Miriam Cross

Huntingdon Valley Bank in Pennsylvania and First Savings Bank in Indiana are among the banks extending their relationships with software providers to make small-business lending more efficient after the Paycheck Protection Program is phased out.

The pandemic was certainly a factor, but the Mississippi company says its decision to concentrate interactive teller machines in drive-through lanes and retrain employees who appear on-screen made a big — and potentially lasting — difference.

Companies from Bank of America to PlainsCapital have ditched dull webinars and found more engaging ways to train workers to show empathy to clients and explain bank programs.

Daylight, a digital banking platform for the LGBT community, uses its customers’ preferred names on debit cards rather than their legal names. Through a new social media campaign, the company is encouraging the American Bankers Association and its members to do the same.

In partnership with the startup Hope Trust, the Chicago bank is piloting tools that will help people with disabilities, their families and caregivers manage their finances, government benefits and medical care.

Other banks soured on their AR experiments, but Ally Financial says the technology has yielded higher-balance deposit accounts — and heavier social media engagement — in marketing campaigns.

Challenger banks like Spiral and Greenwood Financial make charitable giving easy through their apps to build stronger relationships with socially conscious customers.

Kearny Bank in New Jersey and four other banks were struggling to manage escrow accounts where the rules vary widely between industries and states, so they teamed up on a tech solution.

The Massachusetts community bank, which rebranded last summer, landed on affiliate marketing as one cost-effective way of attracting choice customers to its business checking and crypto banking capabilities.

The custody service provider, which will maintain a New York license in addition to its national charter, is one of several cryptocurrency companies to apply to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The fintech Fair isn’t using terms like “sharia” or “Islam” in its messaging, but it is offering interest-free loans and socially responsible investments that comply with Islamic rules.

Till Financial provides a banking app for kids and their parents that encourages them to broker money transfer agreements and save toward their goals. As users age, Till will earn revenue by guiding them to more adult financial products.

Queensborough National Bank and Trust in Georgia is one of several banks aiming to recruit tech-savvy interns through a network of universities and fintech companies.

By migrating to Fiserv’s DNA core account processing platform, Citizens Bank & Trust in Guntersville, Ala., aims to give customers instant updates on balances and transactions.

Ally, Huntington, KeyBank and others are reimagining automated savings tools challenger banks have made popular.

The Baltimore community bank is experimenting with fee-based checking accounts that bundle cellphone protection, roadside assistance and other perks with an app that makes such services easier to use. Early returns are promising.

The joint checking account is similar to its individual checking feature, launched last April, and will target millennial couples in particular.

The company has changed the dynamics of its meetings, created diversity metrics and deployed software to make job descriptions gender-neutral.

The company, which provides workplace investing programs to banks, is giving employees a say in some decisions and working with partners to recruit women and people of color.

Small, often intangible quality-of-life perks are a big part of what makes some fintechs the best ones to work for.