Strategies and Tools to Drive Real Success with Digital Retail Banking Solutions

In a fireside chat, discover the myriad ways that financial institutions are transforming the customer experiences across channels. Hear directly from bank executives as they share real-world success stories, highlighting the tangible benefits and measurable outcomes these digital tools deliver. The panel discussion provides valuable insights, key actionable takeaways and inspiration to meet diverse, ever-evolving needs of customers within your banking universe.

Transcription:

Shane McWilliams (00:11):

All right. Hey folks, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate y'all hanging out with us for a few minutes. A lot of the conversations at these sessions are around digital banking or the digital experience, the digital end sort of user experience. And if you think about that, a lot of what goes into the actual end experience for our digital customers is not necessarily just the product or it's the technology, right? It's the digital transformation that happens as a part of rolling that out. And so that's what today's conversation is going to be here today. So welcome to you if you're a FinTech customer. If you're a FinTech provider, happy to have you here today. My name is Shane McWilliams. I am the Head of Retail Banking for Digital at FIS. So FIS is one of the largest providers in the space. We've had a very significant resurgence in the digital space in the last number of years.

(01:14):

We're probably one of the largest investors by dollar in the space in digital, and so we're really happy to hear today joined with me on stage. I have Apryl Strass, VP of Retail Operations at Beal Services Corporation, as well as Sharisee Schwinn, who is Head of Digital at FNB Louisiana. So they are two of my customers, and I feel like one of the best things that we can do is hear things through our customers' voices. And so we'll talk today about some of the transformation that we've been doing together. So again, thank you for attending. April, why don't we start with you, maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that we have been doing together.

Apryl Strass (01:58):

Yeah, hello everyone. Is it not close enough? Okay. We worked with FIS over several months on reevaluating our online account opening systems as well as trying to streamline some of the processes with our online account opening. And together we were able to optimize some of the features of our online banking by utilizing some of their add-ons that were available for making the online banking safer, more user-friendly, smoother operating. Also, one of the greatest things that we appreciated about working with FIS on redoing our online account opening was the customization that we were able to do. It allowed us to find areas where we needed to do things better. And so this helped us with the application process for the customer going smoother as well as backing out some of those applications that were fraudulent and had issues with them. So we utilized one of their systems that blocked the account at processing when they failed certain identification protocol.

Shane McWilliams (03:34):

That's great. Well, again, as we're talking about the experiences and how we're working together in partnership to roll these things out, why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the business outcomes that you guys were able to achieve as a bank again, and how you guys were able to roll these things out and the changes that you made and the results that you got from those?

Apryl Strass (03:56):

So we realized with the updates that we did that there was much more ease of access for the customers. There was more security that we felt with this upgraded system, the ability for our clients to go into online banking and download notices and some of the documents that go along with their accounts provided that extra level of security for those customers who don't like to have mail come to them or have unsecure mailboxes. I think that was something that's nice that we saw. We did end up finding that after we implemented some of the special products that they had that our fail application rate cut in half. So the application process became more efficient because of some of the protocols that were put in place that would make an application fail if it didn't meet certain criteria or it would go through the auto process because it did meet all of the criteria and allowed for us to save time, more efficient applications, better results overall, and a lot of time saving by having some of these programs do some of the work for us. And that was very helpful. Great.

Shane McWilliams (05:26):

Fantastic. Again, I think for the folks in the room that do this type of work, there's no significant change that comes at a financial institution without challenges and we all want to work with our customers together in partnership especially to work through some of those things. What were some of the difficulties I guess, that we work through as we kind of completely overhaul the application funnel together?

Apryl Strass (05:55):

We were on a very short timeline to roll out this product. We are in the process of rebranding, and we only had five months to get this all put together in order to have it pair up with the new branding that we were offering to on our website. And so the ability to work with just one person through the process of this implementation allowed for us to be more efficient, to work quicker. We had someone from start to finish and overall I would say that allowed us for us to meet our deadline and roll them all together, which was very helpful.

Shane McWilliams (06:41):

Yeah, I think one of the things that you talk about be service corporation and kind of their work in the online account, open space, there's a couple of products in the digital space that are a little bit unique, both online account open and also if you're standing up a marketing engine in particular, those are two products that for a financial institution, you can't just set it up and set it and forget it. A lot of things otherwise are driven by sort of limits your compliance teams, sort of what you want to offer. But when it comes to online account open, that's a really great example of it's having a financial institution think differently. They don't normally think about sales funnels, about application funnels, about a marketing engine and about offers and keeping those things fresh. And so my suggestion, and I think from what we've heard of our work with Beal is to, if you're thinking about things like that that involve an application funnel that involve a marketing engine or anything that needs that sort of care and feeding over time, definitely suggest thinking about how do you work differently with those customers.

(07:47):

I mean, I've got a large customer base and obviously a big part of what we do and what you guys do is around efficiency and speed to getting people onto the platform and getting up and live, but really put a lot of good thought into what is the plan for how we're going to support our customers on an ongoing basis, specifically with products that need to get that care and feeding over time to make sure that they stay healthy and that the customers continue to see the results. And so I think with the online account open, that's a really good example of that. So anything else that you would like to share? I guess with the audience of our mixed group of friends out here, both providers and consumers of these products.

Apryl Strass (08:28):

For this specific upgrade, we were able to use one source of work to go through the entire process. So instead of having to piecemeal each little piece, if we added global KYC or if we decided to do some various different tweaks to the online account opening process, we had a single pool of hours that we could pull from versus having to paper up each single item. I think that was very helpful. That allowed for more efficiencies as well as that one dedicated person, our partner from FIS, that was right by our side through the entire process. And so I think those two things together made the process much more efficient and very streamlined, and so it was great.

Shane McWilliams (09:23):

Yeah, and I guess that's great. I think it's interesting in a setting like this, you're thinking about statement of works and statements of work and how do you sort of do this over time, but I saw a lot of heads nodding in the audience on that topic, which was really interesting. As you're thinking about supporting your customers, we all go through a lot of similar challenges. You've got disparate knowledge spread around the company. I mean, that's definitely a thing for us SMEs that are spread all over the place and the fact that it's hard sometimes to predict, especially on the customer side, what do you want to do over a period of time? And so my suggestion from an ease of use perspective and ease of support perspective is try to come up with different and creative ways, even small things like that about creating a pool of work that a customer can pull from over time is just an easier, especially if you're depending on the size of the institution as a really creative way to sort of look at a problem and solving a problem like that, it takes out the pain point of having to paper up every single engagement that you have with a customer and it makes that whole interaction a lot more smooth.

(10:26):

So again, I mean technology's difficult, especially the type of work that we're doing, find ways, my suggestion would be to find ways that you can smooth things out for your customers that may or may not be inside of the technology itself. April, thank you so much. Appreciate that. Our next, I wanted to kind of pivot over to Sharisee Schwinn from FNB Louisiana and Shey wanted to talk a little bit about migrations, right? And so migrations are a bit of a dirty word in the industry. Migrating from a new platform to a new platform, migrating from one provider to a new provider. And one of the greatest things, and part of the reason that we sort of wanted to highlight Sharisee and her bank, they really saw their migration from one platform to another as an opportunity to improve things. So how do we make this not just something that we have to grid our way through? How do we make this something that's going to be a positive for our employees and also for our customers? You want to speak a little bit about that?

Sharisee Schwinn (11:33):

Yeah, thanks Shane. Also, thank you for not butchering my name terribly. As Shane said, part of our journey was to make sure that we were improving the customer experience overall. And migration, like Shane said, is kind of a dirty word, but we took it as an opportunity to actually look inside our institution and figure out what we were doing wrong. FIS is a global company. We knew that we had to have been using their solutions incorrectly for it to be as, to have as much friction as it did for our customers. So at that point of inflection, we reached out to FIS and they were great partners with us in resolving those frictions. They really have a very customer-centric focus and we were able to work through a lot of our issues that were just basically a lack of knowledge, a transfer of knowledge. We had an aging out demographic in our workforce within the bank, and it just created a lot of knowledge gaps and FIS was really proactive in helping us fill those gaps.

Shane McWilliams (12:51):

Same question as I gave to April. So working through this and having to lift and shift over to a totally new system, especially for it always has challenges. So what were some of the things that we work through together in that process to help make sure that we got to a really good outcome in that change.

Sharisee Schwinn (13:16):

So training, I guess would be a good point to make. You guys really helped implement, you took, I felt like you took our experience and then use that in your training model. So I do feel like FIS really does well with that.

Shane McWilliams (13:36):

Yeah, and I think, again, I think it's a little bit from a large company of our size with the resources that we have, I think it's really great for us to be able to lean into things like that and supporting the customers, providing that type of training, surfacing some of that stuff up in the backend admin tools. I think that's really, really critical. And again, I think even the learnings I think from you guys and helping to enhance what we already had was a really big asset for us as well.

Sharisee Schwinn (14:09):

And by engaging with us in training, we were able to really create some efficiencies in our back office by reducing login failures. Let's see what else? We were able to reduce our call center calls by about 25% as well because of those efficiencies that we found within our configuration settings that were just set wrong and they had just been set wrong for quite some time and that was our fault. That was not FI S's fault.

Shane McWilliams (14:42):

Great. I guess any other sort of benefits that you guys achieved or results I guess as a result of all of the hard work that you guys sort of put into that transition from platform to platform?

Sharisee Schwinn (14:58):

We increased our customer's knowledge on how the platform worked through company administration tools. We were able to really drive adoption rate there within our customer base. So that really helped quite a bit. I would say we increased that about 65% or so.

Shane McWilliams (15:17):

Alright. Anything you would like to share with our friends here in the industry today from your perspective? Especially again, everybody in this room has customers that are doing some sort of digital transformation or some sort of migration. So to hear from your perspective, how do we as an industry, how do you as a customer try to maximize those opportunities? I think it'd be great to hear anything like that from you.

Sharisee Schwinn (15:43):

I would say really lean into the training, but make sure that you're training the right people. You need to find the champion within the organization that you're working with and I guess build them up and through doing that, you will then spread that knowledge internally within that institution. A lot of times institutions send people to these trainings or onboarding classes with you and they're not really aware that they're sending the wrong people. They're not sending the people that are doing the day-to-day job. And so maybe just emphasize that whenever you are bringing on a new client that they really need to send their champions of the product solution or whatever it is that they're migrating to or onboarding with.

Shane McWilliams (16:28):

Great. Thank you. So do me a favor real quick because kind of wrapping up. So raise your hand if you're part of a financial institution right now if you're in here. Anybody. All right. Interesting. Okay. How about if you're a technology provider on the other side of the house? Raise your hand. Come on. There's a group in the back that didn't raise your hand for either. So again, I think you'll notice as a part of this, there's not a single thing that I've said that sounds like a skew right or something that we're looking to sell you. And I think it's really important, again, for people to start thinking and sort of operating that way. Again, I think if you think about the complexity of the work that we do in the space and that our customers do, and even consuming that technology change is very, very significant.

(17:15):

And so again, I think I would really highly suggest that people find great customers like April and Sharisee up here and work with them to think about how you're interacting with your customers. Even if it's a smaller technology change that you think is easier to consume, you'd be surprised how much you can get. If you think creatively, try to maximize the different ways that you work with your customers. You can increase your time to revenue as a part of that process by working more closely with your customers. So again, just a really strong recommendation for both sides of the house. If you're on the consuming side of this, try to maximize these technology changes. Otherwise you're just adding a product into your portfolio and that'll only get you so much. And if you're on the providing side of this, definitely try to really closely engage with your customers and find new and creative ways to think about doing things.

(18:07):

Even if you're somebody as big and as large as FIS, I mean, we try to find as many ways as we can. We're always looking to get better to engage with our customers more closely and feel small as much as you possibly can. So again, thank you to April and Sharisee today. Again, you can give them a round of applause for their courage and jump up here on stage with me. They did great. They're both wonderful leaders at their respective banks. And again, thank you all for your time and if you happen to see me walking around, feel free to ask me any questions these guys as well. And of course find us over at our kiosk over in the digital section in the opposite corner. Again, thanks so much for your time and hope this was valuable for you guys today in some way. And just try to encourage people to look at these challenges differently. And I promise you the revenue and all that, we'll work itself out when you look at it through a different lens. So again, thank you for your time and y'all have a great rest of the conference. Thanks.