The Great Deposit Race: Optimizing the “Less is More Strategy”

Choosing a proactive strategy to prune unproductive accounts may seem radical By Gregg Early It may seem counterintuitive to think that the best way to build primacy, grow deposits organically, and generate more non-interest income is to focus on determining which accounts aren’t financially productive and how to fix that relationship with your FI. Community…

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What Banking Can Learn from Amazon Prime

By Mike Branton   Building a fair exchange of value in a subscriber-first ecosystem is a winner for consumers and Amazon. If there’s one program that stands well above all others as the greatest marriage of a digital retail products selling platform and value-based subscription pricing, it is Amazon Prime. The numbers don’t lie, making…

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Rethinking the Small Business Checking Playbook

By Dave DeFazio This article was previously published on BankDirector.com Even before interest rates rose, community banks and credit unions were battling megabanks, regional banks and the new wave of digital banks and fintechs to keep and attract traditional retail and small business checking account customers. This battle is for only a small percentage of…

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Navigating Beyond the “Free Checking” Era in Business Checking

By Dave DeFazio The era of simply offering a free checking account for business checking customers is done. And community FIs’ biggest competitors – megabanks and digital banks – are well aware of that. They’ve been busy adding value to their business checking accounts, especially in the past few years. Unfortunately, it’s not the same…

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Revitalize Your SMB Checking Accounts and Take on the Megabanks

By Gregg Early A study done by the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA) revealed that community banks provide about 60% of SMB loans nationwide. That puts community financial institutions at the center of their communities. It also means that SMBs are a crucial part of a healthy community FI’s portfolio. Both these axioms are the…

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It’s Time to Get Beyond Basic Banking

By Gregg Early Few people get excited about basic banking – paying bills,  managing account balances.  However there is a way to augment these mundane banking functions by extending lifestyle-based banking features so that FIs can help consumers save money when they need to spend it.  Doing this offers a unique level of value that…

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Remember Who Won David vs Goliath

Channel the Power of Organic Growth by Gregg Early   Let’s not talk about the past year. Let’s take the long view and talk about the past decade and a half. For nearly all of that time we lived in a “next normal” of quantitative easing, which brought along with it easy money and sustained…

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Don’t Fight the Tape: Get Beyond Chasing New Deposits

While certainly an arrow in the quiver, community financial institutions can’t solely rely on growing deposits to thrive.   By Mike Branton and Gregg Early   It has been a wild ride for banks and credit unions. The shift from a low-growth, low interest rate environment to its complete opposite in less than 12 months…

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5 Steps to Up Your Engagement Marketing Efforts

Attract and retain consumers with engaging benefits and a plan to educate people about it   By Trae Turner   It’s not breaking news that people’s lives are tied to their mobile devices. Look around. Whether it’s a phone, tablet or laptop, it seems wherever you go, people are incorporating their lives in one place…

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Redefining Primary Relationships

By Mike Branton and Dave DeFazio This article originally appeared in Bank Director.   Ask 100 bankers to define what it means to be the primary financial institution for a consumer, and you’ll likely get 100 different answers. Ask 100 consultants to bankers what being the primary FI entails, and you’ll probably get 100 more…

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