The materials available in this article are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your own advisors with questions regarding the digital growth strategies content herein. The opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the individual authors and may not reflect the opinions of MeridianLink, Inc.
“It’s easy to drive more traffic and generate applications. The harder question is whether those applications are actually creating valuable long-term relationships.”
― Joe Mearn, Director of Product Management, MeridianLink
Capturing more completed digital applications is one thing. Turning those applications into funded accounts and loans, long-term relationships, and sustained business requires a little more intention.
What are financial institutions doing between the initial application and funding to keep more new relationships active and engaged? After the deposit account or loan is funded, how are those relationships being nurtured for future opportunities?
Our recent webinar answers those questions. Get a breakdown of the digital growth strategies propelling institutions forward and the MeridianLink capabilities and integrations supporting those strategies.
1. Attract
Every relationship starts with an application. It’s your digital front door, and if that door doesn’t welcome consumers in, they won’t stay.
Using data signals and triggers is the best way to ensure each consumer is directed to the application journey aligned with their needs. For example, a credit union member seeking a loan would only need to fill out the loan applications, while a non-member would need membership and loan applications. Data can help the system differentiate between the two individuals and trigger the right application flow.
Data can also be used inside the application to personalize the experience. Consider the member vs. non-member example again. Once the non-member completes their application and becomes a member, the credit union could present guidance to set up direct deposit in the same session.
The MeridianLink platform and our Marketplace of partner integrations are here to help financial institutions remove friction and accelerate acquisition.
- MeridianLink® Engage and Insight—Bring together insights from across your institution to better understand your consumers and deliver more relevant outreach. That means reaching the right people with the right offers when they’re most likely to need them.
- MeridianLink® Access—Turn that initial engagement into a simple application experience by guiding each consumer to the right application. Flexible fields, workflows, and ready-to-use templates make it easier to keep applications clear, concise, and moving toward submission.
- MeridianLink® Marketplace—Extend that experience with solutions that make it easier for consumers to connect, apply, and take the next step. From SSO integrations with major digital banking providers to lead generation, our partners help you create more opportunities for consumers and your institution.
2. Convert
Whether it’s an applicant struggling with unclear requirements or underwriters bogged down by manual reviews, unnecessary friction slows everyone down and creates frustration, delayed service, and increases the risk of drop-off.
For every completed digital account opening application, 3 are abandoned.
You can’t remove friction you can’t see. That’s why having the right data, and the tools to turn that data into action, is essential.
- MeridianLink® Access and Insight—Together, they give you a clearer view of what’s happening across your application, decisioning, and funding processes. Detailed insights and reporting help you pinpoint bottlenecks, understand what’s causing them, and address them faster.
- MeridianLink® Intelligence—Removes friction by bringing role-based AI agents directly into MeridianLink® One to streamline workflows, increase application-to-funding speed, and improve both customer and employee experiences.
- MeridianLink® Pathway—When an applicant falls just outside your qualification parameters, Pathway provides a guided path forward to help more near-qualified applicants find a way to approval, helping your transform an initial decline into a future funded loan.
- MeridianLink® Marketplace—Bring even more data into the process with compatible partner solutions that give you additional insights to make better-informed decisions. With a more complete view of your operations, you can see what’s working, where progress is slowing, and where consumers are dropping off.
3. Accelerate
Fast, efficient experiences convert. And when your teams can move faster, consumers feel the difference too.
Data-powered automation gives your teams the speed and accuracy to make confident decisions in minutes, or even instantly, while helping more of the right applicants get funded sooner.
- MeridianLink® Access—Make applications faster and easier to complete with pre-filled information, hidden fields, and streamlined templates that only show applicants what they need, when they need it.
- MeridianLink® Consumer and Mortgage—Accelerate decisions, reduce manual reviews, and keep applications moving—all while maintaining compliance and managing risk with intelligent automation across the lending workflow, including auto-booking to your core and auto-disbursements that get funds where they need to go faster.
- MeridianLink® Marketplace—Fill information gaps that can slow applications down and bring additional data into the decisioning process. Combined with the insights that pinpoint where friction and drop-off occur, these integrations help you identify and eliminate slowdowns before they hold up the next application.
4. Protect
Fraud is only getting more sophisticated, making security more important than ever. But stronger security shouldn’t mean slower processes, more friction, or a worse consumer experience. You shouldn’t have to choose between protecting your institution and moving consumers forward.
Fortunately, our partner integrations help you strike that balance with solutions for:
- Intelligent verification that uses data to assess applicant risk and apply the right level of verification, adding stronger checks when they’re needed without slowing down lower-risk applicants.
- Fraud detection and prevention that uses layered strategies to catch suspicious activity while reducing false positives that can create unnecessary delays and friction.
- Risk-adaptive decisioning that replaces one-size-fits-all policies with decisions based on an applicant’s actual risk, helping you protect your institution while keeping more qualified consumers moving forward.
5. Growth
Approval shouldn’t be the end of the conversation, it’s the beginning. Once a consumer becomes a customer, every interaction is an opportunity to deliver more value and grow share of wallet.
That could mean recommending a product that fits their needs, helping them activate a digital debit card, or making it easy to set up recurring payments after opening an account. When you consistently make the relationship more valuable, you create more opportunities to grow with you.
- MeridianLink® Engage—Keep relationships active with timely, relevant offers based on each consumer’s needs, goals, and circumstances. By connecting consumers with products and services when they’re most likely to need them, you can build trust while creating more opportunities for additional business.
- MeridianLink® Pathway—Provides a personalized, digitial, and fully compliant adverse action experience that helps borrowers understand why a decision was made and what to do next, with a clear path back to approval.
- MeridianLink® Marketplace—For those applicants on the cusp, our vendor partners can offer alternative products such as automative loans, personal loans, and credit cards to offload a portion of risk from your institution while giving more near-qualified applicants more near-term chances to engage and build a financial relationship with you.
Watch the full webinar on demand to learn more about digital growth strategies. Plus, see how the MeridianLink platform and our Marketplace partner integrations work together to get you there.
