Loyalty

Building Lifetime Loyalty and Customer Value in Banking

When banks and credit unions open the door to multiple digital channels

It allows them to acquire a greater number of customers than by in-person branch visits alone. According to a 2021 digital banking consumer survey, 20-25% of consumers would prefer opening a new bank account digitally but are still unable to do so today. In fact, the difference between one customer’s business for a few years vs their entire adult life can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
With Verivend, banks gain: an increase in customer adoption and retention, and additional revenue opportunities.

Going Digital Drives Lifetime Value

Listening to what consumers want and offering high-quality digital experiences is a vital part of creating a long-term customer strategy. So, improving lifestyle value must start from the beginning, by modernizing the way customers open a new account through digital means. Customers don’t just want a seamless account setup experience anymore, they expect it. Thus offering quick and convenient features like integrated document management, integration with existing billing and accounting platforms, and the ability to build trust and reputability with their vendors One of the greatest benefits consumers express about going digital is being able to manage their financial lives in the palm of their hand, at any time, from anywhere. The rise of the API economy, Open Banking, and digital is allowing banks to merge with strategic partners whose services they can offer and benefit from together.
Verivend opted to break the competitive ties traditionally woven between banks and Fintechs by striking up a cutting-edge partnership with Lake Shore Savings Bank. Now, Lake Shore Savings can deliver a seamless, white-labeled experience to their customers as they integrate Verivend into existing AR and AP systems and workflows to modernize their B2B transactions. Creating a tech-based partnership with superior value drives consumer value to last a lifetime.

Does Creating a Customer for Life Really Matter?

The short answer to this question is: of course, it does. Creating a customer for life quickly turns into creating customers for life. This, in turn, helps businesses determine important factors such as how much time and resources to dedicate to new customer acquisitions. It actually costs more to continually acquire new customers than it does to keep existing ones so adding lifetime value to an existing customer experience can be a cost-efficient growth strategy. It’s vital to gain a genuine understanding of each customer and their financial lives as they make decisions on products and services to buy depending on where their financial status stands. Something else to consider when asking does a customer for life really matters, is age-range demographics, since certain age groups may be less profitable when they first sign up but provide a much higher lifetime value in the future.

How to Face Changing Consumer Values

Banking and the financial industry face continuous threats from all different directions including, rapidly changing customer values and new digital competition from other banks and or platforms. However, not only taking into consideration but implementing some of the strategies mentioned above to improve the financial lives of consumers can help increase brand loyalty and derive lifetime value from customers.

Fintech

How Banks Can Learn From Fintechs

Like COVID-19 has done with just about everything in life, it is now changing the way customers interact with their banks

possibly forever. Customers are starting to want more than just a “cool” mobile app and hollow promises from their banks to support the community they serve. In fact, 44% of consumers say their purchasing decisions will be negatively impacted when they see banks focused on maximizing profits during this difficult time. However, some banks aren’t quite buying this and are beginning to question if these changes will really last as the pandemic dispels? Below, we’ve highlighted consumer-focused shifts in banking and where they’re taking the future of finances.

Banking the Responsible Way

Product and profit maximization focus in banking has started to take a back seat to providing a consumer-centric banking experience. Responsible banking is becoming more important than ever as customers don’t want or need financial products anymore if those products can’t actually do something positive for them. While the global pandemic did send a surge of panic that left some banks scrambling to prioritize their profits over their growth, it is now time to take a step back and reestablish long-term investments in top-notch customer experience. A strong and trusted relationship with customers is pivotal to banks competing with, or embracing fintech solutions, but this doesn’t happen overnight. Banks will need to begin putting a long-term plan in place right now that puts intuitive and compelling customer experiences at the forefront of what they do.

Banking Is Beginning to Fragment

Banking services such as payments, savings, and loans are beginning to fragment as Fintechs create a more consumer-centric way of handling them. According to recently collected 2020 statistics, 47% of financial service companies considering a third-party collaborator wanted to partner with a fintech firm. As of 2021, Western New York’s fastest-growing bank, Lake Shore Savings Bank partnered with Verivend so as to combine their banking capabilities with a robust and secure cloud-based payment platform that immediately helps Lake Shore’s business banking customers. Even the majority of banking business executives at 84% believe cloud technology will play a transformative role throughout banking. Thanks to open banking, the data around consumers are much more accessible, making it possible for both Verivend and Lake Shore Savings to design a digitally financial environment geared toward consumers in a more intelligent way. Banks like Lake Shore Savings have already secured a partnership with Verivend and here’s what’s in it for them.

  • Increased customer retention.
  • New customers attracted.
  • Additional revenue opportunities.

The Future is Fintech

So, whether banks believe in the future of fintech or not, it’s clear consumers do and they’re more than willing to immerse themselves in the future of experience. In order to not only catch up but compete, the banking sector must step up to the challenge of solving customer problems in a customer-focused way. So, open the door to the future by receiving exclusive access to our platform’s banking-centric features by signing up through verivend.com/banking.