Bank Innovation Reimagined

t’s a new era for community banking - the pandemic forced banks to become proactive, and to question existing business models. At the same time, fintech firms emerged that challenged the status quo in banking. According to an Accenture report, some of the top banking trends for the coming year include reimagining the importance of innovation, using technology and automation to improve banking experiences and back-office efficiencies, understanding the impact of new payment alternatives, and fighting for talent. Georgia community bankers have found that keeping up with the changing digital marketplace is indeed a challenge and opportunity. CBA is pleased to share experiences from those on the digital front line – challenges, where to start, employee adoption, improving efficiencies and successes.

Griffin: The biggest challenge for me concerning fintech and innovation is knowing what innovative product or offering fits in my shop. Like many, I like new technology and I am intrigued by the latest and great advancements. Every vendor throws around phrases like Fintech, Metaverse, NFT’s or Crypto Currency, so much so that it has created a cacophony of buzzwords that can make you feel like you are behind the times if you are not participating in or providing a way for your customers to use those products. Quite frankly, today, most of those words have no real tangible impact on the way the majority of community banks interact daily with their customers. For most community bankers, I believe it is best to keep your ears to the ground and stay in the conversation, so that you do not miss an opportunity that to provide new technology that fits in your market or will be of benefit to your customers. However, be careful to not be overwhelmed by the fasttalking heads who attempt to play to your fear of missing out. This can cause you to purchase a product or change course unnecessarily which will not produce a return for your bank and can end up being a costly mistake.

President Flint Community Bank Albany

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Griffin: Do your homework!! Make sure the product fits in the unique structure of your community and your bank. The new product or offering must enhance the experience of your customer so much that it is easily seen in an increase to the bottom line by growth in revenues or decrease in operational expenses, or preferably, both!!

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Herring: First Century Bank, N.A. (FCB) partnered with a global fintech partner to launch a virtual commercial purchasing card at the beginning of last year (2021). The card program was marketed to e-commerce marketplace sellers to facilitate purchases needed to run and scale their businesses, such as Google and Facebook digital ad buys and arranging logistics with carriers all over the world. The program has been a success for FCB and also our fintech partner, which enabled them to stay ahead of the curve in a very competitive market and also provide a value-added service. This helped them maintain their current client base and attract new clients. We expect this program to see $1 billion in spends by 2022 YE.

Herring: Whether you’re a traditional community bank or a fintech, payments-focused bank like FCB, the client experience is always at the forefront of what we do. Our BSA and Compliance teams are well-versed in what it takes to onboard emerging fintech payments clients and assist in understanding regulatory implications of every program. This knowledge base allows FCB to provide a frictionless, efficient onboarding experience and for a smooth program launch. Combined with our ability to be nimble and responsive, the results are an improved client experience, which helps us build a long term foundation of trust with our fintech and BaaS partnerships.

Helen Herring Senior Vice President, Payments Implementation First Century Bank, N.A., Commerce

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Sebade: I think the cultural aspect of your bank being ready to adapt and knowing what you are trying to accomplish with innovation and technology is a very large hurdle for FIs.

Sebade: I think as banks we are always getting pitched about how technology is going to improve our expenses – it is part of every pitch. If you asked that question to the BankSouth team, I think you would get back a laundry list of things that were intended to improve our efficiency but what really happens the project frees up time and that time ends up being spent on other tasks (or in the worst case, our old processes don’t update with the new technology and we become no more efficient with a higher tech spend). Anyway, I think it may be rare to ask if someone is trying to improve revenues through fintech and expand their offerings to reach new customers or offer a new level of service or product.

Keith Sebade Chief Strategic Officer BankSouth, Atlanta

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Executive Vice President/Chief Technology Officer First National Bank of Coffee County, Douglas

Bridges: While not a fintech related innovation, First National Bank of Coffee County (FNBCC) recently converted from a traditional phone system to a cloud-based phone system, improving our communications capabilities. Our traditional phone system was outdated, lacked both functionality and support, and we had experienced outages with our service provider. Our goal was to find a cloud-based phone system that could provide a modern telecommunications experience as well as business continuity capabilities. In addition, we wanted the ability to easily manage and configure the phone system ourselves. Our team investigated a number of providers including several of the well-known vendors and eventually decided on an established vendor which had recently added a cloud-based phone service to their suite of offerings. The selection of this vendor has proven to be a good one for FNBCC. The vendor offers a complete digital communications suite, and we were able to integrate all of our communication channels – video conferencing, telephone, and instant messaging into one platform. The cloud-based phone system operates on traditional VOIP desktop phones, as a desktop app, and on a full feature mobile app. This flexibility allows us to effortlessly extend our phone system to remote work environments and enables our employees to easily communicate with each other and our customers while on the go. We have the ability to fully administer the system as well as analyze call volumes and call quality. Not only has the system improved the quality and dependability of our communications, but we have also achieved efficiency gains by having a fully integrated telecommunications system.

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At Craft Bank, it took us a long time to identify the right partner to develop a loan portal for us. We had in our minds very specific functionalities that we wanted for this app. Before consummating our arrangement with LeapXL we spoke with probably 20 different software companies, many of whom had already developed apps that incorporated portions of what we wanted, but not in its entirety. It was interesting to be “pitched” as to why a certain already available app was actually superior to what we “thought” we wanted. In the end, our portal will do exactly what we want and how we want it done. So, if it does not achieve the customer service and efficiency goals that we have set, then that will be 100% on us. My suggestion would be for any bank seeking to implement either an upgrade or a new piece of technology to do the following: a. Have clear consensus among the decision makers as to what you want – everyone should articulate the same objective in 20 seconds or less; b. Have clear consensus as to why this is necessary (not just important); c. Have the CFO run a model to project the quantitative goal: increase revenue, save FTE’s, enhance customer service, etc. And then compare that with the cost to purchase as well as the cost to implement and then maintain; d. Finally – ask the troops about it. If they don’t get behind it, it will be added to the bin of stuff you have, but don’t use.

Ross Mynatt President & CEO Craft Bank Atlanta

Executive Insurance is a Preferred Service Provider of the CBA of Georgia, and has been working with community banks in Georgia since 1980.

We are totally committed to the future of community banking and consequently are setting the standard in service, knowledge and innovation in this very important area. We encourage you to call on us for a comprehensive review of your specific needs.