Case study: A suite of products to bring a sweeter consumer experience

In today’s world, consumers expect simple, unified, digital experiences across every aspect of their lives. This includes their financial experiences as well. So what does it take to meet their demands and deliver a best-in-class consumer experience in your banking products? Oftentimes it’s a mix of technology and the human touch that make a financial services firm great.

In this session, BOK Financial’s Senior Product Delivery Manager for Consumer and Business Deposit Account Opening channels Nicholas Ievolino and Blend Product Lead for Consumer Banking Alden Seabolt will dive into their partnership and how Blend’s cloud banking platform technology is helping BOK Financial to expand their team’s ability to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers through consistent and personalized experiences.

Transcription:

00;00;10;03 - 00;00;14;0
Alden Seabolt

Hey, folks, I'm Alden Seabolt. I'm the product lead for consumer banking at Blend.

00;00;15;14 - 00;00;21;02
Nicholas Iervolino

And I'm Nicholas Iervolino product owner and channel manager for BOK Financial for digital account opening.

00;00;21;23 - 00;00;45;01
Alden Seabolt

And Nicholas and I are here to talk to you today about how we deliver a cohesive experience across a portfolio of products for consumers and also for the folks that serve those consumers, ushering in a new era of personalization Nicholas, you've been in the driver's seat for digital transformation, both at BOK Financial, as well as in prior roles and even in different industries.

00;00;45;21 - 00;00;52;27
Alden Seabolt

Talk us through a little bit more about how digital transformation has played out over the years and also how you see it playing out today.

00;00;53;18 - 00;01;16;03
Nicholas Iervolino

I'm extremely happy to talk about our personalization strategies and what we see has cohesive design both for our clients and our bankers. First I'd like to talk about the job I had actually before this, which was working for a publication company that went all the way back, was founded in 1910, I don't know what they used in 1910 to publish their magazines.

00;01;16;21 - 00;01;49;19
Nicholas Iervolino

But regardless, 100 years later, almost a hundred years later, when they're ready to celebrate their centennial event, they had grown to a worldwide company. They had conquered dozens, dozens of industries. They had the largest audience globally for power generation oil gas firefighting they were on top of the world in almost every means possible. However, in 2009 they got scared.

00;01;50;16 - 00;01;56;07
Nicholas Iervolino

They had to change their corporate and their global strategy. Do you know what scared them?

00;01;57;10 - 00;01;59;29
Alden Seabolt

I may have an idea, but tell me.

00;02;02;18 - 00;02;44;09
Nicholas Iervolino

Two years previously. Steve Jobs gave a presentation. Steve Jobs gave a presentation, and the world changed and their products hadn't changed by human behavior had they survived the dot com stage, survived the rise of different industries over 100 years and over a hundred years. The way they did business didn't change. But in 2007, we became the monkeys in the Space Odyssey, trying to test the device can't keep a laptop in your pocket, but you can keep your phone with you everywhere.

00;02;44;27 - 00;03;00;08
Nicholas Iervolino

And so they changed their entire strategy to digitize or die. It was yelled at every event that they held at their centennial and it was always followed closely by Mobile First and Responsive Design.

00;03;02;21 - 00;03;34;28
Alden Seabolt

And I'm sure that they weren't the only company and certainly not the only industry feeling that same same level of anxiety at that moment in time. You know, I think maybe some people foresaw a shift towards digital and the increased usage of phones and some limited capacity to be able to serve consumers in different ways. But obviously the announcement of the iPhone catalyzed so much of this, and I think it really put so many different companies in so many different industries on their heels.

00;03;34;28 - 00;03;41;11
Alden Seabolt

Now consumers are going to expect that all of our products and services are delivered here through our phones.

00;03;42;17 - 00;04;10;07
Nicholas Iervolino

Well, that's the point I'm trying to get across, because it wasn't the Internet which to change things. It was an evolution in human expectation that came with mobile devices. Elon Musk talking about his company Neuralink in 2018 was asked when he thinks we’ll turn into cyborgs, when he thinks humanity will make that large evolutionary step to cyborgs. And his response was we already are We just don't realize it yet.

00;04;12;16 - 00;04;39;24
Nicholas Iervolino

You see at our fingertips we can compute complex equations. We have access to instant [inaudible] results to any question that we ask. We can find true love. our devices, our phones have become extensions of ourselves and we change permanently. Our expectations are behaviors. Everything has permanently changed. You can see this when you're at home with your family trying to talk for dinner.

00;04;40;04 - 00;05;08;01
Nicholas Iervolino

You go to a restaurant, the gym, go for a jog. If you drive in your car, look at the drivers next to you. If you see them, you'll understand why I'm a fan of automation in driving We have firmly changed and personally adapted, and we know that to be true. So our first and primary driver is mobile first responsive design.

00;05;09;25 - 00;05;47;01
Nicholas Iervolino

That doesn't mean that our branches and our bankers and our partners aren't important. They're extremely important. They're the reason that we're here. Starbucks has 33,000 different locations, and their strength is in those locations and in their team members However, even they know that digital first that the best location is in the hands and pockets of their clients. Five years ago, they went through a digital transformation team for the digital transformation journey all themselves.

00;05;47;18 - 00;06;15;05
Nicholas Iervolino

They hired a new team that changed their name from I.T. to Technology Division, which I thought was really interesting how a change in a word can change a purpose They went through and revamped their point of sale system and mobile experience to really take advantage of the behaviors that they had seen coming. And when you talk about personalization and great experience, if you use their application.

00;06;16;01 - 00;06;16;21
Alden Seabolt

I have.

00;06;17;11 - 00;06;20;24
Nicholas Iervolino

What's your favorite thing about it?

00;06;22;02 - 00;06;34;21
Alden Seabolt

It remembers where I like to go. It remembers my order as suggestions based on things that I've done previously. It can almost predict better than I can what I'm going to want when I get there.

00;06;35;15 - 00;07;02;01
Nicholas Iervolino

And unless the location that you want to go to is out of business and there is a problem. But they built the most sophisticated AI possible, and it is based off those recommendations based on what you did in the past. What the current trend is, what's trending right now, what the weather's like. And I don't know what coffee they recommend for like a bright sunny day or a cold night.

00;07;02;16 - 00;07;08;08
Nicholas Iervolino

But I am curious what they recommend for that little unicorn drink that they have is purple and pink.

00;07;09;10 - 00;07;10;10
Alden Seabolt

I know what you're talking about.

00;07;10;23 - 00;07;37;01
Nicholas Iervolino

Yeah. Even they recognize they have the best brand recognition. They have the best locations they have locations across from locations Their first step is mobile device, and that's one of our key drivers. We'll get into personalization. We'll get a cohesive design. But the first thing to realize is this is the thing. This is the thing that gets us the thing.

00;07;38;03 - 00;07;42;13
Nicholas Iervolino

[inaudible] reference. If you are curious.

00;07;43;04 - 00;08;07;27
Alden Seabolt

Nicholas, one of the things that I really picked up on and wrote down here was when you were talking about Elon Musk and talking about the mobile phone, you know, not just as a device, but as the extension of one's self and how increasingly. Now, that is the first place that anybody turns. And the first thing that you do in the morning now is pick up your phone, see what's on there.

00;08;08;05 - 00;08;28;01
Alden Seabolt

Like you are going to be able to reach the consumer or consumers are going to be able to engage with you and your brand and your content first and foremost by mobile. Even if there is a complementary experience, I think Starbucks is a really interesting example where there is this 33,000 stores. It's like a very large branch network.

00;08;28;01 - 00;08;52;21
Alden Seabolt

If you compare any of us to financial institutions, 33,000 is crazy. And we've got this very tight coupling between this mobile experience and this complementary branch experience. I'm curious how you see that playing out or what you see to be kind of analogous between that and and what financial services or how that applies to financial services.

00;08;53;07 - 00;09;22;25
Nicholas Iervolino

First of let me say 33,000 locations. They have over 30 million active users. That's where you have to be When we talk about personalization, I get a little dorky about this, so I try to simplify it to terms that people can understand. I like to think personalization has the friend or the Cheers experience.

00;09;23;10 - 00;10;01;23
Nicholas Iervolino

Do you want to be treated like Cliff or Norm? Norm, we know who you are. We know what you want. You know why you're here. We know what stories to tell you would share your laughter, and we know what to recommend. You know what beer you like. Personalization is basically being the best digital friends that you can be, and the more that we can engage with you, the more that we can hear from your stories, the better recommendations that we can make, the more intuitive that we can make that experience and the more perception that you have that we know what you like, the more you're going to trust us when we make that recommendation.

00;10;01;24 - 00;10;25;23
Nicholas Iervolino

Nobody should sit down at a random bar and take a drink the somebody hands you but you will from a friend. And that's our first step our second step is understanding that recency is key If you have a recent life changing event, if you lost a loved one, if you fell in love or got the new job, that's what we're going to talk to you about and as your digital friend.

00;10;26;22 - 00;10;56;17
Nicholas Iervolino

We're going to give you advice where to make recommendations. We're going to listen to you give your stories. I don't know how many times you've in your experience on digital, online or off, where you've made a big change your life. You bought a mortgage or a small change bought that pair of sneakers and then you're going around and you get phone calls for the next month, or you see those shoes on every site that you visit for the next week or two they missed their chance.

00;10;57;15 - 00;11;08;01
Nicholas Iervolino

And recency is key in the way that we understand recency in the end, the way that we understand the call to actions is by having that level of engagement and that good friendship.

00;11;10;06 - 00;11;37;13
Alden Seabolt

There's a really interesting interplay here between the role of the banker as well as digital as well. And, you know, in recency, the depth of conversation that you can have talking to an individual, I think is always going to be greater than what you experience digitally. Now, on the digital side, you may be shopping around for something or applying for something, and we are able to glean a ton about who you are, your behaviors and all of that stuff.

00;11;37;19 - 00;11;55;03
Alden Seabolt

But then it's incumbent on feeding that back to the banker so the banker can act on that information when they're having that next conversation and when the bankers having that conversation, being able to feed that information back into a digital experience as well, to create that level of cohesion and personalization across all of these different touchpoints.

00;11;55;17 - 00;12;19;15
Nicholas Iervolino

And interesting that on that same API that Starbucks uses for their clients, they also have access to it as their cashiers. So it's used both for clients and most of the stuff that we talk about cohesive design, personalization, even touch points and device, it's ubiquitous across our [inaudible] have more experience and we pay them to be trained.

00;12;20;26 - 00;12;49;05
Alden Seabolt

And I think you from a brand and a quality standpoint well as well, that's one of the assets that would be financial and another number of other institutions have you know, your customers know that when they go in and they talk to a banker that those bankers are going to know them that their bankers are going to focus on solving that problems rather than starting with solutions and ultimately helping them figure out or solve whatever they came in for.

00;12;49;24 - 00;12;57;23
Alden Seabolt

So I really do think that pairing and empowering those bankers with that type of information that you would be able to serve up on a digital side as well.

00;12;59;19 - 00;13;47;19
Nicholas Iervolino

Yeah, that's what we see. We've had some issues with that in the past where we currently have over 100 unique products that became financial or consumer and small business divisions. Of those, approximately about a third of them are online currently. And over the last few years we've had up to eight point of sale platforms, if you can imagine the headaches, trying to maintain that cohesive design, all the features, all the roadmaps, the training curriculums, the access requests, it's easy to get into a position where you're constantly chasing your tail or chasing the tail of innovation, and nobody has time to optimize a different experience.

00;13;49;29 - 00;14;09;27
Alden Seabolt

What you just laid out seems like a seemingly insurmountable task or certainly something that's very daunting, that Bank of Oklahoma is definitely having success in digital transformation. Talk to us more about where you began that journey, how you thought about what the most important things to focus on were and how you get started.

00;14;10;23 - 00;14;38;17
Nicholas Iervolino

We first listen to our bankers and listen to our clients as well, and the two most common complaints we had was inconsistency and lack of repetition. So in some cases, with some point of sale platforms, they only use them once or twice a month, depending on the products and the differences between navigation, [inaudible], different logins really confuse them during that client and buyer journey.

00;14;41;09 - 00;14;47;17
Nicholas Iervolino

If you can imagine how complicated was on the banker side, think about it from the client's experience.

00;14;49;07 - 00;15;12;19
Alden Seabolt

I think so often the client experience is unfortunately reflective of the individual business and technology silos that are on the backend. And the consumers shouldn't have to be able to see that wow, I think maybe this line of business was started earlier than this other line of business because I just gave all my sensitive information and not seeming to port over to the next product that I'm engaging with.

00;15;15;22 - 00;15;41;13
Nicholas Iervolino

That's 100%. How our bankers and [inaudible] see it and to kind of jump off of that, I would recommend taking a step back, take two or three steps back and see your banks. Your business has one experience, see it how our clients see it one bit. BOK Financial. You don't see us as a conglomeration of different technology steps.

00;15;41;13 - 00;16;28;28
Nicholas Iervolino

You don't see us as a Salesforce or Roostify or everything else. If you look at Amazon as the example mid-nineties they started the books in ‘98. They moved to movies, DVDs, ‘99 they moved to dozens of other categories and in each case they kept the same total design in its branches. They added things like one click checkout, Amazon Prime right now they have over 100 million different products offerings, and if they have that simple design logged in same experience, buy everything, then we can definitely get closer on our 100 unique applications and products.

00;16;30;28 - 00;16;53;09
Alden Seabolt

I think one of the interesting analogies there and in how you talk about Amazon is you could argue that early day Amazon was reflective in some ways of current state financial services, where there are a handful in many cases, maybe there are a couple of dozen different products, but the experiences are disjointed between them. The experiences certainly aren't personalized.

00;16;53;09 - 00;17;13;02
Alden Seabolt

I think one of the things that you and I and everybody appreciates about Amazon is that where you come in, it uses all of your past and usage and purchasing data to then suggest something that's relevant for you and you actually find relevancy out of it. And then finally, they've been able to iterate on the number of products that they are able to provide.

00;17;13;02 - 00;17;29;10
Alden Seabolt

And I think is as I actually would love to get your perspective on this. As financial services continues to evolve over the next 20 years, the level of innovation that we would expect to see above and beyond the current product offerings that the institutions provide.

00;17;31;04 - 00;17;57;11
Nicholas Iervolino

So Amazon was doing amazing, but what changed the game for them was when they open it up to their clients to be able to start selling stuff on their platform and start and that's what opened up really dozens, hundreds of products to hundreds of millions of products. I know just kind of looking at the same thing and you start seeing some parallels with these different technologies that we're talking about but that's how we kind of see it in the future.

00;17;57;11 - 00;18;15;16
Nicholas Iervolino

And right now we are working on some different opportunities with Blend for kind of that same experience. What product offerings intuitive experience can we deliver to our clients within one easy navigation platform, same login and everything else.

00;18;17;17 - 00;18;39;18
Alden Seabolt

One of the things I'd like to your perspective on this is the role of fintechs in this space as it pertains to just making the market so much more competitive I think know in certainly in the past few years, fintechs have been playing a role and certainly in some categories have been kind of pushing the bar on experience.

00;18;39;18 - 00;18;55;15
Alden Seabolt

But I think now more than ever, consumers are aware of some of these fintech brands are expecting that level of service out of each of these different products. We'll have to get your perspective of where you think fintechs are doing well and maybe where some of the shortcomings are well.

00;18;57;10 - 00;19;13;27
Nicholas Iervolino

Maybe I'll start with some of the shortcomings I think part of it depends on are they actually listening to their clients? Are they listening to other industry leaders? What is this a roadmap now? Was it in the past? And what is it in the future?

00;19;16;07 - 00;19;41;10
Nicholas Iervolino

We know that our roadmap, our ability to deliver is based off of our vendor partnership. So we ask ourselves will they be able to be there three, five years, ten years? Do they have a history of collaboration with the industry leaders? Do they have a history of collaboration? With their clients? And then we ask ourselves, do they care about our vision?

00;19;41;10 - 00;19;49;06
Nicholas Iervolino

Do they care about collaboration with us? Because we do have a strategy to move forward with our clients.

00;19;51;04 - 00;20;16;13
Alden Seabolt

I think what you're describing is so critical here, which is technology in and of itself is not going to be the panacea for all of these consumer problems. And in particular, when you're in such a relationships driven, driven business like financial services, you need to deeply understand how to marry the impact of technology with what consumers are actually experience and actually going through.

00;20;16;13 - 00;20;31;07
Alden Seabolt

And I think one of the things that I've so valued out of our relationship and our partnership is the ability to come to the table and hear first and foremost from you and your team and the folks on the ground of what your consumers and what your bankers are experiencing.

00;20;33;02 - 00;21;08;10
Nicholas Iervolino

Well, we definitely enjoyed our partnership. We think about that same question. What do you see has a value add with fintechs and partners all kind of to the blend in here for a second? Blend has a lot of experience with making their partners’ strategic dreams a reality. If you talk to any Blend product owner on this many times now to the last few years, you talk to any Blend partner and tell them your dreams, tell them your visions.

00;21;08;12 - 00;21;24;14
Nicholas Iervolino

They will listen intently. They'll ask you questions. Their history of collaboration, not just among us, but among all partners, means that they'll be there are that three, five, ten year mark. And oftentimes they have us racing to keep up.

00;21;24;24 - 00;22;00;24
Alden Seabolt

I think that I appreciate all of the kind words there. I mean, the feeling is absolutely mutual. If if we were building technology by ourselves, we know that we could not be having the impact that we are both for, both for your consumers as well as your bankers and understanding the challenges that you're facing, the vision that you have, the opportunities that you're seeing in the market that probably were not sometimes is exactly the fuel that goes into our roadmap, that refines our roadmap to ensure that we're delivering on the right things.

00;22;03;13 - 00;22;46;22
Nicholas Iervolino

We joined Blend three years ago for HELOCs and HE loans, and soon after that we went to auto loans, I think before we joined Blend, and we didn't have that great responsive intuitive design that was consistent across all your products. Our completion rate was around 18% and our application volume was less than 15% Since we joined with you guys, our completion rates have tripled, and now the majority of our applications come from which platform it was easy for us to make the decision to move our mortgage business over with you all.

00;22;47;05 - 00;22;49;23
Nicholas Iervolino

And we're now working on business deposits as well.

00;22;52;01 - 00;23;12;29
Nicholas Iervolino

That Business Deposits is actually using a platform similar to the Amazon experience where it's configurable. You can we use different components. We still get the same intuitive design, same single sign on functionality, client dashboard, email notifications. We believe that that can get us to the remainder, two thirds of where we are with our products today.

00;23;14;02 - 00;23;40;27
Alden Seabolt

Nicolas, what you were just talking there about using the Blend platform to configure small business checking experience that's it's been perfect validation of the direction that we've been moving in using our platform and the individual workflows and integrations both with our own services as well as services to really quickly innovate new products, get them out to market, test them and ultimately deliver that cohesive customer experience.

00;23;41;25 - 00;24;03;14
Alden Seabolt

That's what we've been driving towards. And that partnership with you and the team has been so instrumental in helping us achieve that vision. And also obviously helping achieve that great experience for consumers. We only have a couple of minutes left. I'm going to transition it back to you. Tell us a little bit more about what you see as the future for Bank of Oklahoma.

00;24;03;27 - 00;24;33;13
Nicholas Iervolino

We have really enjoyed our partnership together and we look forward to more things in the future. Our journey continues with personalization and being the best digital friends that we could possibly be. Our unified vision of a cohesive intuitive design both for our clients and our bankers. And then making a mobile first best in class responsive design strategy for the cyborgs of tomorrow.

00;24;34;25 - 00;24;54;10
Alden Seabolt

I love it. I think just going back to what you were talking about, the consumer expectations are changing so rapidly. I think that the vision that you and the team have is perfectly getting to where the market is going to both to meet those customer expectations, but also to exceed them in so many different ways. So just want to thank you again for your partnership.

00;24;54;10 - 00;25;03;23
Alden Seabolt

Over the past few years, it's been so instrumental in evolving what we do, helping serve your business and your customers. I want to thank you again for the time today as well. It's always a pleasure talking with you.

00;25;04;24 - 00;25;05;29
Nicholas Iervolino

You as well. Thank you.