3 minutes
Leverage the larger banking ecosystem for increased digital banking engagement.
By Wendi Klein
Sponsored by Alogent
Your members are primarily banking through digital channels. In fact, a survey by Chase at the end of 2021 showed an increase of more than 10% adoption over the previous year when stay-at-home mandates were in place. With online and mobile channels critical to account holder satisfaction and retention, credit unions must turn their attention to engagement linked to the user journey, and ultimately to deliver the flexibility and convenience that your members desire. Even with the continued adoption of digital banking, account holders expect the same level of service through remote channels as they do in the branch.
“Banking on your own terms” doesn’t solely mean when and where a user wants—financial institutions must also consider the blending of consumer and small-business capabilities under the same platform, as well as accessibility to complementary and personalized offerings like financial wellness advice and services specific to their life events. This empathetic banking approach anticipates a member’s needs and, through artificial intelligence and predictive analytics-based capabilities, enables your credit union to tailor its tone of voice, or the campaign message itself, to guide the user journey toward a specific product, tool or piece of wellness advice.
These types of personalized banking experiences are now expected at every point of the account holder lifecycle. Soon-to-be parents, for example, may be looking for ways to start a college savings account, while those looking for a new home are likely interested in mortgages. Regardless of someone’s stage of life, members want to feel that their banking experiences are specific to their needs—and that all banking tools are available at their fingertips.
The same can be said for small-business owners. Having access to specific capabilities that streamline their operations is vital, as is the financial advice and tools needed to grow their businesses.
However, regardless of how robust and flexible your solution may be, it’s impossible to be everything to everyone out of the box. Leveraging a modern, application programming interface-based digital banking platform is an important fundamental step, as is bridging the gap between in-branch and remote channels, along with consumer and business banking functionality.
Despite the market’s abundant offerings, there’s a good chance that some level of customization will be required to meet your goals. A software development kit built into the digital banking platform can help address these custom development efforts, while an open platform with API-driven capabilities is cost-effective for credit unions of all sizes that wish to expand their ecosystems and keep users in-solution, but may not have endless resources, bandwidth or budget. At the same time, members gain access to additional products and services without having to look outside of their trusted credit union relationship.
If you’re unsure about enabling access to third-party tools, it’s important to remember that these capabilities have already become a significant part of your members’ routines. Forrester Research notes that 81% of survey respondents have linked their primary banking account to a fintech offering, confirming it’s time for credit unions to embrace the idea of a larger banking ecosystem and to work with the fintechs, not compete against them.
Enabling a robust digital banking ecosystem that taps into additional subsets of financial offerings means your institution can provide new, hyper-personalized experiences that deepen engagement and strengthen institutional loyalty. And, increased digital interactions mean more access to data that your credit union can leverage for personalization and segmentation. By allowing members to seamlessly share access to account information through your platform, you’ll remain in control of the user journey and be able to combine real-time and historical data to advance the member experience with faster decisions and a better understanding of feature usage and adoption.
Wendi Klein is VP/marketing & communications at Alogent, a leading provider of software solutions for financial institutions and a CUES Supplier member. Credit unions and banks of all sizes trust Alogent for their end-to-end check payment processing, digital, online and mobile banking, and enterprise content and information management needs. Alogent's unified online, mobile, and digital banking platform, NXT, offers integrated capabilities for consumers and businesses. Built from the ground up on the most modern tech stack, its open and API-based platform is scalable and configurable, paired with hundreds of pre-built configurations to leading industry solutions that keep users in-solution and engaged, addressing user needs today and well into the future. Learn more in this eBook.
