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. 

Digital growth strategies are top of mind for every financial institution, but those strategies are often narrow in scope. 

The emphasis rests on attracting more applicants and raising completed application volume. To be clear, these are critical steps to long-term growth. Every loyal customer or member began as an applicant. But capturing more applicants doesn’t equate to capturing more relationships, or even more funded accounts. 

Financial relationships, like any type of relationship, thrive with intention. You wouldn’t pursue a friendship with a person who always places the onus to keep in touch and make plans on you alone. Similarly, you wouldn’t pursue a relationship with a financial institution that forces you to go out of your way for application updates or more information about additional products you’re interested in.  

The institutions sustaining growth look beyond application volume alone and prioritize delivering experiences with customer-focused intention at every stage of the relationship to build engagement and trust that last well into the future. 

In a recent webinar, we explored what’s possible when better digital experiences today lead to greater growth tomorrow. 

Aligning digital performance with customer-focused intention 

From the application experience 

Application volume is one performance metric to consider, but what about the dozens of metrics within your application experience? 

The application stage is where first impressions are made, and those impressions make or break relationships and, by extension, growth potential. One small friction point in the journey may not spur abandonment, but what about when that small bottleneck is followed by a series of other small bottlenecks? Worse yet, what about when the institution isn’t even aware there are any bottlenecks to begin with? 

Periodically reviewing and refining your application flow is customer-focused intention in practice. Maybe overall application volume is steady, but a specific applicant flow is broken and hemorrhaging otherwise viable opportunities. When you pinpoint issues like spikes in dropoff or slowly rising average completion times, you can find the root of the issue and resolve it to provide a smoother, simpler experience that makes it easier to take applications over the finish line. 

Some application metrics and information worth examining beyond just volume are: 

• Abandonment rates and common dropoff points in the flow.  
• Which steps require manual intervention and opportunities to automate where possible. 
• Approve-to-fund ratio. 
• The follow-up sequence for declined applicants who aren’t immediately approved to maintain connection. 

Keep your fraud risk-friction balance in mind, too. Sometimes bottlenecks are caused by overly stringent risk management protocols that drive away legitimate, qualified applicants. Removing redundant controls, applying controls in proportion to actual risk, and implementing data and ID verification earlier in the application journey can minimize disruption or slowdowns for those legitimate individuals. 

Through the decisioning process and beyond 

Once you reach the decision phase, it’s time to double down on your customer-first focus.  

Everyone knows the common phrase “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” Here, it’s good practice to keep a similar saying in mind: It’s about the journey, not just the decision. 

Yes, your applicants want a fast decision. But the experience leading up to, surrounding, and following the decision hold just as much weight as the decision itself. It’s about pairing speed and simplicity with confidence—in your institution and among each applicant. 

That confidence is built through: 

• Clear expectations and timelines throughout the application and decisioning processes. 
• Timely requests for additional information. 
• Visibility into application status, as well as regular communication across channels to keep applicants in the loop. 
• Coordinated, helpful next steps following the decision. 

Those next steps following the decision, whether approved or declined, are arguably the most decisive actions you can take to build relationships and long-term growth. 

Approving an applicant doesn’t guarantee the relationship. If you don’t lay out the next steps post-approval, that applicant will turn to other institutions for answers (and solutions).  

Your best chance to convert approved applicants to funded accounts comes in following “Yes” decisions with a strong onboarding cadence, regular outreach, and readily available support. From there, you can extend that engagement further and turn isolated transactions into a deep, rich relationship. That can look like: 

• Reviewing available data to better understand the borrower’s financial circumstances and current, external relationships. 
• Determining when a borrower is ready for another product. 
• Offering appropriate supplemental products, services, and resources based on the borrower’s needs. 

And even when the initial decision is no 

Outlining a path forward matters just as much for your declined applicants as it does for your approved ones, too.  

Adverse action isn’t necessarily the end of the road for financial relationships. In fact, as many as 30% of declined applicants are on an upward financial trajectory, meaning that given a few months or years, several of today’s declines will pass the qualification threshold. 

However, 70% of declined applicants never re-apply with the institution that declined them. Why would they, considering that many of those applicants never heard from the institution again following a notice with scant rationale, next steps, or guidance? 

Keeping those opportunities, and relationships, intact requires reframing adverse action as a “Not yet” rather than simply “No.” Don’t punt real near-future opportunities directly into your competitors’ pipelines. Instead, use the decline as an opening to educate, nurture, and build trust. 

Explain, in plain language, what the reasons mean and why they impacted the decision. Then, provide a roadmap to approval outlining which criteria need to improve and how to reach qualification within your institution. Monitor progress and automatically notify the applicant of eligibility changes as soon as they occur to keep them motivated and on board.  

And, naturally, be sure to be the one to deliver the good news alongside a link to reapply when they qualify for their desired product. After all, as applicants’ situations improve, you likely won’t be the only institution contacting them with offers. Stay ahead of those institutions by remaining in lock step with the applicant after the decline, guiding them through every moment that comes next with sound advice and practical action. Those are the moments that build enduring relationships. 

One connected platform to power digital grow th strategies 

Understanding how these items each play a role in developing relationships and sustaining growth is the easy part. The challenge is figuring out how to implement them in your financial institution and in ways tailored to each applicant. 

Just as your applicants deserve a supportive, clear path forward, so do you. That’s the spirit behind the MeridianLink^® One platform. 

Our technology doesn’t force your institution or consumers to conform to prescribed workflows or capabilities. You know your institution’s and consumer’s needs best. So, we take a modular, configurable approach that puts you in control. Simply put, we provide an array of integrated solutions, and you add the solutions best aligned to your goals. As those goals evolve, you can reconfigure and incorporate additional MeridianLink solutions to meet those needs.  

MeridianLink One brings consumer and mortgage lending, account opening, personalized engagement, data analytics, and collections under one core-connected ecosystem. Within those solutions, you can bridge procedural gaps, offer prompt, proactive service, and progress growth through intelligent, data-backed capabilities including: 

• Embedded AI-enabled insights and automation for rapid, reliable decisions and fewer time-consuming manual tasks. 
• Configurable, compliant workflow and underwriting rules that refine your operations rather than replacing them altogether. 
• Straightforward, personalized application journeys that only ask what’s needed, eliminate friction, and deliver quick answers—all from the applicant’s preferred channel.  
• Tailored, timely cross-sell outreach that places relevant products and services in front of the people who could benefit from them the most. 

This is the part where we say, “And so much more.” It’s true: there’s so much more to these solutions, because there are so many tools and abilities that institutions need to keep their operations running smoothly and continuously grow business.  

And when specialized solutions are needed, trusted MeridianLink^® Marketplace integrations extend capabilities from fraud protection and ID verification to eDocuments and indirect lending. 

See how MeridianLink can help you develop deeper relationships that ensure your growth goes beyond application volume alone.