Adapting for 2025: Strategic Approaches to Banking Growth

Welcome & Housekeeping 

Izzio Nelson 

00:00 – 02:15 

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Izzio Nelson, and I’m the managing director of research and thought leadership here at BAI. 

Thank you for joining today’s webinar. It’s sponsored by MeridianLink, the webinar adapting for 2025, strategic approaches for banking growth. 

I’m gonna introduce our guest here in just a minute. But before we begin, I would like to take a moment just to review some of the housekeeping items. If you have any technical difficulties on your end, please know that a recording of today’s webinar will be sent out to you you for a view on demand option. 

We will be using the pulling feature during today’s session. So there’s some of you that might, not see the pulling question if you’re viewing the module in the full screen mode. 

So just ask that you minimize the module during those polling questions so you can participate in the poll. We will conclude the webinar with a q and a period, at the end of this. 

And, so anytime that you do have question that comes up or you feel you wanna, put it into the q and a box, go ahead and do that, during any time, and then Wes and I will go ahead at the end of this and start answering those questions. And that’s just right at the right of your screen there on the, on the webinar application. 

Also, at the end of today’s session, you’re gonna see an online evaluation on your screen. Your feedback is very important to us, and as we strive to address the key issues that are impacting the industry, especially in today’s dynamic business environment. 

Please just take a couple minutes at the end to complete the survey, and that’ll help us as we continue to do more of these. So let’s go ahead and dive in. 

I’m gonna go ahead, and I’ve got the pleasure of speaking with Wes Zauner here. He’s the vice president of product at marketing, MeridianLink. 

Some of the top strategies he’s gonna talk to us today is gonna be around deposit quality growth, and building stronger customer relationships, especially in today’s rapidly evolving landscape. Now Wes brings a wealth of experience in product management. 

In his current role, he oversees product strategy and user experience design for Meridian Link’s retail lending and account opening capabilities. He’s got really unique perspective working with multiple banks across the industry, and he hears a lot of the feedback that I think is gonna be interesting as we go into this topic. 

So welcome, Wes. Glad to have you. 

Wesley Zauner 

02:15 – 02:18 

Thanks, Izzio. It’s great to be here. 

Appreciate it. 

Izzio Nelson 

02:18 – 05:01 

Great. Well, I think we wanna go ahead and start off with a polling question for the audience. 

It’s always good to see what everybody’s thinking. So we’re gonna go ahead and and put a poll up there. 

And, what we wanna ask you is is what do you think is gonna be the most important factor in attracting new bank customers in 2025? We’ve got a couple of different things in there. You can only take one, answer. 

So is it gonna be personalized financial products, exceptional customer service, competitive interest rates, enhanced digital experiences, or access to trusted financial guidance. So take a second here and go through that. 

And and, Wes, I know these are things that I think are all seem to be important, but I know both you and I have done some research, and it seems we’ll see if the audience here is is aligned to some of the research that we’ve been doing. I see. 

It’s always interesting these little horse races that are coming up on the polling. Looks like we’re getting some good responses here. 

Yep. And the number one that’s usually out there for most customers is still there. 

Okay. I think looks like we’re slowing down. 

So let’s go and lock that in. And so we’ve got, competitive interest rates. 

Looks like it’s leading the pack, and that lines up with the the types of research that we’ve done. It’s usually rates and and fees. 

And then number 2 is that enhanced digital experience, which just happens to be a lot of what we’re gonna talk about today. So it’s good to see that one of the key items out there. 

And then, access to trusted financial guidance, which, you know, we’ll talk a little bit about how that can be done at scale, along with kind of that human element that that’s there too. And, of course, customer service and then some of that personalized financial products, which I think is is another thing we’ll we’ll touch on is is how can some of the bankers do more of that personalization and and do it in a way that, really enhances both the customer experience and then ultimately the the, the overall growth. 

Alright. So, Wes, I’m gonna ask you a couple questions here and and, you know, as we look into 2025, we’re we’re we’re ending the the season. 

Probably people are coming off holiday parties right now. As we look to 2025, though, we’re thinking about, what emerging trends are gonna shape how banks and credit unions are gonna attract and retain quality deposits. 

And I I wanna emphasize the word quality and not just attracting yield seeking customers, which, you know, we’ve seen some different research that we’ve done on our side about banks deploying strategies, including, like, tapping cash incentives, products featuring low and transparent fees, emphasizing new features. What other marketing incentives do you think will dominate the coming year? 

Identifying Quality Customers and Targeted Incentives 

Wesley Zauner 

05:01 – 07:31 

Yeah. That’s that’s great. 

You know, just first, some of the things that you just mentioned, right, make make a lot of sense. But zooming out for a second, I think it’s really important that banks not get drawn into a me too attitude. 

Right? Just looking at what everybody else is doing and assuming that, oh, that’s the playbook that I have to run-in order to be successful. It’s certainly important to have an understanding of, you know, what the competitive landscape looks like as you consider what your customers may be, receiving as far as offers or, you know, other other, banks and financial institutions and some of the playbooks that they’re running. 

But I think a lot of this comes back to first principles. And really starting from the ground up is you wanna answer this question is determining, you know, who who is my customer. 

Right? And that’s talks to segmentation. It really speaks to focus. 

It’s really, not a viable strategy to think about being all things to all people in the same way. And so if you take that customer centric point of view on on answering this question of what are the right incentives, what are the right tactics that I should be using to go after those really strong customers, you know, that have that really good deposit value, you need to think about, you know, what’s important to them. 

Really thinking with the the end in mind, but evaluating. Right? Am I or am I focused on, you know, retail consumers? If so, you know, what what is the type of retail consumer that I’m going after? Right? Is there a particular demographic? Does my geography play a role in what might be meaningful or important to them? Right? If it’s a younger demographic, maybe it’s a student. 

Right? Thinking about, the student’s financial journey, what they’re on, and what are some things you can do to help meet their needs given where they’re at in their financial journey. Maybe your your customer, your ideal customer is, a small business. 

Right? It’s even useful to double click one layer deeper than that, in my opinion, and say, well, what kind of small businesses am I going after? Again, that could be a geographic focus. It could be an industry focus. 

But really putting yourselves in the shoes of your customer, having an outside in view of your business and your offering to really meet them where they’re at and stand out from the crowd so you don’t just get sucked into doing what everybody else does, which will give you the same results as everybody else, which ultimately, you know, is not going to be that that really strong performance that banks really want in 2025. 

Izzio Nelson 

07:31 – 07:46 

Yep. So segmenting and understanding your customer, understanding that customer journey, and then not just who you serviced, but who you want to service as you go forward, within that segmentation. 

Is that pretty much what you’re thinking there? 

Wesley Zauner 

07:46 – 08:50 

Absolutely. And so, you know, the the answers to the actual question, are gonna be very diverse. 

Right? I mean, you you mentioned a couple of of tactics that I think are particularly advantageous with younger demographics that have more of a a transparent shopping mentality. Right? These are things that are very attractive to, to millennials, to Gen Zs that are coming into their prime banking ages. 

And so if those are part of your ideal customer profile, right, those are really, you know, gonna be compelling incentives. But the great news about financial institutions and particularly, like, you know, if you think about the community and and the region that you serve, right, you have that better understanding of those customers and really tailoring your offering to the needs of your ideal customer is really gonna be your playbook for success. 

And so, I don’t wanna be overly prescriptive for what that looks like. Right? That’s part of the the journey that every institution, is is on and thinking through, you know, the answer to that question to meet best meet the needs of their customers. 

Enhancing Loyalty & Retention Through Technology 

Izzio Nelson 

08:50 – 09:16 

Gotcha. So, I wanna dive into something, you know, less about attracting new customers, about more about how you enhance a customer loyalty and retention, as as you come into the coming year, how do you make sure you’re keeping those customers because everybody else is trying to get your own your customers. 

Right? What do you think is gonna happen as far as some of the technologies that play a role in enhancing some of that customer loyalty and retention? 

Wesley Zauner 

09:16 – 12:29 

Yeah. Yeah. 

That’s it’s it’s a really interesting kind of dynamic, question that you just asked there. I think the first thing to acknowledge is that, you know, one of the things that I’ve been thinking through in in my conversations that I’ve been having with with financial institutions is this idea of technology is strategy in 2024 and 2025 and into the future. 

Right? How you take advantage of technology, the types of technology that you onboard really does speak to, you know, what what kind of a strategy am I trying to run as a financial institution of, you know, the modern age? And so, technology allows us to do things like, offer convenience to to customers. Right? I think convenience could not be, understated in terms of its importance to the modern consumer. 

Right? I I reflect on my own personal preferences and how those have been shaped, even over the last couple of years, right, of of the technology and the convenient services that are made available. And, you know, I’m I’m on the younger end of the spectrum, but I would say, you know, everybody has had just tremendous exposure to the convenience that modern tools offer today. 

And so as a as a bank, and thinking through, you know, my offering and how I’m interacting with my customers. Right? Convenience needs to be front and center and using technology to, to enable convenience. 

I think similarly alongside of this, I think personalization is is key. It’s really interesting to see the poll and see where personalization fits into the overall equation. 

I think, Ivio, you point out that, you know, certainly all of the things that we listed were super important ingredients in their own right. But thinking about specifically technology and personalization, I think think some things that you can, explore doing to help with retention and, instilling loyalty in your customers, looking at things like using technology to develop proactive rewards for your good customers. 

Right? Are you are you rewards for your good customers. Right? Are you are you employing things like relationship pricing? Right? How are you using the information that you have on your customers and understanding of their personal habits and behaviors, to give them better service. 

Right? Are you using things like predictive analytics to proactively engage with customers based on propensity, whether that be propensity to churn and getting in front of them with a competitive offer or propensity to expand the relationship and really providing that proactive data driven, journey for for those customers. And just speaking of journeys, I think making it easier across the board, really taking a look at your technology and saying, is this a is this a convenient experience? Is this an easy experience? Am I making it easy to do business with me, based on the different paths that my customers have to interact with me? Or or is there a lot of friction here? Right? Is it hard? Because, eventually, customers are going to gravitate towards the path of least resistance. 

If there are more, easy experiences out there for them to get access to the financial needs, and those being met, that’s eventually where they’re going to gravitate towards. 

Optimizing Digital Onboarding 

Izzio Nelson 

12:29 – 13:22 

Yeah. So that’s a good point. 

I wanna dive in that a little bit is and we we do some work over here at BI, and and, you know, the the flow through rate of customers who come in from an onboarding perspective who then start an application and either abandon or complete, is is pretty low for the industry. And I’m talking about in the single digits. 

So out of a 100 customers, you’re lucky to get, you know, 5 to 6 of those customers to make it through, and then the number of that fund is even less. So part of that is that you just talked about is that onboarding experience and then the balance of that low friction and high fraud mitigation. 

Right? There’s that balance you need to keep. So with the increasing importance of digital, how do you think FIs optimize that onboarding process to reduce that friction and increase revenue generating engagements? 

Wesley Zauner 

13:22 – 16:52 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Well well, the first thing I would say is, you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel on this particular topic. And so for for all of the things that I’ve said in terms of, you know, personalization and, you know, really deep segmentation knowing your customers, there really has been over the recent past, what I feel like is a synthesis of good best practices for digital engagement of customers for financial solutions. 

So some maybe some obvious things to think about, really as you’re thinking about the onboarding journey for a customer, what are you asking them for? What are you asking of them? Right? If you’re asking for certain data, does that data have a really strong purpose in the flow? One of the things that that we’ve seen in our, observations of of data and, you know, looking how our customers use onboarding technology is every additional question and data point introduces friction into the process. Right? Some some of that friction might be good to your point, Isio, around fraud mitigation. 

Right? You want there to be a high friction experience for for bad actors. But for those customers where they’re high intent, they’re high value to your organization, you wanna minimize the amount of hoops that they have to jump through to be able to do business with you. 

And so really taking a look at every single data element, every question, every step in the process and saying, is there a strong purpose and reason for this? And I think a lot of institutions don’t do that as often as they should. There should probably be some periodic cadence where they do a cleanup exercise and say, okay. 

These are things that we’ve maybe introduced into the process. Are we taking a look at this with fresh eyes to ensure that this all works together cohesively? Again, maybe there was one piece of data that you thought you needed. 

Are you taking inventory and doing a retrospective to say, hey. Is this is this giving us what we want in terms of that onboarding journey? Does it really earn its place there? So I think that’s that’s a huge part of it. 

And I think another, you know, best practice that that we’ve seen, become just even more available is, using data, both for understanding the onboarding journey, right, analytics and being able I mean, the the stat that you shared around the overall conversion rate, your institution should know that percentage for your institution. Right? You should know what your conversion percentage is, and you should know that by channel. 

You should know that by customer segments. Right? There’s there’s analytics and technology that’s out there that helps you get an understanding of how people are engaging with you. 

There’s data there, and then there’s data bringing to, data you can bring to the table to prefill an application, right, to to reduce the amount of information that you’re asking somebody for. Right? Even if it’s a net new customer, there are innovative tools out there that you can use to take, limited data points but securely populate other things that you would need to know about them so that you are reducing that friction. 

And, ultimately, right, by employing these types of tools, you’re respecting your user and your customer. You’re respecting their time, and that’s gonna lead to really positive benefits on the back end in terms of their desire to expand you’re so you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. 

I know it’s really cheesy, but I think it I think it’s meaningful, and, you know, respecting your customers by giving them those good tools, really is impactful. 

Delivering Consistent Experiences Across Touchpoints 

Izzio Nelson 

16:52 – 17:56 

Yeah. Yeah. 

I think it’s a great point, and I I think you can do both. You can reduce the number of questions, but also increase some of that fraud mitigation because of some authentication that can happen in the background. 

And I I think the other thing I would say that you just mentioned a little bit about, you know, taking some different approaches and even doing some AB testing that can allow you to see, okay, if I drop these questions, what does that do, and you can have some minimal impact there. Let let’s move on. 

So one of the the research items that we have is that, you know, one of the top demands is is account flexibility, you know, but also a lot of the high touch interaction matters. You talked about it a little bit before, especially for the some of the complex transactions. 

So we just talked about how important investing in onboarding is. Let’s talk about maybe that post onboarding. 

What are the key challenges you think some of the FIs might face in delivering a consistent experience across all the touch points once they got them on board and how they may, be able to overcome them? Yeah. I think there’s a a couple. 

Wesley Zauner 

17:56 – 20:50 

of things that, that come to mind for me as we think about consistency and experience even post onboarding. One is I think understanding the nature of the problem, for for your particular institution. 

Right, especially as as, institution scale, there’s more specialization that tends to occur, right, whether you’re talking by product or by, engagement channel, whether it be in the branch or through digital channels or through call center. Right, the specialization is good, but it can also, at times lead to functional silos where whether it be data isn’t being communicated across the organization or, just overall process and how things are handled become inconsistent. 

And that’s going to lead to negative customer experiences in the long run. Right? It’s increasingly I’m of the opinion that it’s uncommon for a customer to only ever engage with their financial institution through a single channel for the entirety of their customer life cycle. 

Right? The the channel that they may come into isn’t necessarily gonna be the only channel, that they continue to employ throughout the course of their relationship. So I think looking at your technology, right, do I have disparate technology across the different touch points, in my business? Again, not just call center versus branch versus digital, but even the products that you’re offering. 

Right? The the the mortgage if you’re offering mortgages, right, do the mortgage people have an ability to understand what’s happening in your retail and deposit account opening, branch operations? Right? Can they see when somebody comes in and and is expressing intent or desire around these different products? So do your processes support this? Does your technology support this? How are you encouraging that type of mentality of being a representative for for the institution kind of more collectively in your people. Right? Not just, hey. 

I’m only laser focused on this one thing, but I am thinking about my customer. I’m thinking about how do I represent the institution effectively to them and making sure you have that integration across the different technology, the different processes and the different people. 

And one thing that I’ve seen institutions use to great success as they have have made progress in overcoming some of these functional silos is they’ve used journey mapping. Right? They they really kinda think through the customer journey, and they think through, okay. 

What are all the different touch points and and how am I overcoming whatever obstacles may may experience? Right? Where are the points of friction, and what am I doing about that? And so it’s a useful exercise, I think, for every institution to take a look from, again, their customer’s point of view and say, you know, how do I get, access to, you know, what I need? And is it easy, or is that a hard process? And what am I doing to help them? 

Hyperpersonalization in Banking 

Izzio Nelson 

20:50 – 21:20 

Yeah. We I got about 10 minutes left here, Wes, and I I I see some questions coming in. 

I got 2 more for you, and then I’m gonna go to this the audience question. So Okay. 

Great. The first one you you talked about earlier was around personalization, and we’ve heard terms like hyper personalization been talked about in the industry for a while. 

Maybe first ground the audience when you say hyperpersonalization. What does that really mean? Then maybe a little bit about how it could be used to create more effective offers and meet those evolving needs of the customers. 

Wesley Zauner 

21:20 – 23:15 

Yeah. Well, I I think hyper personalization I mean, different people are gonna have different impressions of that, but, you know, maybe the most the most extreme instantiation of hyper personalization is this idea of an audience of 1. 

Right? Every individual is is just that own unique financial journey with their own unique. That’s on their own unique financial journey with their own unique needs. 

And so, you know, over time, pursuing strategies and, and services that allow you to connect what you can offer at scale as an institution, you know, with with, you know, strong profit margins, strong efficiencies with each of the individual needs of the various different, individuals that have, a need for banking. Right? I think that’s what hyperpersonalization speaks to. 

And I think, you know, as time goes on, that becomes more and more of a realistic proposition because of things like data. Right? Because of things and interesting new technologies like artificial intelligence as an example and being able to understand, customers and off develop and curate offers for them that are truly relevant to what they need when they need it. 

So, yeah, those are some critical ingredients. In the spirit of journey mapping as well, if if if you have a personalization journey and think about, the types of experiences that your your customers are gonna have, being able to use technology to create bespoke experiences, where a customer that you know, maybe the small business customer, maybe has a different, a different journey than a retail customer and then potentially even one click down from that. 

Right? Each of these segments has their own unique experience and journey through your organization that’s curated and designed for them. Right? It’s just taking these incremental steps towards that hyper personalization. 

AI’s Role in Personalization, Cross-Sell, and Service 

Izzio Nelson 

23:15 – 24:15 

Yeah. And and you mentioned one thing in there, which was I’ll leave to my last one. 

And so, you know, we wouldn’t be, talking to the industry if we weren’t talking about AI. We wouldn’t be talking about 2025, but we weren’t talking about AI. 

You you inserted it in there a little bit. So, you know, I know a lot of the banks we talk to are kind of in this still early phase about AI and and can they use it, how can they use it, where can they use it, and and whether it’s internally or through other vendors that that that have AI. 

So with that early stages in some of the limited investments that they have in some of the AI technology, and I’m sure you feel a lot of the AI related questions too, how do you think AI’s capabilities can potentially help financial institutions identify, capitalize on some of the the personalization you talk to in the cross sell and upsell and other ways to to service those customers? And, I I would just say as we look at that too, don’t think about just maybe 2025. Let’s even kinda think about just, eventually, how does AI help? 

Wesley Zauner 

24:15 – 26:33 

Yeah. Well, boy, like like you said, this could be a conversation unto itself. 

And so for sake of time, I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll strive for brevity. You know, I think AI is, is actually been around for quite a while. 

I think the, the generative AI technologies, are are truly impressive and exciting. And and just as a person, I enjoy using and exploring those. 

But there are other types of AI that, you know, have been around for a while that really can advance the purposes of an institution. You know, some some things that I think maybe maybe shorter pluses, you think about using AI to create outsized business results. 

AI can help you know your customer more deeply. I I briefly alluded to this. 

But really understanding taking the data that you have on customers, right, looking at their payment and transactions data and understanding, you know, how do I proactively get in front of them, with the right offer at the right time to expand that relationship or get in front of them if you think that they’re gonna churn. Right? There’s so many different propensity indices that you can use that leverage AI and machine learning to create those insights for for your staff and for your people. 

It also can be used, I think, to great effect in identifying fraud and potentially malicious behavior. That’s a really, another really good use case for AI is identifying patterns that, that would necessitate and require further attention to just confirm is this actually, you know, is this is this good behavior? Is this bad behavior? And then lastly, I think AI can, can help you offer that convenient experience that I mentioned earlier. 

Right? You know, there are there are chatbots that you can employ, in the experience to give people contextual help and assistance. Right, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a human anymore on the other end of it. 

Chatbots are incredible now with what they’re capable of offering. And so, you know, you can deploy AI, you know, contextually to, to your customers to get them answers to questions and things real time, that allow you to scale beyond just hiring people to answer those questions. 

So, you know, maybe just 3 high level suggestions there, but definitely an interesting topic. 

Audience Q&A 

Izzio Nelson 

26:33 – 27:10 

Yeah. That’s great. 

And I would just add on that last one you said because we’ve seen some of this as more of a hybrid. So it may be AI assisting the existing staff you have to make them more efficient to be able to answer questions quicker and more, succinctly for their customers Mhmm. 

And and just create that overall customer experience. So we’ve got a couple of minutes left. 

I I got some questions that have been coming in here, Wes. So, let me see if, you’ll be able to, take some of these. 

Or if not, we can always get back to them later. One is, how can the smaller banks compete with the bigger players when it comes to digital innovation? 

Wesley Zauner 

27:10 – 27:59 

Well, harkening back to something that I said earlier in terms of, not feeling the need to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of great solutions that are out there from companies that are offering their services to more community financial institutions. 

And through economies of scale, right, you can develop partnerships that allow you to have technology and have solutions, that rival that of the big banks that are really maybe more focused on building things in house to solve for these problems. And so, a strong partner ecosystem, having strong partnerships with companies that understand your business, that have been in business for a long time as well and know the space, I think, you know, there are myriad solutions, to to offer similar services to what the big banks would offer. 

Izzio Nelson 

27:59 – 28:21 

Gotcha. And, one last one here before we close out and wrap up. 

And we didn’t talk about this much at all, but I think it’s an interesting question around, supporting financial literacy with the consumer is how do you think banks can use that to differentiate themselves and support their overall engagement as efforts? 

Wesley Zauner 

28:21 – 29:50 

Yeah. Yeah. 

This one really is interesting, and I think there’s a lot of different strategies that can be employed. Again, the risk of sounding like a broken record, a lot of this does come down to who is your ideal customer and, you know, what type of financial literacy do they need, in order to advance in their unique financial journey. 

So, certainly, taking advantage of tools like, that is more of a prescriptive general statement, but, you know, leaning into things like social media, right, not being afraid of the digital ecosystem to provide, you know, recommendations and and even self help tools that allow customers to self educate and get the help that they need. Certainly, even staff training and making sure that your staff is is competent and capable of, you know, when there is an interaction, that that staff is really helpful to understand and get at the root of what that person really, really needs for their financial services. 

And there’s some interesting solutions to to help with that as well, and and scale that out. And then, yeah, just personalization, almost by definition, is can be can be viewed as a source of financial literacy. 

Right? If you’re not presenting everything to somebody and making them have to figure out, well, which of these things is truly relevant for me if you’re doing the work on the front end to target your offers, to target the journey that they’re gonna be on, right, there’s gonna even be, some guidance there that’s given to them without them even realizing it. And so that may be another opportunity that institutions have. 

Izzio Nelson 

29:50 – 31:17 

Great. Well, Wes, we’re coming up to the end here. 

I think we had a great discussion today. I think if I were to kinda summarize it, it’s make sure you’re you’re segmenting your customer, use data to be able to know who you’re serving, understand that customer perspective and that journey, and then go ahead and shape everything, including the technology around it to be able to serve that customer. 

And together, that hopefully should get a winning strategy. Well, thank you, Wes. 

We really appreciate you sharing your insights with us today. And thanks to everybody for joining us. 

If you are interested in connecting with Wes, his contact details are gonna pop up right now. You can also find a QR code to to access more insights on strategic deposit acquisition. 

I think it’s a great, offering there. And as a follow-up today’s, session, you’re gonna receive an email from BAI within about 48 hours. 

It’s gonna include a link to this webinar recording. I would encourage you to share the link with your team or other peers who might benefit from the insights that we shared today. 

Also, you may have heard that BAI and RMA have come together to form ProSight Financial Association. We’re really excited about this opportunity to serve the broader range of financial service leaders through the thought leadership like this as well as peer sharing, learning, and development, and a variety of decision support solutions. 

So you can learn more about that at prosightfa. org, and, we look forward to continue to be able to see everybody in the new year. 

This concludes our session today, and thank you again. Enjoy the rest of your day. 

Thanks again, Wes. Great meeting you. 

Wesley Zauner 

31:17 – 31:18 

Thank you, Izzio. Thank you, everybody.