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What digital capabilities does your bank
offer to its retail customers?
Source: Bank Director’s 2024 Technology Survey
Deposit account onboarding
79%
91%
Person-to-person payments
69%
Mortgage loan applications/processing
58%
Consumer loan applications/processing
48%
Personal financial management
38%
to bank. That means bankers like Donovan
must not only prioritize security in those
channels, but they also have to present a
digital experience on par with retailers and
big banks alike.
“That’s the fulcrum you’re balancing
on,” Donovan says. “How do you provide an
almost shopping-like, enjoyable experience
while maintaining security?”
Relationship Building
Many banks and credit unions recognize
the importance of providing strong digital
offerings to customers. Fifty-eight percent
of directors and executives who took part
in Bank Director’s 2024 Technology Survey
said that digital channels and the branch
were equally important to their strategy.
“If you think the digital experience is just
about completing a transaction and not
about building a relationship, you’re going
to miss the opportunity to engage with your
customers in an entirely different way,” says
Allison Maddock, chief product officer with
the technology firm CSI. Maddock believes
91% of Americans own a
smartphone.
Source: Pew Research Center, data
as of June 10, 2024
branches will continue to be important for
many institutions’ overall strategy, but for
most, the mix between physical and digital
channels will shift.
“Having a user experience based on
intuitive design that enables customers
to efficiently do what they need to do and
recommend additional banking products is
really going to be key to growth,” she says.
Customers generally log into their banking app for a specific reason, says Hannah
Day, senior director of digital banking with
CSI. “You’re not scrolling like you do with
TikTok or Instagram,” she says. “You want
to get to that area and do that task as
quickly as possible. We’re in our banking
app to manage our money, move our money
and monitor our money, and it really boils
down to those three things.”
Payments are a prime example of where
intuitive design plays an important role.
Bank leaders who took part in Bank Director’s survey indicated that payments were
particularly important to their retail business. Sixty-nine percent said they offered
person-to-person payments to retail cus-
tomers, and 84% believed it’s important to
offer retail customers real-time payments.
An early adjustment that INB made to
its mobile banking app was the addition
of a “quick pay” option to the app’s home
screen, Donovan says. Because customers
commonly log on to pay bills, it made sense
to elevate that function to the home screen,
therefore cutting out at least two or three
clicks for most users.
“It’s an example of the kind of thoughtful, small improvements to incrementally
improve the customer experience,” he says.
“One way to help customers love our app
is actually to not make them spend more
time in it.”
Gauging Impact
Intuitive design may sound like an
amorphous concept and one that’s difficult
to quantify, but there are some definitive
indicators bankers can look at to determine
whether customers find their app to be
intuitive. “One of the easiest ones is, what’s
your app store rating?” says Day. “How is
your app performing, not only against other
apps in the store but also those in your
competitive space?”
For business clients, an easy indicator
is the number of ACH payments initiated
through the app versus in the branch or over
the phone, Donovan says. For retail clients,
he sees the declining number of customer
support calls concerning app functionality
as an indicator that it’s working.
Donovan sees the connection between the
app’s functionality and the bank’s broader
strategy in very straightforward terms. INB
has adopted the motto, “We make banking
easy.” Therefore, he reasons, the app should
be easy to figure out and use.
“Banking can be unnecessarily complicated,” Donovan says. “Part of our job
is to help consumers, and to help people
navigate and smooth out the process of
whatever they’re trying to achieve financially. As we’ve grown, technology has been
an enormous lever in helping achieve that.”
