Believe in Banking Podcast
In our special summer series, we’re revisiting some of our most popular episodes and rounding up some of the best thinking from banking leaders featured on the Believe in Banking podcast. In this special summer episode, we’re highlighting insights from: Ryan Kilpatrick, executive vice president and chief brand and communication officer from Origin Bank; Brad Tidwell, president and CEO of VeraBank; and Jimmy Stead, chief consumer banking officer at Frost Bank. In these enlightening conversations, these leaders talk about the year of change that COVID brought to banking and how the pandemic accelerated the way customers bank. They discuss how their institutions managed through change and helped people understand what’s happening and what’s coming. Finally, with purpose at their core, these bankers demonstrate how banking can be a force for good.
Ask An Expert
Sean Keathley discusses how to create connections through branch conversions
After a COVID slowdown in banking mergers and acquisitions, we’re now in the midst of a predicted a resurgence of M&A activity in 2021. But it's once the deal is done, that the real work begins. In this Ask an Expert, Sean Keathley discusses converting branches to the new post-merger brand. With the exterior of the branch as your beacon and the interior as your experience, branch conversion is a rich opportunity to drive acquisition, deepen customer connections, and solidify and grow relationships. Learn the principles and practices in branch conversion that help banks master all the complexity.
We believe that banking can help us overcome this crisis and emerge stronger for it.
Leveraging the Local Influence of the Branch to Grow
How branch networks help financial institutions meet consumers where they are and make the most of all-time high acquisition opportunity As communities across the U.S. …
Financial Institutions Move Away from Fee-Driven Banking Model
How banks and credit unions can lead the path forward by embracing a banking-for-good model The year 2020 was a watershed moment. For financial services, …
Earning and Keeping Consumer Trust in Post-COVID Banking
How trust sparks and sustains bank and credit union relationships and provides the underpinning of powerful purpose for financial institutions As we continue coming out …
Weekly Round-Up
Believe in Data
Outside View
Marketing to meaningfully address the banking needs of the LGBTQIA+ community
With an impressive $3.7 trillion in in buying power, the LGBTQIA+ community is undoubtedly a financial force in the U.S. and a prime audience for banking services. As banks and credit unions look to become more purpose-driven and more inclusive in how they equitably serve their customers, Pride Month is a great time to consider both marketing campaigns that speak directly to queer communities as well as more meaningful changes.
As Forbes notes in a recent feature, a successful LGBTQIA+ marketing campaign must be built from a place of authenticity that “helps lay the groundwork for change.” More than adding a rainbow flag to a social media presence during Pride Month, building impactful campaigns that invite inclusive communities into your brand require a ground-up, inside-out approach that includes: ensuring representation of LGBTQIA+ voices in marketing decision-making; envisioning campaigns that include a wide range of people; and choosing the right language making deliberate, thoughtful choices in copy that don’t fall into gendered stereotypes.
But demonstrating a commitment to serving LGBTQIA+ communities must go beyond marketing. Financial services’ legacy thinking and outmoded technology can inadvertently make life harder for queer consumers in their banking relationships. A Forbes article on inclusion in banking puts it this way: “The modern world of finance and banking has only complicated queer lives, with outdated banking IT systems that consistently deadname those who identify as trans or nonbinary.”
Now the banking platform Daylight, All Out and the National Center for Transgender Equality are teaming up to call on financial institutions go beyond Pride Month marketing and dedicate their dollars to better address the challenges of transgender and non-binary banking customers. In #CallMeByMyName, the coalition says serving LGBTQIA+ community begins with calling people by their chosen names. Daylight cofounder Billie Simmons, says, “Being able to access debit and credit cards in your chosen name (versus a legal designation), which is not necessarily your legal name, is vital for ensuring the physical safety and security of trans and non-binary people.”
The campaign asks financial intuitions to: enable transgender and non-binary customers to update their name and gender identification for free and without requiring doctor, judge or notary authorization; to recognize customers by their true gender identity and name across every customer service touchpoint; and enact a publicly available plan and track progress by the end of the year. The coalition is also asking banking organizations like the American Bankers Association to use their commitment to diversity to influence industrywide change.
For more ways to create customized and meaningful marketing campaigns with diversity and inclusion at their core, email info@adrenalineagency.com.
Marketing to meaningfully address the banking needs of the LGBTQIA+ community
With an impressive $3.7 trillion in buying power, the LGBTQIA+ community is undoubtedly a financial force in the U.S. and a prime audience for banking services. As banks and credit unions look to become more purpose-driven and more inclusive in how they equitably serve their customers, Pride Month is a great time to consider both marketing campaigns that speak directly to queer communities as well as more meaningful changes.
As Forbes notes in a recent feature, a successful LGBTQIA+ marketing campaign must be built from a place of authenticity that “helps lay the groundwork for change.” More than adding a rainbow flag to a social media presence during Pride Month, building impactful campaigns that invite inclusive communities into your brand require a ground-up, inside-out approach that includes: ensuring representation of LGBTQIA+ voices in marketing decision-making; envisioning campaigns that include a wide range of people; and choosing the right language making deliberate, thoughtful choices in copy that don’t fall into gendered stereotypes.
But demonstrating a commitment to serving LGBTQIA+ communities must go beyond marketing. Financial services’ legacy thinking and outmoded technology can inadvertently make life harder for queer consumers in their banking relationships. A Forbes article on inclusion in banking puts it this way: “The modern world of finance and banking has only complicated queer lives, with outdated banking IT systems that consistently deadname those who identify as trans or nonbinary.”
Now the banking platform Daylight, All Out and the National Center for Transgender Equality are teaming up to call on financial institutions go beyond Pride Month marketing and dedicate their dollars to better address the challenges of transgender and non-binary banking customers. In #CallMeByMyName, the coalition says serving LGBTQIA+ community begins with calling people by their chosen names. Daylight cofounder Billie Simmons, says, “Being able to access debit and credit cards in your chosen name (versus a legal designation), which is not necessarily your legal name, is vital for ensuring the physical safety and security of trans and non-binary people.”
The campaign asks financial intuitions to: enable transgender and non-binary customers to update their name and gender identification for free and without requiring doctor, judge or notary authorization; to recognize customers by their true gender identity and name across every customer service touchpoint; and enact a publicly available plan and track progress by the end of the year. The coalition is also asking banking organizations like the American Bankers Association to use their commitment to diversity to influence industrywide change.
For more ways to create customized and meaningful marketing campaigns with diversity and inclusion at their core, email info@adrenalineagency.com.
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Data You Can Use
The Story: As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the pandemic sparked massive migration across the U.S. In 2020, as a record number of people left major metro cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago in search of more affordable and relaxed lifestyles, they mostly headed to the suburbs, which saw a whopping 43% rise in net new households last year.
The Takeaway: Local matters in banking. Despite the sharp rise of digital banking, most people still want to be within 15 minutes of a branch. With this migration away from city centers, banks and credit unions now have an opportunity to grow by reshaping and expanding their branch networks – to go where the people are. A rigorous, analytics-driven network strategy that identifies prime areas of opportunity by tracking human mobility data can help financial institutions thrive today and position well for the future.
Source: U.S. Postal Service Data, April, 2021
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Black Banking: Fintechs Take the Lead
As we approach Juneteenth’s commemoration of enslaved people’s freedom in the U.S., it’s a time to reflect on black advancement in all of American life. In financial services, the need for greater diversity drives much of the conversation around black economic opportunity. “The cultural movement to support Black-owned banks along with other African American businesses received a major boost in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020, as many corporate leaders and everyday Americans sought ways to address longstanding socioeconomic disparities,” according to CNN’s article on black-owned banks and community reinvestment.
In the last year alone, the National Bankers Association – a trade group representing minority-owned FIs – reports an estimated $150 million in capital has been invested in Black-owned banks. But capital tells only part of the story. While black financial services providers have a harder time securing funding, that’s not stopping the ranks of digital and fintech entrants into banking. “Unconstrained by geography, these financial institutions can extend their reach and solve previously unsolved problems for particular consumer groups,” according to Forbes’ exploration about digital banking and social change.
During PPP for example, black businesses were more likely to turn to neobanks and fintechs for lending than traditional banks, according to the Federal Reserve. And these digital upstarts are delivering. Minority-owned fintechs are exploding to support the financial needs of diverse communities. Whether it’s digital banking for black and Latinx consumers like Greenwood, debt pay-down apps like Qoins, or wealth-building like BREAUX Capital, digital is providing a platform of support for underserved and diverse communities, and the Mighty’s interactive tools or Simple Dollar’s listicles are helping empower consumer choice.
To learn more about serving underserved communities and how the financial industry can help build banking diversity, email info@adrenalineagency.com.
Photo Credit: Greenwood Bank
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