3 Reasons to Add SBA Lending

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There were nearly 32 million small businesses in the United States at the end of the third quarter in 2020, according to the Small Business Administration.

That means 99% of all businesses in this country are small businesses, which is defined by the agency as 500 employees or fewer. They employ nearly 50% of all private sector employees and account for 65% of net new jobs between 2000 and 2019.

Many of the nation’s newest businesses are concentrated in industries like food and restaurant, retail, business services, healthy, beauty and fitness, and resident and commercial services. This is a potentially huge opportunity for your bank, if it’s ready and equipped for when these entrepreneurs come to you for financing. But if your bank is not prepared, it may be leaving serious money on the table that could otherwise provide a steady stream of valuable loan income.

That’s because these are the ideal customers for a SBA loan. If that’s not something your bank offers yet, here are three reasons to consider adding SBA lending to the loan portfolio this year.

1. New Avenue for Long-Term Customers
Small business customers often provide the longest-term value to their banks, both in terms of fee income generated and in dollars deposited. But not having the right loan solution to help new businesses launch or scale means missing out on a significant and lucrative wave of entrepreneurial activity. That’s where SBA lending comes in.

SBA loans provide the right solution to small businesses, at the right time. It’s an ideal conversation starter and tool for your bank team to turn to again and again and a way to kick off relationships with businesses that, in the long run, could bring your bank big returns. It’s also a great option to provide to current small business customers who may only have a deposit relationship.

2. Fee Income With Little Hassle
In addition to deeper relationships with your customers, SBA lending is an avenue to grow fee income through the opportunity for businesses to refinance their existing SBA loans with your bank. It broadens your portfolio with very little hassle.

And when banks choose to outsource their SBA lending, they not only get the benefit of fee income, but incur no overhead, start up or staffing costs. The SBA lender service provider acts as the go-between for the bank and the SBA, and they handle closing and servicing.

3. Add Value, Subtract Risk
SBA loans can add value to any bank, both in income and in relationship building. In addition, the SBA guarantees 75% to 85% of each loan, which can then be sold on the secondary market for additional revenue.

As with any product addition, your bank is probably conscientious of the risks. But when you offer the option to refinance SBA loans, your bank quickly reduces exposure to any one borrower. With the government’s guarantee of a significant portion, banks have lots to gain but little to lose.

3 Ways to Drive Radical Efficiency in Business Lending

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Community banks find themselves in a high-pressure lending environment, as businesses rebound from the depths of the pandemic and grapple with inflation levels that have not been seen for 40 years.

This economic landscape has created ample opportunity for growth among business lenders, but the rising demand for capital has also invited stiffer competition. In a crowded market, tech-savvy, radically efficient lenders — be they traditional financial institutions or alternative lenders — will outperform their counterparts to win more relationships in an increasingly digitizing industry. Banks can achieve this efficiency by modernizing three important areas of lending: Small Business Administration programs, small credits and self-service lending.

Enhancing SBA Lending
After successfully issuing Paycheck Protection Program loans, many financial institutions are considering offering other types of SBA loans to their business customers. Unfortunately, many balk at the risk associated with issuing government-backed loans and the overhead that goes along with them. But the right technology can create digital guardrails that help banks ensure that loans are documented correctly and that the collected data is accurate — ultimately reducing work by more than 75%.

When looking for tools that drive efficiency in SBA lending, bank executives should prioritize features like guided application experiences that enforce SBA policies, rules engines that recommend offers based on SBA eligibility and platforms that automatically generate execution-ready documents.

Small Credits Efficiencies
Most of the demand for small business loans are for credits under $100,000; more than half of such loans are originated by just five national lenders. The one thing all five of these lenders have in common is the ability to originate business loans online.

Loans that are less than $100,000 are customer acquisition opportunities for banks and can help grow small business portfolios. They’re also a key piece of creating long-term relationships that financial institutions covet. But to compete in this space, community institutions need to combine their strength in local markets with digital tools that deliver a winning experience.

Omnichannel support here is crucial. Providing borrowers with a choice of in person, online or over-the-phone service creates a competitive advantage that alternative lenders can’t replicate with an online-only business model.

A best-in-class customer experience is equally critical. Business customers’ expectations of convenience and service are often shaped by their experiences as consumers. They need a lending experience that is efficient and easy to navigate from beginning to end.

It will be difficult for banks to drive efficiency in small credits without transforming their sales processes. Many lenders began their digital transformations during the pandemic, but there is still significant room for continued innovation. To maximize customer interactions, every relationship manager, retail banker, and call center employee should be able to begin the process of applying for a small business loan. Banks need to ensure their application process is simple enough to enable this service across their organization.

Self-Service Experiences
From credit cards to auto financing to mortgages, a loan or line of credit is usually only a few clicks away for consumers. Business owners who are seeking a new loan or line of credit, however, have fewer options available to them and can likely expect a more arduous process. That’s because business banking products are more complicated to sell and require more interactions between business owners and their lending partners before closing documents can be signed.

This means there are many opportunities for banks to find efficiency within this process; the right technology can even allow institutions to offer self-service business loans.

The appetite for self-service business loans exists: Two years of an expectation-shifting pandemic led many business borrowers to prioritize speed, efficiency and ease of use for all their customer experiences — business banking included. Digitizing the front end for borrowers provides a modern experience that accelerates data gathering and risk review, without requiring an institution to compromise or modify their existing underwriting workflow.

In the crowded market of small business lending, efficiency is an absolute must for success. Many banks have plenty of opportunities to improve their efficiency in the small business lending process using a number of tools available today. Regardless of tech choice, community banks will find their best and greatest return on investment by focusing on gains in SBA lending, small credits and self-service lending.

Banking’s Netflix Problem

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On April 19, Netflix reported its first loss in subscribers — 200,000 in the first quarter, with 2 million projected for the second — resulting in a steep decline in its stock price, as well as layoffs and budget cuts. Why the drop? Although the company blames consumers sharing passwords with each other, the legacy streamer also faces increased competition such as HBO Max and Disney Plus. That also creates more choice for the 85% of U.S. households that use a streaming service, according to the U.K. brand consulting firm Kantar. The average household subscribes to 4.7 of them.

Our financial lives are just as complicated — and there’s a lot more at stake when it comes to managing our money. A 2021 survey conducted by Plaid found that 88% of Americans use digital services to help manage their money, representing a 30-point increase from 2020. Americans use a lot of financial apps, and the majority want their bank to connect to these providers. Baby boomers use an average of 2.6 of these apps, which include digital banking and lending, payments, investments, budgeting and financial management. Gen Z consumers average 4.6 financial apps.

“Banks can be material to simplifying the complexity that’s causing everybody to struggle and not have clarity on their financial picture,” said Lee Wetherington, senior director of corporate strategy at the core provider Jack Henry & Associates. He described this fractured competitive landscape as “financial fragmentation,” which formed the focus of his presentation at Experience FinXTech, a tech-focused event that took place May 5 and 6 in Austin, Texas. Successful banks will figure out how to make their app the central hub for their customers, he said in an interview conducted in advance of the conference. “This is where I see the opportunity for community financial institutions to lever open banking rails to bring [those relationships] back home.”

During the event, Wetherington revealed results from a new Jack Henry survey finding that more than 90% of community financial institutions plan to embed fintech — integrating innovative, third-party products and services into banks’ own product offerings and processes — over the next two years.

Put simply, open banking acknowledges today’s fractured banking ecosystem and leverages application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow different applications or systems to exchange data.

Chad Davison, director of client solutions consulting at Fiserv, creates “balance sheet leakage” reports to inform his strategic discussions with bank executives. “We’ve been trying to understand from an organization perspective where the dollars are leaving the bank,” said Davison in a pre-conference interview. Some of these dollars are going to other financial providers outside the bank, including cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase Global and investment platforms like Robinhood Markets. This awareness of where customer dollars are going could provide insights on the products and services the bank could offer to keep those deposits in the organization. “[Banks] have to partner and integrate with someone to keep those dollars in house,” said Davison, in advance of a panel discussion focused on technology investment at the Experience FinXTech event.

Increasingly, core providers — which banks rely on to fuel their technological capabilities — are working to provide more choice for their bank clients. Fiserv launched a developer studio in late 2021 to let developers from fintechs and financial institutions access multiple APIs from a single location, said Davison, and recently launched an app market where financial institutions can access solutions. “We want to allow the simple, easy connectivity that our clients are looking for,” he said. “We’re excited about the next evolution of open banking.”

Jack Henry has also responded to its clients’ demand for an open banking ecosystem. Around 850 fintechs and third parties use APIs to integrate with Jack Henry, said Wetherington, who doesn’t view these providers as competitive threats. “It’s a flywheel,” he said. “Competitors actually add value to our ecosystem, and they add value for all the other players in the ecosystem.” That gives banks the choice to partner and integrate with the fintechs that will deliver value to the bank and its customers.

As fractured as the financial landscape may be today for consumers, bank leaders may feel similarly overwhelmed by the number of technologies available for their bank to adopt. In response, bank leaders should rethink their strategy and business opportunities, and then identify “the different fintech partners to help them drive strategy around that,” said Benjamin Wallace, CEO at Summit Technology Group. Wallace joined Davison on the panel at Experience FinXTech and was interviewed before the conference.

The Federal Reserve published a resource guide for partnering with fintech providers in September 2021, and found three broad areas of technology adoption: operational technology to improve back-end processes and infrastructure; customer-oriented partnerships to enhance interactions and experiences with the bank; and front-end fintech partnerships where the provider interacts directly with the customer — otherwise known as banking as a service (BaaS) relationships.

Banks will need to rely on their competitive strengths, honing niches in key areas, Wallace believes. That could be anything from building a BaaS franchise or a niche lending vertical like equipment finance. “Community-oriented banks that do everything for everyone, it’s really difficult to do” because of the competition coming from a handful of large institutions. “Picking a couple of verticals that you can be uniquely good at, and orient[ing] a strategy and then a tech plan and then a team around it — I think that’s always going to be a winning recipe.”

Opportunities For Transformative Growth

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The bank space has fundamentally changed, and that has financial institutions working with more and more third-party providers to generate efficiencies and craft a better digital experience — all while seeking new sources of revenue. In this conversation, Microsoft Corp.’s Roman Chwyl describes the rapid changes occurring today and how software-as-a-service solutions help banks quickly respond to these shifts. He also provides advice for banks seeking to better engage their technology providers.

Topics addressed include:

  • Focusing Technology Strategies
  • Partnership Considerations
  • Leveraging Digital for Growth
  • Planning for 2022 and Beyond

The Next Wave of Digital Transformation

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There is no question that digital transformation has been a long-term trend in banking.

However, innovation is not instantaneous. When faced with the obstacles the recent pandemic presented, bankers initially accelerated innovation and digital transformation on the consumer side, thanks to a broad scope of impact and the technology available at the time to streamline human-to-human interactions.

Now, as easy-to-use technology that automates complex interactions between human and machine and machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions becomes more readily available, the banking industry should consider how it can transform their own business and the banking experience for their business clients.

The First Wave
Why were consumers first served in the early days of the pandemic? Because there are often a lot of consumers to serve, with similar use cases and needs. When many account holders share the same finite problems, it can be easier for banks to commit personnel and financial resources to software that addresses those needs. The result is the capability to solve a few big problems while allowing the bank to effectively serve a large base of consumers with a mutual need, generating a quick and viable return on investment.

The first wave of digital transformation in banking concentrated on consumers by focusing on digitizing human-to-human interactions. They created an efficient process for both the bank employee along with the customer end-user, and then quickly moved to enable human-to-machine interactions with the same outcome. This transformation can be seen in previous interactions between consumers and bankers, like account opening, check deposits, personal financial management, credit and debit card disputes and initiating payments — all of which can now be done by a consumer interacting directly through a digital interface. This is also known as human-to-machine interactions.

In contrast, business interactions with banks tend to be more nuanced due to regulations, organizational needs and differences based on varying industries. For instance, banks that manage commercial escrow accounts for property managers and landlords, municipalities, government agencies, law firms or other companies with sub-accounting needs frequently navigate various security protocols and regional and local compliance. Unfortunately, these complexities can slow innovation, like business online account opening that is only now coming to market decades after consumer online account opening.

The Next Wave
Automating these business interactions was once thought to be too large of an undertaking for many banks — as well as software companies. But now, more are looking to digitally transform these interactions; software development is easier, further advanced and less costly, making tackling complex problems achievable for banks.

This will mark the next wave of digital transformation in banking, as the potential benefits have a greater effect for businesses than consumers. Because profits for each business client are much higher than consumer accounts, banks can expect strong returns on investment by investing in value-add services that strengthen the banking experience for business clients. And with so many niche business verticals, there is opportunity for institutions to build a strong commercial portfolio with technology that addresses vertical-specific needs.

While the ongoing, first wave of digital transformation is marked by moving human-to-human interactions to human-to-machine, the next wave will lead to more machine-to-machine interactions. This is not a new concept: Most bankers have connected two separate software systems, and have heard of M2M interactions through discussions about application programming interfaces, or APIs. But what may not be clear to executives is how these M2M interactions can be extremely helpful when solving for frustrating business banking processes.

For example, a law firm may regularly open trust and escrow accounts on behalf of their clients. Through human-to-human interaction, their processes are twofold: recording client information in an internal software system and then providing the necessary documentation to their bank, via branch visit or phone, to open the account. They need to engage in additional communication to learn the balance, move money or close the account.

Transforming this to a human-to-machine interaction could look like the bank providing a portal through which the firm could open, move funds and close the account on their own. While this is an excellent improvement for the law firm and bank, it still requires double data entry into internal software and banking software.

Here, banks can introduce machine-to-machine automation to improve efficiency and accuracy, while avoiding extraneous back and forth. If the bank creates a direct integration with the internal software, the law firm would only need to input the information once into their software to automatically manage their bank accounts.

The digital transformation of business banking has arrived; in the coming years, machine-to-machine automation will become the gold standard in the financial services industry. These changes provide a unique opportunity for banks to help attract and satisfy existing and prospective business clients through distinctive offerings.

Why Are Bank Marketing Departments Not Profit Centers?

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It’s 2022 and the technological changes in everything in life have never been more rapid or meaningful. And while the banking industry has made some progress, it continues to encounter challenges on the digital journey.

Marketing efficiently to customers and prospects remains a big one. Transforming a bank marketing department from a necessary evil and cost center to a thriving profit center that actively generates revenue is not a far-fetched reality. Traditional marketing strategies and tactics can seem downright primitive in a rapidly expanding and flourishing digital economy. Banks must recognize that their account holders are in fact digital users and have high expectations about all of their digital experiences.

So why hasn’t bank marketing adopted to the digital economy? Even though the benefits are easy to visualize, the issues and factors preventing this transformation are real and complex.

Over the past decade, banks have made significant investments in technology. At the top of the list were digital banking apps, which became the main gateway for customers to interact with their banks. Bank transactions became virtual. But while transactional activities took precedence, customer engagement was not top-of-mind for bank executives.

The question that many banks failed to ask themselves is: Are we doing enough digitally to let our account holders know that we understand and value them? It’s vital that banks engage with their customers uniquely, at scale. This engagement must be unique; each consumer is experiencing a different life state and distinctive financial odyssey. Accomplishing this involves a journey — not an event or app.

In a world of intense competition and tech savvy consumers, digital engagement is not only needed for a bank to survive, never mind thrive. How does it begin? For a bank to transform their marketing department, the strategy and investment starts at the top. How important is digital engagement to the bank? What tools and resources does the bank need to expand the digital universe of a financial institution? Does the marketing department have the authority to comply and seek out the solutions to help in this journey?

Changing how marketing works requires executives to treat modern data-driven marketing as a key growth strategy for their banks. Developing high-level goals will drive clear revenue objectives, generate data-driven strategies and leverage  digital marketing technology to power legitimate marketing performance metrics.

Differing priorities, lack of clear direction, fear of change, uncertainty about results and confusion about available solutions — these are not small challenges faced by bank marketing professionals. Banks motivated to make the changes to better equip their departments with the tools and resources they need should not underestimate these issues; it’s important to recognize and address these genuine issues when they arise.

Interestingly, most banks won’t need to make significant additional investments. That’s because they won’t be spending any more on marketing — they’ll be spending it differently, in ways that generate positive results. This digital marketing investment relies on data — business  and artificial intelligence —for smarter communication with consumers, so they understand that their trusted bank truly knows them and humanizes every interaction, even though the medium is digital.

What if banks operated with clarity of purpose, a strategy for growth, a transition path to digital engagement and the ability to source practical solutions? It’s not about having the newest shiny object, but instead having a reliable and robust tech platform that drives new sales for financial institutions every day. Proof and results matter. Solutions can help your bank grow by simplifying digital marketing with amazing customer experiences, resulting in new product sales and lasting long-term relationships with your digital users.

Banks can revolutionize their marketing department into a future-proofed, thriving profit center. Who is ready?

How Open Banking Will Revolutionize Business Lending

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There has been much chatter about open banking over the last couple of years, and for a good reason. If it stays on its current growth trajectory, it could revolutionize the financial services sector worldwide, forcing changes to existing business models.

At this stage, many business bankers, and the small commercial clients they serve, are not ready to move to an open banking system. Banks have traditionally enjoyed a monopoly on their consumers’ financial data — and they do not want to lose it. Small business owners might worry that their data is shared with financial services providers other than their banks.

Open banking can seem risky, but it offers benefits to both lenders and borrowers. 2022 could be an excellent opportunity for this perception to catch up to reality and make open banking the norm in the business lending space.

Open banking is a banking practice that uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to give third-party providers access to consumer financial data. This access allows financial institutions to offer products that are tailor-made to consumers’ needs. This approach is more attractive than other ways that consumers have traditionally aggregated their financial data. For instance, screen scraping transfers screen display data from one application to another but can pose security risks. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology requires substantial human resources to read PDF documents to extract information. And data entry is both time-consuming and has a high likelihood of errors.

Using APIs addresses many of the problems that exist with other data aggregation methods. The data is transmitted directly — no need to share account credentials — eliminating the security risk inherent with screen scraping. And since there is no PDFs or data entry involved, bankers do not need to use many resources to check the accuracy of the data.

Still, bankers may wonder: Why do we need to move to an open banking system?

Business lending works today, but there is significant room for improvement. The main issue is the lack of centralized data. Lenders do not have enough data to approve loans to creditworthy borrowers or identify other products the client could receive. On the other side, small business owners endure a slow and cumbersome process because they must provide their data to each lender, one by one. An open banking system allows lenders to offer borrowers better terms and creates an easier application process for borrowers.

Misconceptions could complicate adoption. In an Axway survey, half of the respondents did not think that open banking was a positive development. They had concerns about the constant monitoring of financial activity (33%), losing control over access to their financial data (47%) and financial institutions using their data against their interests (27%).

But open banking gives consumers more control over their financial data, not less. Since open banking is a new concept, there is a significant gap between perception and reality. There is, understandably, a hesitancy among the public to share their data, which emerges when consumers are directly asked about it. But as services like Personal Capital and Credit Karma clearly show, consumers will overwhelmingly opt for open banking services because they can use their financial data to gain via more straightforward analysis or track their spending.

This is the promise of open banking in the business finance space. Small business owners want to focus their attention on non-administrative tasks and connecting their financial data to services that bring them faster access to capital with less paperwork is a clear benefit they are excited to get.

Services like Plaid and Envestnet Yodlee connect customer data directly with financial institutions and are widespread in the small business lending market. More than half of small business owners already choose to use these services when applying for financing, according to direct data reported by business lending companies.

Banks, on the other hand, will need to make a couple of adjustments to thrive in an open banking ecosystem. They will need to leverage the bevy of consumer financial data they have to offer more customizable financial products, as the system’s open nature will lead to more competition. To analyze all that data and provide those customer-centric products, banks should consider using a digital lending platform, if they aren’t already. Open banking is set to disrupt the financial services sector. Financial institutions can set themselves up for sustainable success by embracing the movement.

Digital Deniers Need Not Apply

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There are few bankers who understand the process of digital transformation better than Mike Butler.

Beginning in 2014, Butler oversaw the evolution of Boston-based Radius Bancorp from a federally chartered, brick-and-mortar thrift to one of the most tech-forward banks in the country. Radius closed all its branches except for one (federal thrifts are required to have at least one branch) and adopted a digital-only consumer banking platform.

The digital reinvention was so successful that in February 2020, LendingClub Corp. announced a deal to buy Radius to augment that marketplace lender’s push into digital banking. Now Butler is off on another digital adventure, this time as president and CEO of New York-based Grasshopper Bancorp, a five-year-old de novo bank focused on the small business market. Like Radius, Grasshopper operates a digital-only platform.

Butler will moderate a panel discussion at Bank Director’s upcoming Acquire or Be Acquired Conference focusing on the importance of integrating bank strategy with technology investments. The conference runs Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2022, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix.

Butler says that successful transformation begins with the bank’s executive management team and board of directors, where discussions about technology need to be an integral part of strategic planning. And most importantly, management and the board need to see digital transformation as crucial to the bank’s future success. Butler says there are still plenty of “digital deniers” among bankers who believe they can be successful without strengthening their institution’s digital capabilities.

“Have you embraced the kinds of changes that are taking place inside the industry?” Butler says. “And do you have a very strong cultural commitment to be a part of that change? When you do that, you start to look to technology as the enabling driver to get you to that place.”

Management teams that are just starting out on a path to digital transformation can easily find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of potential projects. “The most important thing to do is to prioritize and recognize that you cannot do this all at once,” Butler says. “It would be a mess if you tried. Pick two to three things that you think are critically important.”

A third element of a successful transformation process is finding the right person to lead the project. “You’ve got to have the right talent to do it,” Butler says. “That leader better be somebody who has been pushing it rather than you push it on them as CEO. You can’t say, ‘Joe, you’ve been running branches for 30 years, do you believe in digital? Eh, kind of. Okay, I want you to put in a digital platform.’ That’s not going to work.”

Butler goes so far as to say that only true believers should run those fintech projects. “You cannot do this without people that have the passion and the belief to get to the other side, because you will hit a lot of roadblocks and you’ve got to be able to bust through those roadblocks,” he says. “And if you don’t believe, if you don’t have the passion, there’s a lot of reasons to stop and go a different way.”

Butler might not seem the most likely person to be a digital change agent. He spent 13 years at Radius and pursued a branch banking strategy in the early years. Prior to joining Radius, Butler was president of KeyCorp’s national consumer finance business. He did not come from the fintech sector. He has a traditional banking background. And yet as Butler is quick to point out, Radius didn’t reinvent banking, it reinvented the customer experience.

The fact that Butler lacked a technology background didn’t deter him from pursuing a transformational strategy at Radius. He was smart enough to see the changes taking place throughout the industry, so he understood the business case, and he was also smart enough to surround himself with highly committed people who did understand the technology.

In building out its digital consumer banking platform, Radius worked with a number of third-party fintech vendors. “I wasn’t making technology decisions about whose technology was better, but I surely was making decisions about the companies that we were partnering with and what type of people we were willing to work with,” Butler says. “I met every single CEO of every company that we did business with, and that was a big part of our decision as to why we would partner with them.”

At Grasshopper, Butler says he prefers the challenge of building a new digital bank from scratch rather than converting a traditional bank like Radius to a digital environment. Sure, there are all the pain points of a startup, including raising capital. But the advantages go beyond starting with a clean piece of paper from a design perspective. “It’s really hard to transform a culture into something new inside of an organization,” Butler says. “So, I’d say the upside is that you get to start from scratch and hire the right people who have the right mindset.”

Five Fintech Solutions Every Bank Should Have

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If Money 20/20 was any indication, it seems like banks are finally ready to really embrace fintech. Small and medium-sized banks have realized that their technology budgets can be used for things other than building and managing technology in-house to keep up with large financial institutions with big budgets and neobanks with brand new tech stacks. A tech stack is the combination of technologies a company uses to build and run an application or project, and typically consists of programming languages, frameworks, a database, front-end tools, back-end tools and applications connected via APIs.

For banks starting to explore fintech partnerships, we’ve compiled a list of the top five fintech solutions every bank should have in its tech stack today.

1. Account Opening Platform
New customer acquisition is one of the most important components of a successful financial institution. An online account opening platform powers an omnichannel interface to onboard new customers quickly and seamlessly. A good account opening platform should also provide a customizable user interface, increased account conversion rates and detailed reporting.

2. Identity Decisioning Platform
An identity decisioning platform, or IDP, automates identity and risk decisions across the lifecycle of your customer. IDPs power smart decisions that can reduce risk for your business while providing a frictionless customer experience for identity verification and onboarding, ongoing transaction monitoring and credit underwriting.

IDPs are the decision engine behind the account opening platform that helps banks determine whether to accept or reject an applicant. It continues to monitor that client’s account activity and powers underwriting decisions. Your IDP should connect to multiple data sources through application programming interfaces, or APIs, allowing you to add and change data sources as needed. By bringing all of your identity and risk decisions into one platform, you’ll see a holistic view of your customers and automate more decisions.

3. Open Banking Platform
Your customers expect to be able to access their financial data across various apps. Open banking platforms make it easy for banks to securely share data with third-party businesses through an API that allows customers to connect their banking data. Open banking platforms are the key component connecting your bank to popular apps like peer-to-peer payments, financial management and cryptocurrency investments.

4. BaaS Platform
You’ve probably noticed the trend of non-bank businesses beginning to offer financial products. This trend is powered through BaaS, or banking as a service, platforms. BaaS platforms enable a third-party business to integrate digital banking or payment services directly into their products by connecting them with a bank. This model allows non-financial institutions the ability to offer a financial product without getting a banking license. Unlike open banking platforms, which share the financial data within a bank account to a third-party business, BaaS platforms transfer the complete banking services into a third-party business’s product.

5. Know Your Transaction Solution
If your bank is starting to think about how to approach cryptocurrency and digital assets, one of the first things you’ll need is a Know Your Transaction, or KYT, provider to complement your Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures. KYT solutions help you remain compliant with anti-money laundering laws when monitoring crypto transactions. A KYT solution allows banks to track crypto funds and ensure they are not coming from mixers (a service that mixes streams of cryptocurrency to improve anonymity and make it more difficult to trace), foreign exchanges or blacklisted addresses.

Fintech companies can provide a lot of value to banks. Many of them are built to plug into your existing infrastructure and be up and running in weeks. They can help banks be more agile and adapt to new customer needs faster, save banks money on engineering resources and bring focused expertise to their category. Alloy also has resources available to help banks select fintech partners and build out their tech stacks.

Building Relationships in the Digital Era

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Customer expectations have evolved dramatically over the past decade, and they seek much more from their financial institution, including advice. Unfortunately, banks often aren’t meeting these needs in the digital space. Soren Bested of Agent IQ explains how banks can return to one of their core functions — dispensing financial guidance to their customers.

  • What Consumers Expect
  • Alleviating Customer Pain Points
  • Personalizing the Experience