MidwestOne Bank, headquartered in Iowa City, IA, knew its digital offerings were falling short of customer expectations. They also recognized that their goals of growing deposits and remaining competitive were closely linked to the bank's ability to deliver personalized service and adopt innovative solutions that meet modern customer demands.
"We want to be there for our customers," explains MidwestOne's Heather DeStefano, Senior Vice President, Director of Digital Innovation. "We want customer interactions with MidwestOne to be seamless and we want to deliver what customers want and need regardless of whether they are in a rural or metropolitan area."
Digital Account Opening Rises to the Top
MidwestOne Bank ($6.6 billion) provides a full range of products and services for retail, small business, and commercial customers across a wide product sets including loans, credit cards, mortgages, and investments and wealth management.
"We needed a technology partner that was as committed to our success as we were."
— Heather DeStefano,
Senior Vice President, Director of Digital Innovation MidwestOne
MidwestOne understood that meeting customer needs required modernizing their digital offerings to enhance customer experience as well as improve operational efficiency and reduce manual processing. The first step was to invest in a more customer-friendly digital accounting opening solution for both prospects and its existing 140,000 customers across over 50 branches in four states.
The bank already offered online account opening, but the process was lengthy. Customers needed to enter an abundance of personal information and scroll through pages of disclaimers only to discover that they had to wait one to two business days to learn if their application was approved. The bank's service center employees were required to manually input customer data into the platform used in their branches to decision the application, increasing the chance of errors. Once approved, microdeposit verification was required to fund the new account digitally.
Right Out of the Box
Like many community banks, MidwestOne did not have an in-house development team so building their own digital account opening solution or handling integration to third-party solutions on their own wasn't feasible. "We needed a technology partner that was as committed to our success as we were," says DeStefano. "We looked for a partner that would listen to us and allow us to tweak the solutions to meet our customers' wants and needs."
Although Destefano had worked on similar projects at previous banks, this was the first time MidwestOne had used a third-party vendor to connect to its core system. The bank pulled together a cross-functional team that included IT, deposit operations, compliance, legal, risk, retail, and others to define both front-end and back-office requirements and document which API fields map to which required fields in their core.
The team was critical to the bank's success. "It's very important to bring key stakeholders from across the organization to the table early so you don't miss any requirements or make any mistakes," notes DeStefano. For instance, a change in account opening could inadvertently increase manual work for back-office staff. Instead, digital onboarding has eliminated manual work and made it easier for staff to review accounts opened digitally versus in the branches.
Since the bank wanted to focus its resources on customers instead of the technology infrastructure, they looked for a technology partner that provided a SaaS solution but allowed for customization. Temenos offered an out-of-the-box onboarding solution delivered by Myridius and deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Designed for scalability and security, the solution offers a flexible cloud infrastructure that supports the bank's future digital initiatives.
MidwestOne has removed friction points, with the aim of boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The
Results are In
Since implementing digital account opening, MidwestOne has:
- Reduced online account opening from over 15 minutes to 2 minutes
- Decreased funding time from days to just minutes
- Automated 95% of online application decisioning
- Saved more than 60 hours of manual work weekly
MidwestOne has also been able to keep digital account opening fraud to a minimum due to strong digital device and identity verification integrations. "Our losses are very low," says DeStefano.
Digital account opening has become a key driver of deposit growth for MidwestOne, with the bank more than doubling the number of accounts opened digitally compared to their previous solution.
Mobile-first approach
The streamlined, mobile-first account opening process has made it easier for customers to engage with the bank, whether at home or on the go. By simplifying the journey, MidwestOne has removed friction points, with the aim of boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty. Today, two-thirds of digital account openings now occur on mobile devices, meeting the expectations of modern customers.
Digital Transformation Next Steps
MidwestOne Bank is building on the momentum of its successful digital account opening solution and is looking to update their online banking platform. DeStefano recommends that other banks follow MidwestOne's example and implement digital transformation in bite-sized pieces based on strategy and goals. "Assess your current state and where you want to go and chunk that out to align with your overall bank strategy," she advises.
