The best digital banking solutions enhance consumer experiences and loyalty, drive growth and ROI, and help the financial institution stay competitive with other financial institutions vying for the same consumers, including giant commercial banks, community banks, credit unions, and neobanks.
A recent survey with the American Bankers Association shows that mobile app banking is the most preferred form of banking. Such a critical piece of end-user engagement technology requires a strategic evaluation approach focused on metrics that assess your capabilities, methodologies, track record, and alignment with your institution’s goals.
To start, outline the outcome-based metrics that matter to your financial institution. This will help you to establish a foundation for evaluating a provider. Common metrics include the following, among others:
- Growth in transaction volume, revenue, assets, and loans
- Operational efficiency
- Digital app score
- Mobile parity
- Adoption rates of digital banking channels
- Regulatory compliance track record
- Cybersecurity breaches
Essential Questions
How will you help me connect with my customers?
A digital banking platform is a powerful conduit for financial institutions to build strong digital relationships with their customers. Satisfaction and user experience should be a top priority for your digital banking provider.
- Ask for a working version of the platform to test drive the experience for ease of use and availability of the features that matter most to your end users.
- How does the platform help me onboard users and encourage them to adopt features?
- Do users like the platform? What are their clients’ average app ratings? Ask for UX metrics to determine ease of use and convenience.
- How will the platform stay competitive with the changing UX trends? Can the users make suggestions for future improvements?
- How can the UX be tailored for different user groups or segments?
Different from the branch experience, the digital platform offers the promise of unparalleled convenience.
- Is the platform always available, anywhere and anytime? Are there maintenance windows where the platform is unavailable? If so, for how long?
- Does the platform provide the features that your end users expect? What self-service tools are available?
- Does the platform offer personalized dashboards and alerts, tailored insights, and notifications?
- How sophisticated and targeted are the data analytics? Financial institutions gain deeper insights into end-user behaviors and preferences, enabling targeted product offerings and personalized experiences, nurturing robust and more enduring relations, and fostering engagement and empowerment among users.
Digital platforms should facilitate seamless communication between the user and your financial institution, allowing for efficient query resolution and end-user support. What communication channels does the provider support? Does that align with your preferred methods of communication?
What can I expect with respect to platform disruptions? How much time/people will my financial institution have to devote to support the product?
Financial institutions do not have to accept service disruption, even during routine maintenance. It is costly. Downtime can negatively impact the financial institution and its users, including financial loss, user dissatisfaction, reputation damage, regulatory scrutiny, security risks, and more.
Platforms built in the cloud avoid costly downtime and can push updates more often without disruption.
- Ask about uptime. Digital banking platforms may mask uptime totals by not including disruption in service during planned maintenance windows.
- How frequently is the system updated, and what are the associated costs? Ask for the in-house QA time required to support regular maintenance and updates. Especially for platforms built on older technologies and not cloud-native, QA efforts may have to be rigorous to maintain the platform’s reliability and security.
- How will moving to a new vendor impact the call center? Will the call center be free to provide exceptional member service, or will they be firefighting issues all day? If the UX is not intuitive and the service is unreliable, call center support will be needed to ensure prompt assistance for users encountering issues or needing guidance with digital banking services.
Do you have multiple referenceable clients? Case studies?
Talk to multiple clients. Request case studies, success stories, and client references. Reviewing real-world examples of successful implementations, measurable outcomes achieved, and client testimonials provide valuable context and validation of the provider’s impact, such as end-user satisfaction, revenue growth, and operational efficiency.
What type of data analytics and reporting capabilities do you provide? How will you use this data?
Data analytics is crucial in assessing and optimizing digital banking outcomes and innovating for the future. Inquire about the provider’s data analytics capabilities, reporting tools, dashboards, and ability to track and measure KPIs important to your financial institution.
A provider with robust data analytics capabilities enables informed decision-making and continuous performance monitoring for your financial institution.
Can you tell me about the user experience and training capabilities? Ask for examples of how they measure responsiveness and satisfaction.
Practical user experience and comprehensive training are often keys to a successful partnership. Get to know your account executive.
- Evaluate the provider’s support channels, responsiveness, expertise, training resources for your staff and users, and ongoing support after implementation. Poor customer support and training lead to poor outcomes and frustration.
- What resources are available to help the financial institution get the most out of the platform over time? Are there educational updates? Product roadmaps? How will your account executive communicate that to you?
How does the organization provide for and ensure compliance and security? Does all of the FI’s data stay in the U.S., or does the provider employ offshore data centers or employees?
Compliance with regulatory standards and robust cybersecurity practices are critical for protecting end-user data and ensuring trust in digital banking services. Inquire about the provider’s compliance frameworks, adherence to industry regulations (such as GDPR or PCI DSS), security protocols, encryption standards, data protection measures, and incident response procedures. More stringent security measures are required if the provider uses data centers or employees outside the United States.
Summary
Evaluating a digital banking provider’s ability to impact critical outcomes requires a comprehensive assessment of their capabilities, methodologies, track record, and alignment with your institution’s goals. Financial institutions can choose the digital banking provider that drives positive outcomes by defining key metrics, speaking with client references, reviewing data analytics capabilities, considering customer support and training, and evaluating compliance and security measures. Partnering with the right provider can enhance end-user experiences, grow assets, deposits, and revenue, improve operational efficiency, and ensure regulatory compliance.
