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The loss of a key partnership with General Motors has left Ally Financial searching for new revenue streams. In the short term, the bank has ramped up its subprime auto lending, but to sustain its growth it must "get more out of customer relationships," says CEO Jeffrey Brown.
April 28 -
That's what Ally Bank did with its recent campaign marketing retirement products.
May 27 -
Traditional bankers could be forgiven for hoping that the direct banks would have gotten their comeuppance by now. But the branchless (or nearly branchless) upstarts look to be very much on the ball.
March 1
Diane Morais
President and CEO, Ally Bank
Ally Bank is an online deposit-gathering powerhouse that aspires to be more well rounded. Diane Morais is charged with leading that transformation, which will include adding loan products and successfully cross-selling them to depositors.
She is just at the start, having become president and chief executive following the resignation of Barbara Yastine. But Jeffrey Brown, the new CEO of the bank's parent company, expressed confidence when announcing Morais' promotion in March. "Her expertise in deepening customer relationships and banking product development will be critical in the next stage of Ally's evolution," Brown said.
Morais joined the bank as its deposits executive in 2008, when it was still GMAC Bank. In her six years in the role, in which she oversaw the development, pricing and marketing of deposit products, deposits more than doubled, to $61 billion at March 31, as the rechristened Ally won over consumers with its quirky ads.
Still, Ally basically just takes deposits to fund the auto loans that continue to be the bulk of its business even after jettisoning the GMAC name.
Morais' immediate task is to cross-sell deposit products to car loan customers, and vice versa. Longer term, Brown is counting on Morais to drive revenue growth by introducing more products, including a broader range of car loans and perhaps even mortgages and credit cards.
Before joining Ally, Morais spent 12 years at Bank of America in a series of roles, including head of customer experience for consumer and small-business banking and head of deposit and debit products. While she was there, the deposit team implemented the groundbreaking "keep the change" savings program in which debit purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference is transferred into a savings account.
