Can web pop-ups win KeyBank new brokerage customers?

Almost all of KeyBank’s Key Investment Services clients don’t have a brokerage relationship with the bank and may never walk into a branch looking for one.

Paul Hansen, the subsidiary’s chief operating officer, wants to change this with a web pop-up. (Only 6% of KeyBank's customers have a broker-dealer relationship with the bank.)

“I have this vision around when I go to play online bills at key.com, I want to see a pop-up for a client that’s never going to walk into a branch, saying, ‘Are you interested in a low-cost, professionally managed portfolio designed by a manager to protect your assets in a down market? Click here,’ ” Hansen said in a panel discussion at In|Vest 2018.

KeyBank building frontage
Signage is displayed on the KeyBank building in Columbus, Ohio, U.S., on Jan. 9, 2018. KeyCorp is scheduled to release earnings figures on January 18. Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg

After clicking on the advertisement, customers will be brought to a page where they can begin self-profiling, something that a banker or a broker normally does.

At this point clients can be cross-sold into the other parts of what Hansen calls the four seasons of the bank: savings and investing, lending, credit and mortgage.

“When you have all four seasons with a client, you are their primary banking relationship,” Hansen said. “That client is twice as profitable from a revenue perspective on an annual basis … and they are way less likely to leave you.”

In conjunction with the digital advice technology provider Jemstep, the bank will try to make the transition from pop-up to setting up an IRA as easy as downloading a mobile application.

“A lot of it relates to how do you integrate with the core banking platform,” said Simon Roy, Jemstep's president and CEO. “How do you make sure there’s very little friction to go from that offer automatically into the wealth service?"

Banks have to work on pulling together as much data for a customer at the same time, Roy said, "so that when you engage you feel known by the bank.”

Roy imagined that going through a discovery process, onboarding and self-servicing should be done in eight to 10 minutes without any human interference from the middle or back office.

“That gives institutions the confidence to say, ‘I’m going to open up a referral system digitally,’ because you can be sure that the system can scale at the back end and your economics are not going to blow up,” Roy said.

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