Preparing Cards for the Next Era in Payments

credit-card-9-3-19.pngAdvancements in payments technologies have forever changed consumer expectations. More than ever, they demand financial services that stay in step with their busy, mobile lives.

Financial institutions must respond with products and services that deliver convenience, freedom and control. They can stay relevant to cardholders by enabling secure and easy digital transactions through their debit and credit cards. Banks should digitize, utilize, securitize and monetize their card programs to meaningfully meet their customers’ needs.

Banks should develop and deploy digital solutions like wallets, alerts and card controls, to provide an integrated, seamless and efficient payments experience. Consumers have an array of choices for their financial services, and they will go where they find the greatest value.

Nonfinancial competitors have proven adept at capturing consumers via embedded payment options that deliver a streamlined experience. Their goals are to gather cardholder information, cross-sell new services and extract a growing share of the payments value chain. Financial institutions can ensure their cards remain top-of-wallet for consumers by developing a digital strategy focused on driving deep cardholder engagement. Digital wallets are the place to start.

The adoption curve for digital wallets follows the path of online banking’s early years, suggesting an impending sharp rise in the use of digital wallets. A majority of the largest retailers now accept contactless payments, according to a 2019 survey from Boston Retail Partners. And one in six U.S. banking consumers reported paying with a digital wallet within the last 30 days, according to a 2018 Fiserv survey. Almost three-fourths of cardholders say paying for purchases is more convenient with tokenized mobile payments, a Mercator Advisory Group survey found.

Financial institutions can deliver significant benefits to consumers and reap measurable returns by leveraging existing and emerging digital tools, such as merchant-based geographic reward offers.

Banks need to provide their cardholders with comprehensive information about how digital solutions can meet their expectations and needs. Implementing digital tools, providing a frictionless financial service experience and helping customers understand and use their benefits can empower them to transact in real-time on their devices, including mobile phones, computers and tablets. Banks’ communications programs are important to encourage adoption and use the implemented digital products and services.

Banks will have to balance digital innovation with risk mitigation strategies that keep consumers safe and don’t disrupt transactions. Digital payments are highly secure due to tokenization — a process where numerical values replace consumers’ personal information for transaction purposes. Tokenized digital wallet transactions are an important first step toward preventing mobile payments fraud.

Mobile apps that enable cardholders to receive transaction alerts and actively manage card usage also significantly improving card security. Fiserv analysis shows use of a card controls app may reduce signature fraud by up to 53%, while increasing card usage and spending.

Banks need strategies focused on detecting and preventing fraud in real time without impacting card usage and cardholder satisfaction. This can be a significant point of differentiation for card providers. A prudent approach can include implementing predictive analytics and decision-management technology. And because consumers want to be involved in managing and protecting their accounts, they should have the option to create customized transaction alerts and controls. Finally, direct access to experienced risk analysts who work to identify evolving fraud threats can significantly improve overall results.

A recent analysis from the Federal Reserve indicated debit fraud is running at approximately 11.2 basis points, which compares the average value of fraud to total transaction dollars. In comparison, Fiserv debit card clients experience only 5.08 basis points of fraud.

Card issuers balance risk rules that help mitigate fraud against cardholder disruption stemming from falsely-declined transactions. These lost transaction opportunities can reduce revenue and increase reputational risk. An experienced risk mitigation partner can help banks strike the right balance between fraud detection and consumer satisfaction to maximize profitability.

More Engaged Users Are

Based on these average monthly debit transactions: Gray = Low 12.6, Blue = Casual (medium) 18.3, High = High 21.4, Orange = Super (highest) 28.4
Net Promoter Score = Measure of cardholder loyalty and value in institution relationship
Cross-Sold Ration = Percentage of householders with a DDA for longer for longer than six months but open to a new deposit or loan account in the most recent six months
Return on Assets = Percentage of profit related to earnings

Banks can turn digital solutions into engines of growth by creating stronger, more lasting consumer relationships. A digital portfolio can be more than just a set of solutions — it can drive significant new revenue and growth opportunities. By delivering secure, frictionless digital services to consumers when and where they need them, banks can maintain their positions as trusted financial service providers. Engaged users are profitable users.

Digitize. Utilize. Securitize. Monetize. Achieving the right combination of innovative products and exceptional consumer experiences will enhance a bank’s card portfolio growth, operational efficiency and market share.

How Innovative Banks Grow Deposits

deposits-8-14-19.pngCommunity banks are under enormous pressure to grow deposits.

Post-crisis liquidity concerns have challenged firms to find low-cost funds, while mega-banks continue to gobble up market share and customers demand digital offerings. In this intense environment, some banks are looking for ways to shake up their approach to gathering deposits. But some of the most compelling opportunities — digital-only banks and banking-as-a-service — require executives to rethink their banks’ strengths, their brands and their future roles in the financial ecosystem.

Digital Bank Brands
When JPMorgan & Co. shut down its digital-only brand called Finn after just one year, some saw it as a sign that community banks shouldn’t bother trying. But Dub Sutherland, shareholder and director of San Antonio, Texas-based TransPecos Banks, argues that there are too many unknowns to make extrapolations from Chase’s decision to ditch Finn.

Sutherland’s bank, which has $224 million in assets, successfully launched a digital-only brand that caters to medical professionals: BankMD. TransPecos is using NYMBUS’ SmartLaunch solution to focus on building products that meet the particular needs of medical professionals. BankMD has its own deposit and loan tracking system, so it doesn’t affect TransPecos’ existing operations. Sutherland says most BankMD customers don’t know and don’t seem to care about the bank on the back end.

Bankers who’ve spent decades crafting their institution’s brand might bristle at the thought of divorcing a digital brand from their brick-and-mortar signage.

I think there’s a fear for those who don’t understand branding and marketing, and don’t understand the new customer. The fact that being “First National Bank of Wherever” doesn’t really carry anything in this day and age,” explains Sutherland. “I do think there are a lot of bankers who fear that they’re going to somehow dilute their brand if they go and launch a digital one.”

That should never be the case, if executed properly. Sutherland explains the digital brand should be “targeting entirely different customers that [the bank] didn’t get before. It should absolutely be accretive.”

Community banks may be able to use a digital-only offering to develop expertise that serves different, niche segments and to experiment with new technologies — without putting core deposits at risk.

A cohort of banks gather deposits by providing deposit accounts, debit cards and payment services to financial technology companies that, in turn, provide those offerings to customers. In this “banking-as-a-service” (BaaS) model, banks provide the plumbing, settlement and regulatory oversight that enables fintechs to offer financial products; the fintechs bring relatively lower-cost deposits from their digitally native customers.

Essentially, BaaS helps these banks get a piece of the digital deposit pie without transforming the institutions.

“These are low-cost deposits. [Banks’] don’t have to do any servicing on them, there’s no recurring costs, no KYC calls,” says Sankaet Pathak, CEO of San Francisco-based Synapse. Synapse provides banks with the application programming interfaces (APIs) they need to automate a BaaS offering. He says banks “have almost no cost” with deposit-taking in a BaaS model that uses a Synapse platform.

Similar to a digital brand, providing BaaS for fintechs means the bank’s brand takes a back seat. That was a big consideration for Reinbeck, Iowa-based Lincoln Savings Bank when it explored the BaaS model, says Mike McCrary, EVP of e-commerce and emerging technology. Lincoln Savings, which has $1.3 billion in assets, has been running its LSBX BaaS program for about five years, using technology from Q2 Open.

McCrary began his career at the bank in the marketing department, so the model was something his team seriously weighed. In the end, though, McCrary says he’s proud to be enabling fintech partners to do great things.

“It doesn’t diminish our brand, because our brand is really for us, within the places that we touch,” he says. “We definitely continue to try to maximize that and increase the value of the brand within our marketplace, but we’re able to then offer our services outside of that immediate marketplace, with these other really great [fintech] brands.”

Bankers need to grapple with whether they are comfortable putting their firms’ brand on the backburner in order to launch a digital bank or BaaS program. But regardless of how banks choose to grow deposits, the time for considering these new business models is now.

“The cost of deposits, in particular, is a challenge that creates a ‘We need to do something about this’ statement inside a board room or an ALCO committee,” says Q2 Open COO Scott McCormack. “My advice would be to consider alternative strategies sooner than later[.] The opportunity to grow deposits by building a direct bank, partnering with or enabling a fintech … is a strategy that is more compelling than it has ever been.”

Potential Technology Partners

NYMBUS SmartLaunch

SmartLaunch leverages Nymbus’ SmartCore to offer a “digital bank-in-a-box” that runs deposits, loans and payments parallel to the bank’s existing infrastructure.

Q2 Open

Its CorePro system of record helps developers easily build mobile financial services. With a single set of API calls, CorePro can also be used to develop a BaaS offering.


BaaS APIs serve as middleware, allowing banks to offer products and services to fintechs and automate the internal Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering and settlement processes for the bank.

Treasury Prime

Their APIs enabled Boston-based Radius Bank to provide BaaS support powering a new checking account called Stackin’ Cash.


Getting your Digital Growth Strategy Right from the Start

Digital growth is only as good as the metrics used to measure it.

Growth is one of an executives’ most important responsibilities, whether that comes from the branch, through mergers and acquisitions or digital channels. Digital growth can be a scalable and predictable way for a bank to grow, if executives can effectively and accurately measure and execute their efforts. By using Net Present Value as the lens to evaluate digital marketing, a bank’s leadership team can make informed decisions on the future of the organization.

Banks need a well-thought-out digital growth strategy because of the changing role of the branch and big bank competition. The branch used to spearhead an institution’s growth efforts, but that is changing as branch sales decline. At the same time, the three biggest banks in the country rang up 50% of the new deposit account openings last year (even though they have only 24% of branches) as they lure depositors away from community banks, given regulators’ prohibition on acquisition.

Physical Branch Decline chart.pngImage courtesy of Ron Shevlin of Cornerstone Advisors

Even in the face of these changes, many institutions are nervous about adopting an aggressive digital growth plan or falter in their execution.

A typical bank’s digital marketing efforts frequently rely on analytics that have been designed for another business altogether. They may want to place a series of ads on digital channels or social media sites, but how will they know if those work? They may use data points such as clicks or views to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign, even if those metrics don’t speak to the conversion process. They will also track metrics such as the number of new accounts opened after the start of a campaign or relate the number of clicks placed in new accounts.

But this approach assumes a direct link between the campaign and the new customers. In addition, acquisition and data teams will spend valuable time creating reports from disparate data sources to get the proper measurement, instead of analyzing generated reports to come up with better strategies.

Additionally, a bank’s CFO can’t really measure the effectiveness of an acquisition campaign if they aren’t able to see how the relationships with these new customers flourish and provides value to the institution. The conversion is not over with a click — it’s continuous.

This leads to another obstacle to measuring digital growth efforts: communication. Banks use three internal teams to generate growth: finance to fund the efforts; marketing to execute and measure it; and operations to provide the workflow to fulfill it.

Each team measures and expresses success differently, and each has its inherent shortcomings. Finance would like to know the cost and profitability of the new deposits generated, to assess the efficiency of the spend. Marketing might consider clicks or views. Operations will report on the number of accounts opened, but do not know definitively if existing workflows support the market segmentation that the bank seeks.

There is not a single group of metrics shared by the teams. However, the CEO will be most interested in cost of acquisition, the long-term profitability of the accounts and the return on investment of the total efforts.

But it’s now possible for banks to see the full measurement of their digital campaigns, from the disbursement of funds provided by the finance group to the success of these campaigns, in terms of deposits raised and net present value generated. These ads entice prospects into the account origination funnel, managed by operations, who open accounts and deposit initial funds. Those new customers then go through an onboarding process to switch their direct deposits and bill pay accounts. The new customer’s engagement can be measured six to 12 months later for value, and tied back to the original investment that brought them in the first place.

Bank leadership needs to be able to make decisions for the long-term health of their organizations. CEOs tell us they have a “data problem” when it comes to empowering their decisions. For this to work, the core system, the account origination funnel and the marketing channels all need to be tied together. This is true Integrated Value Measurement.

How Community Banks Can Compete Using Fintechs, Not Against Them

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.

Sink or Swim in the Data Deep End

data-7-1-19.pngCommunity banks risk allowing big banks an opportunity to widen the competitive gap by not investing in their own data management.

It’s now-or-never for community banks, and a competitive edge could be the key to their survival. A financial institution’s lifeblood is its data and banks can access a veritable treasure trove of information. But data analytics poses a significant challenge to the future success of community banks. Banks should focus on the value, not volume, of their information when adopting an actionable, data-driven approach to decision-making. While many community banks acknowledge how critical data analytics are to their future success, most remain uncommitted.

This comes as the multi-national institutions expand their data science teams exponentially, create chatbots for their websites, use artificial intelligence to customize user interactions and apply machine learning to complete back-office tasks more efficiently. The advantage that a regional bank manager has when working next door to a community bank is growing too large. And the argument that the human touch and customer experience of a community bank will make up for the technological gap has become less convincing as younger customers forgo the branch in favor of their phone.

Small and medium institutions are dealing with a number of obstacles, including compressed margins and a shortage of talent, in an attempt to move past basic data analytics and canned ad hoc reports. If an institution can find a qualified candidate to lead their data management project, the candidate usually lacks banking experience and tends to have a science and mathematics backgrounds. A real concern for bankers is the hiring managers’ ability to ask the right questions and fully discern candidates’ qualifications. And once hired, is there a qualified leader to drive projects and their results?

Despite these obstacles, banks have only one option: Jump into the data deep end, head first. To compete in this data-driven world, community banks must deploy advanced data analytics capabilities to maximize the value of information. More insight can mean better decisions, better service to customers and a better bottom line for banks. The only question is how community banks can make up their lost ground.

The first step in building your organization’s data analytic proficiency is planning. It is crucial to understand your current processes and outputs, as well as your current staff’s capabilities, in order to improve your analysis. Once you know your bank’s capabilities, you can determine your goal posts.

A decision you will need to make during this planning stage will be the efficacy of building out staff to meet the project goals, or outsourcing the efforts to a consultant group or third-party software. A community bank’s ability to attract, manage and retain data specialist could be an obstacle. Data specialists tasked with managing more-complex diagnostic and predictive analytics should be part of the executive team, to give them a complete understanding of the institution’s strategic position and the current operating environment.

Another option community banks have is to buy third-party software to supplement current resources and capabilities. Software can allow a bank to limit the staffing resources required to meet their data analytical goals. But bankers need to understand the challenges.

A third-party provider needs to understand your organization and its strategic goals to tailor a solution that fits your circumstances and environment. Management should also weigh potential trade-offs between complexity and accessibility. More-complex software may require additional resources and staff to deploy and fully use it. And an institution shouldn’t solely rely on any third-party software in lieu of internal champions and subject-matter experts needed to fully use the solutions.

Whatever the approach, community bank executives can no longer remain on the sidelines. As the volume, velocity and variety of data grows daily, the tools needed to manage and master the data require more time and investment. Proper planning can help executives move their organizations forward, so they can better utilize the vast amount of data available to them.

Five Insights into the Top 25 Bank Search Terms

customer-6-20-19.pngBanks can use customers’ search queries to create a more efficient, optimized user experience.

Most marketers rely on search engine optimization to drive traffic to their website, missing a crucial opportunity to optimize searching on the site itself. But on-site search optimization is a critical component of search and self-service for customers, and is a way that banks can create a better experience for users.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, focuses on attracting new visitors to a website. On-site search optimization addresses the existing and returning traffic base—a bank’s current customers and prospects. This approach helps them find helpful and relevant content once they are on the site, which is as important as getting them to the website or mobile application in the first place.

A growing percentage of customers use digital channels to interact with banks and require intuitive search and easy-to-find support information. Banks will benefit from delivering superior on-site search functionality with actionable support answers on their websites and mobile apps.

Transforming a bank’s website, mobile or online banking applications into a true digital support center involves more than a simple search bar. Search terms and activity can be used to inform the support content strategy, while monitoring customers search queries ensures a bank is providing the most sought-after answers across its digital and mobile channels. This continuous process directly impacts an institution’s customer experience, service levels and operational efficiency.

The top 25 search terms across banking websites in 2019 included:

1. Routing Number 10. Direct Deposit 19. Mobile Deposit
2. Overdraft Protection 11. Rates 20. Login
3. Order Checks 12. Address Change 21. ACH
4. Skip Payment 13. Loan Rates 22. Stop Payment
5. Online Banking 14. Debit Card 23. ATM
6. Wire Transfers 15. Check Card 24. Mortgage
7. Credit Card 16. IRA 25. Bill Pay
8. Open Account 17. CD Rates  
9. Account Number 18. Hours  

Customers’ search patterns in a bank’s digital and mobile channels differ the terms used in a search engine platform such as Google or Bing, according to data from SilverCloud. Searches on banking websites and apps average 1.4 words per search, compared to four on search engine platforms. On Google, people search for “the best checking account for me;” on a banking website, they use broader terms like “online banking.”

Two factors drive this search behavior. First, banking consumers are already on the desired site, so they use more narrow search terms. Second, financial terminology can be confusing and unfamiliar. As a result, customers who lack knowledge of specific banking terms tend to use broader search terms to home in on exactly what they need.

There are five takeaways for banks that are interested in how top search terms can help them grow more efficiently:

Banks need to deliver a better customer experience. Having a strong on-site search engine allows customers to service themselves in a way that is easy, fast and efficient.

Strong search could reduce call center volume. Having robust content, frequently asked questions and support answers allows customers to get answers without needing to contact call center agents.

Provide support as mobile adoption increases. Customers will have more questions as banks introduce more self-service options, like online account opening, mobile deposit and online bill pay. Banks should anticipate this and have support answers in place to facilitate faster adoption.

Create opportunity and invite action through search. Banks can drive deeper customer engagement into various product offerings by writing actionable support answers. For example, the answer for a search query for “routing number” could include information about what customers can do with a routing number, like set up direct deposit or bill pay. This approach can increase the likelihood they take such actions.

Banks can do more with less. The more that customers use self-service digital and mobile channels and find information that addresses their queries, the fewer employees a bank needs to staff customer service centers. Institutions may find they can grow without adding a commensurate number of employees.

Banks should review their digital channels to ensure they are providing support content that addresses the ways customers seek information. Content around general search terms needs to be robust. Executives will need to keep in mind that most search terms require 10 or more custom answers to address the transactional, informational and navigational forms of customer intent.

Mining for Gold in Bank Data

data-5-9-19.pngCommunity banks are drowning in customer data.

Every debit card swipe, every ACH and every online bill pay produces data that provides insight into their customers’ relationship with the institution, as well as their lifestyle and potential needs. Banks should prioritize using their proliferation of customer data to open up new service and revenue opportunities. The potential to identify untapped opportunities is enormous.

The amount of data generated by the digitization of services and customer interactions has grown exponentially in recent years. By 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every person on the planet, according to a 2017 McKinsey & Co. report. This figure is only expected to increase: By 2021, half of adults worldwide will use a smartphone, tablet, PC or smartwatch to access financial services. The mindboggling amount of data comes at a time when companies must “fundamentally rethink how the analysis of data can create value for themselves and their customers,” according to a Harvard Business Review article by Thomas Davenport, a professor at Babson College and a fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.

Amazon is often cited as the model for capitalizing on data to increase sales and improve consumers’ experience. The company tracks each customer interaction—from site searches and purchases, from Alexa commands to song or movie downloads—to develop a holistic view of that consumer’s preferences and buying habits. For instance, if a consumer purchases prenatal vitamins from Amazon, she will soon see pop-up ads for other pregnancy and baby-related items. Amazon will also send her offers and reminders to repurchase the vitamins at the exact time they run out.

Banks should try to emulate Amazon’s ability to highly personalize a consumer’s experience. Organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85 percent in sales growth and more than 25 percent in gross margin, according to Gallup. And personalization based on customer data can deliver 5 to 8 times the return on investment on marketing expenses and increase sales by 10 percent or more, according to McKinsey.

But in order for banks to use the data produced by their internal systems, they need to create a structure and plan around it. Institutions need to direct information to one location, figure out how to analyze it and—most importantly—develop an actionable plan. This is a challenge because many banks partner with a myriad of vendors to provide the different consumer services such as debit and credit card processing, online banking and bill pay vendors. To consumers, these disparate systems may appear to work together reasonably well; behind the scenes, they may not communicate with each other.

This is an overwhelming imperative for many community banks. Fifty-seven percent of financial institutions say their biggest impediment to capitalizing on their data is that it is siloed and not pooled for the benefit of the entire organization, according to a July 2016 report from The Financial Brand. Other impediments include the time it takes to analyze large data sets and a lack of skilled data analysts.

But banks can remove these impediments with an “intelligent” data management technology platform that aggregates information from unlimited sources and makes it available enterprise-wide, from frontline staff to marketing to management. Platforms analyze data from sources like the core processor, online banking and lending systems, as well as peer and demographic data, and develop automated revenue- and service-enhancing strategies that capitalize on the findings.

The results are better, automated and even instantaneous decisions that generate greater sales opportunities and improve customer experience.

Banks can use the data to generate personalized, targeted marketing and communications campaigns that are triggered by an increase or decrease in customer transactional activity. Reduced activity can indicate an account might leave the institution; proactive communication can reengage the customer and retain the account.

This data can improve cross-selling objectives, generate sales opportunities and track onboarding activities to facilitate the customer’s experience. The data could identify customers who use payday or other non-bank lenders, and generate omni-channel offers for in-house products. It could also flag follow-up communications on products or services that consumers expressed interest in, but did not open.

Centralizing institutional data into one platform also creates efficiencies by automating manual processes like new account onboarding, loan origination and underwriting—even customer complaint resolution. It can also introduce additional customer services provided by third-party vendors by requiring them to integrate with only one data source, instead of many.

Banks need to leverage their customer data in order to create highly personalized and meaningful offers that improve engagement and overall performance. With the assistance of a comprehensive data management platform, community banks can overcome the hurdles of unlocking the value of their data and achieve Amazon-like success.

The Secret To Marketing To Gen Z and Millennials




Content Marketing






Paid Online Advertising Combined With Machine Learning


User Experience Design




Tying it All Together




Does Your Digital Strategy Include the “Last Mile?”

strategy-3-20-19.pngThe “last mile” is a ubiquitous term that originated in the telecommunications industry to represent the final leg of delivering service to a customer. Most of the time it referred to installing copper wire that connected the local telephone exchange to individual landlines.

More recently, the term represents what can be the final and most challenging part of a consumer interaction. Generally, it’s the point at which a broad consumer service interacts with an individual customer to deliver a personalized experience.

In banking, this is most often in the form of digital documents created to meet the exact specifications and compliance requirements of an individual transaction that allow a loan or deposit to be booked.

The last mile concept is changing the way financial institutions approach their digital strategy. Previously, many banks focused on digital services to a broad customer base that allowed end users to access account information, pay bills and transfer funds. Lesser in the strategy was the ability to originate a loan or deposit transaction through a digital channel, and even less likely to be contemplated was the customer experience while documenting and booking these types of transactions.

Often, what would begin as a digital experience through a mobile device, tablet or PC would quickly revert to a less accessible process that concluded with a customer coming to a branch to manually sign an agreement.

Banks today are recognizing that a shift in their digital strategy is required. Increasingly, institutions are reshaping their digital presence to focus on the “last mile” – the hardest part of the customer journey that requires an individualized experience. Building a foundation focused on this critical customer touchpoint requires banks to deploy technology that documents, in a fully compliant manner, consumer and commercial loan and deposit transactions while at the same time supporting a fully digital customer experience.

In seeking fintech partners that can support this digital strategy shift, institutions are identifying essential attributes and capabilities to enable effective execution:

  • Integrated Capabilities: Disparate systems require data to be imported and exported to avoid data conflict. A single system of record, integrated with digital document capabilities and a two-way data flow, supports data integrity while eliminating the need to access separate solutions.
  • In-house Compliance Expertise: Documenting transactions in a compliant manner is essential. State and federal mandates change frequently. In-house compliance expertise supported by unique research capabilities ensures the documented words are accurate and up to date.
  • Electronic Closing Enabled: The ability to leverage technology from origination to customer signature without deploying manual workarounds or static forms.
  • Reinvestment in Technology: Digital capabilities continue to evolve. Gone are the days of generic templates and static documents. A partner that’s focused on both current and future capabilities ensures an institution isn’t left behind the times.

As your bank begins to formulate a digital strategy or if you’re revising your existing strategy, ask yourself if you’ve contemplated the “last mile.” If not, focus on this part of the customer interaction first to deliver a comprehensive, compliant, and digitally enabled experience.

Bridging The Gap Between Retail & Business Banking

Speed, ease of use and convenience define the customer experience today for both retail and commercial clients. In this video, First Data’s Christian Ofner and Eric Smith explain what retail and commercial customers expect from banks today—and you might be surprised to find they have similar needs. They also share how banks should enhance the experience.

  • Strengthening the Retail Experience
  • Enhancing Commercial Clients’ Experience
  • Technologies Banks Should Consider
  • Evaluating Your Bank’s Digital Strategy