Why digital growth stalls at “approved” and what a connected journey opens for community financial institutions.
Originally published on CUInsight.com
Three applications walk away for every one that makes it through the door. That’s the reality facing financial institutions today, according to industry benchmarks. When I share that number with the institutions I work with, I usually get the same reaction: a knowing sigh. Everyone has felt it. Everyone has spent money trying to fix it.
But the number that keeps my attention isn’t the abandonment rate. It’s what happens to the applications that do get completed. As an industry, we’ve quietly agreed that an opened account or a funded loan is the finish line. We celebrate the approval and move on to the next one. From where the consumer sits, that moment isn’t the finish line at all. It’s the starting line. The first real signal of what they need and what they might need next. And many institutions let that signal go cold.
I’ve had the chance to watch this play out at scale. For nearly three decades, MeridianLink® has served financial institutions; last year alone we processed more than $700 billion in loan applications, we integrate with over 300 of the industry’s technology partners, and we serve institutions representing more than half of U.S. credit union members.
When you sit at that vantage point, a pattern becomes hard to miss: the institutions pulling ahead didn’t implement a nicer form for their applications. They connected the journey.
Where “just digitize the application” runs out of road
Plenty of technology can put a clean application on a screen. Fewer can make that application work with everything else you run. A polished front end bolted onto a disconnected stack looks modern right up until real volume hits it. And it quietly wastes the single most valuable thing an application contains, which is intent. Someone who just applied for an auto loan has told you something. Someone whose payroll is landing at another institution has told you something. If your application experience can’t carry that context forward, you’re re-earning the relationship from scratch at every step.
So, when we built MeridianLink® Access, we focused on both sides of the experience: a digital interface consumers want to use and the connected technology institutions need behind it
Getting to “yes” faster, without asking the consumer to do our work
The first question I ask about any step in a digital journey is: what are we asking the consumer to do that our data or our technology could do for them? If we already know who someone is, we shouldn’t be making them re-key it.
That’s why Access uses prefill, single sign-on into digital banking platforms, and core lookups to bring the right data into the application from the start. From there, it can move the applicant through automated decisioning, auto-booking, and auto-disbursement wherever the risk profile allows—all without asking the consumer to do work the technology can handle.
Last year, on stage at MeridianLink LIVE, we showcased this functionality and opened a brand-new deposit account, start to finish, in under two minutes. No smoke and mirrors. Just connected technology doing what it’s designed to do.
Protecting the institution without punishing good consumers
Speed only matters if it’s safe. But a strong risk strategy doesn’t have to sacrifice speed or experience. The old model—collect every document, manually review every application, accept a wall of false positives as the cost of doing business—adds friction that costs you good consumers. Layered, risk-adaptive verification lets you make the low-risk path frictionless and reserve the deeper review for the applications that actually warrant it. You remove unnecessary friction and manage real risk at the same time.
That’s the balance we’re creating: stronger protection without putting the brakes on growth. One example that comes to mind is an institution using MeridianLink Access that prevented $1.2 million in fraud risk in its first two months live, while simultaneously speeding up the application process and increasing conversion.
The part almost everyone skips: what happens after “approved”
This is where I think the biggest opportunity in digital acquisition actually lives, and it’s the part most platforms ignore. If I open a checking account, don’t just hand me an account number; help me fund it, switch my direct deposit, provision my debit card into my wallet, and get me using it. If I’m approved for a loan, help me sign, understand my payments, and set up autopay. Then use what you learned along the way to have the next conversation, driven by data rather than a random cross-sell.
That’s the shift I think financial institutions should be aiming for: from apply, approve, done to apply, approve, activate, engage, deepen, grow. And that’s exactly why we built Access as a connected front door into the broader MeridianLink ecosystem. It gives institutions a way to carry the consumer’s context forward instead of handing them off from one disconnected experience to another.
Why this is the moment that matters
The competitive pressure is real. One statistic I heard recently stuck with me: SoFi has grown faster than all credit unions combined. Fintechs are built to churn applications. That was never our customers’ game, and it shouldn’t be. The community financial institution edge isn’t volume for volume’s sake. It’s the relationship. The opportunity is to compete on that relationship at digital speed, and that’s exactly what a connected journey makes possible.
The institutions doing this are seeing it in the numbers. At Salal Credit Union, custom application journeys cut drop-off by 38% and processing time by 50%, while new-member satisfaction rose 27 points. And P1FCUdoubled digital application growth across loan products while bringing 140 previously abandoned applications back into the funnel.
None of those outcomes came from simply having a flashier application interface. They came from connecting the full consumer journey, on a platform we continue to invest in for our customers.
So, here’s where I’d start if I were sitting on your side of the table: find one place in your journey where you’re losing good consumers to friction and use the data to understand what’s getting in their way. That’s how the best institutions I work with approach it. And it’s the standard we hold ourselves to as we continue to innovate our platform.
