • Machine learning or AI to simulate human cognition and expedite problem solving. These applications can be used in areas ranging from customer service interactions to sophisticated back-office processes. Some industry reports estimate that financial institutions can save $1 trillion within the next few years through AI optimization. Several large banks have debuted their own virtual assistants or chatbots; other financial institutions are following suit by making it easier and more convenient for customers to transact on the go.

What are next steps for banks interested in using AI? Banks first need to identify the right use cases for their organization, evaluating and prioritizing them by feasibility and business need. It’s more effective to start with small projects and learn from them. Conduct due diligence to fully assess each project’s complexity, and plan to build interactively. Start moving away from thinking about robots replacing employees, and start considering how banking smarter – not harder – can play out in phases.

The Key To Creating A Profitable Deposit Strategy

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deposit-5-6-19.pngSmall and mid-size banks can leverage technology to retain and grow their retail relationships in the face of fierce competition for deposits.

Big banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. continue to lead the battle for deposits. They grew their domestic deposits by more than 180 percent, or $2.4 trillion, over the past 10 years, according to an analysis of regulatory data by The Wall Street Journal. To survive and thrive, smaller institutions will need to craft sustainable, profitable strategies to grow deposits. They should invest in technology to become more efficient, develop effective marketing strategies and leverage data and analytics to personalize products and customer experiences.

Banks can use technology to achieve efficiencies such as differentiating net new money from transfers of existing funds. This is key to growing deposits. Traditionally, banks and their legacy core systems were unable to distinguish between new deposits and existing ones. This meant that banks paid out promotional interest and rewards to customers who simply shifted money between accounts rather than made new deposits. Identifying net new money allows banks to offer promotions on qualified funds, govern it more effectively, incentivize new termed deposits and operate more efficiently.

To remain competitive, small and mid-sized banks should leverage technology to create experiences that strengthen customer retention and loyalty. One way they can do this is through micro-segmentation, which uses data to identify the interests of specific consumers to influence their behavior. Banks can use it to develop marketing campaigns that maximize the effectiveness of customer touchpoints.

Banks can then use personalization to execute on these micro-segmentation strategies. Personalized client offerings require data, a resource readily available to banks. Institutions can use data to develop a deeper understanding of consumer behaviors and personalize product offers that drive customer engagement and loyalty.

Consumers deeply valued personalization, making it critical for banks trying to attract new customers and retain existing ones. A report by The Boston Consulting Group found that 54 percent of new bank customers said a personalized experience was “either the most important or a very important factor” in their decision to move to that bank. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents added products or services because of a personalized approach. And “among customers who had left a bank, 41 percent said that insufficient personalized treatment was a factor in their decision,” the report read.

Banks can use data and analytics to better understand consumer behavior and act on it. They can also use personalization to shift from push marketing that promotes specific products to customers to pull marketing, which draws customers to product offerings. Institutions can leverage relationship data to build attractive product bundles and targeted incentives that appeal to specific customer interests. Banks can also use technology to evaluate the effectiveness of new products and promotions, and develop marketing campaigns to cross sell specific, recommended products. This translates to more-informed offers with greater response, leading to happier customers and improved bottom lines.

Small and mid-sized banks can use micro-segmentation and personalization to increase revenue, decrease costs and provide the kind of customer experience that wins customer deposits. Building and retaining relationships in the digital era is not easy. But banks can use technology to develop marketing campaigns and personalization strategies as a way to strengthen customer loyalty and engagement.

As the competition for deposits heats up, banks will need to control deposits costs, prevent attrition and grow deposits in a profitable and sustainable way. Small and mid-size banks will need to invest in technology to optimize marketing, personalization and operational strategies so they can defend and grow their deposit balances.

Three Tech Strategies for Banks, Based on Size

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strategy-5-3-19.pngHow should you position your bank for the future—or, for that matter, the present?

This is one of the most perplexing questions challenging leadership teams right now. It is not a new consideration; indeed, the industry has been in a constant state of evolution for as long as anyone on our team can remember. Yet lately, it has taken on a new, possibly more existential sense of urgency.

Fortunately, there are examples of banks, of different sizes and a variety of business models, keeping pace with changing consumer expectations and commercial clients’ needs. The industry seems to be responding to the ongoing digital revolution in banking in three ways.

The biggest banks—those like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.—have the resources to forge their own paths on the digital frontier.

These banks spend as much as $11 billion a year each on technology. They hire thousands of programmers to conceptualize digital solutions for customers.

The results are impressive.

As many as three-quarters of deposit transactions are completed digitally at these banks. A growing share of sales, account openings and money transfers take place over these banks’ digital channels as well. This allows these banks to winnow down their branch networks meaningfully while still gaining retail deposit market share.

The next step in their evolution is to combine digital delivery channels with insights gleaned from data. It’s by marrying the two, we believe, that banks can gain a competitive advantage by improving the financial lives of their customers.

Just below the biggest banks are super-regional and regional banks.

They too are fully embracing technology, although they tend to look outside their organizations for tailored solutions that will help them compete in this new era rather than develop the solutions themselves.

These banks talk about integration as a competitive advantage. They argue that they can quickly and nimbly integrate digital solutions developed elsewhere—growing without a burdensome branch network while also benefiting from the latest technologies without bearing the risk and cost of developing many of those solutions themselves. It is a way, in other words, for them to have their cake and eat it too.

U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group fall into this category. Both are reconfiguring their delivery channels, reallocating funds that would be spent on expanding and updating their branch networks to digital investments.

In theory, this makes it possible for these banks to expand into new geographic markets with far fewer branches.

U.S. Bancorp announced recently that it will use a combination of digital channels and new branches to establish a physical retail beachhead in Charlotte, North Carolina. PNC Financial is doing the same in Dallas, Texas, among other markets.

Finally, smaller community banks are adopting off-the-shelf solutions offered by their core providers—Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), Fiserv and Jack Henry & Associates.

This approach can be both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because these solutions have enabled upwards of 90 percent of community banks to offer mobile banking applications—table stakes nowadays in the industry. It is a curse because it further concentrates the reliance of community banks on a triumvirate of service providers.

In the final analysis, however, it is important to appreciate that smaller banks based outside of major metropolitan areas still have a leg up when it comes to tried-and-true relationship banking. Their share of loans and deposits in their local markets could even grow if the major money-center banks continue fleeing smaller markets in favor of big cities.

Smaller regional and community banks dominate small business loans in their markets—a fact that was recently underscored by LendingClub Corp.’s decision to close its small business lending unit. These loans still require local expertise—the type of expertise that resides in their hometown banks. The same is true of agriculture loans.

Banks are still banks, after all. Trust is still the top factor cited by customers in the selection process. And loans must still be underwritten in a responsible way if a bank wants to survive the irregular, but not infrequent, cycles that define our economy. The net result is that some community banks are not only surviving in this new digital era, they are thriving.

But this isn’t a call to complacency—far from it.

To compete in this new era of heightened digital competition, it is more important than ever for banks of all sizes to stay committed to the quest of constant improvement. That is why our team at Bank Director is thrilled to host bank executives and board members at the JW Marriott Nashville on May 9 and 10 for our annual Bank Board Training Forum, where we will talk about how to tackle these challenges and remain relevant in the years ahead.