Turning Insights into a Competitive Advantage

Jim Marous (00:12):

Welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking, I'm your host, Jim Marous. Every financial institution is sitting on a gold mine of customer data, yet most struggle to turn these insights into a real competitive advantage. The challenges in collecting data is knowing what to do with it.

Jim Marous (00:31):

Rachel O'Neill from Alkami joins me on the Banking Transformed Podcast to tackle the hard questions: why do so many banks fail to activate their data strategically? How can financial institutions break into the paralysis of analysis and start driving tangible business outcomes today, and what separates the winners from the wishful thinkers in today's data driven banking landscape?

Jim Marous (00:58):

From streamlining back-office operation to enhancing customer financial wellness, it's clear that institutions need to embrace data-driven strategies to position themselves for sustained success in an increasingly competitive environment.

Jim Marous (01:15):

Leading organizations across virtually every industry are transitioning from reactive gut-based decisions to proactive data-driven strategies. Winners identify patterns faster, act on insights quicker, and continually optimize their operations based on real time feedback loops. The competitive advantage isn't just about having data, it's actually building the organizational capability to turn insights into action at speed and at scale.

Jim Marous (01:45):

So, Rachel, before diving into specifics around how organizations in the financial service industry are using data, could you share a little bit about your professional journey and how it has led to your current role at Alkami?

Rachel O’Neill (01:58):

Sure. So, I became an Alkamist three years ago when Alkami acquired Segmint. Segmint was based out of Akron, Ohio. I joined Segmint right after college graduation two days. So, it was a startup and so I was part of the journey from pretty much the beginning. Not the true beginning, but right when we started actually driving revenue, we launched the product that we still have in market today as well as other solutions.

Rachel O’Neill (02:29):

At the time, I was a marketing manager for about seven years, implementing different platforms like Salesforce CRM and marketing cloud. I was a part of our client success team so I had a stint where I actually helped our clients leverage their data for personalized and tailored marketing, but also other strategies at the bank or credit union. Then I moved over to solution engineering and the sales side more recently, so I kind of hopped around over the past 12 years.

Jim Marous (02:56):

Well, it's cool because working in the background with financial institutions on actually building their database solutions, and then helping them implement it is really a good give and take where you know what they are fighting with, but also able to implement Alkami solutions for their advantage.

Jim Marous (03:15):

You've actually worked with hundreds of financial institutions through Alkami, what's the most significant shift you've observed in how banks and credit unions are approaching data analytics today compared to maybe just a few years ago?

Rachel O’Neill (03:30):

Great question. So, I'm going to take it back from even just a few years ago to a few years before that, where probably about 10 years ago, everything was the scary concept of big data. We don't even hear that term being used anymore because we've heard it so many times. And at that time, it was about modernizing the core or aggregating all of your data together, and maybe a few financial institutions stood up some sort of data lake or data warehouse.

Rachel O’Neill (03:56):

Fast forward to about 2020, with the acceleration of digital, that's when data became even more important because through digital engagement, you have the data to personalize the experience. Where before that, a lot of banks and credit unions were still prioritizing the human touch or saying, "Hey, we know our customers, we know the relationship."

Rachel O’Neill (04:21):

So, over the past few years, a lot of banks and credit unions have been putting a real big focus on leveraging their transaction data to understand who their customers truly are, what products that they have elsewhere, maybe where they don't truly have the share of wallet, but also who their best customers are.

Rachel O’Neill (04:43):

I think attrition is a topic that a lot of banks and credit unions talk about, and sometimes, it's okay to see customers leave. But how do we prioritize those who are at risk of leaving, but still have a foot in the door and are financially worth saving? Where's the juice worth the squeeze up to our highest engaged customers? So, data's been giving banks and credit unions a different lens to understand their customers, and that's been accelerated over the past few years.

Jim Marous (05:13):

It's interesting, you talk about transaction data, but also the flow of funds and more than ever, there's challenges in the marketplace. Some institutions are trying to generate more deposits, trying to generate new customers, some are realizing that, and you mentioned attrition that maybe the customer's not actually closing the account, but the relationships are striding because they're opening accounts at other organizations that they used to open at the financial institution, that was their primary, if there is such a thing anymore.

Jim Marous (05:43):

What's interesting is when you look at transactions, when you look at flow of funds, you see so many things that institutions never had to peel back the layers on that they do today. I talk a lot about the fact that you don't know who else your customers are using unless you realize where those funds are going.

Jim Marous (06:04):

How have you seen successful organizations using data analytics to actually navigate these turbulent conditions from interest rate rising to uncertainty in the marketplace, to even wellness? How are they using these to their advantage with data analytics?

Rachel O’Neill (06:22):

Oh, my gosh, there's so many examples. So, let's go back two, three years ago, one of our institutions, they were behind on their goal of bringing in new deposits. They were less than halfway to like a $27 million goal.

Rachel O’Neill (06:40):

What they did is they looked at, we know we have customers that have money elsewhere. They might not have a high deposit with us, but if we look at their transactions, we could see their transferring money to Merrill Lynch or Raymond James or Charles Schwab. And so, they started going after those customers through digital campaigns, but also by doing care calls.

Rachel O’Neill (07:02):

Now the strategy is not picking up the phone and saying, "Hey Jim, I saw you just transferred money to Merrill Lynch, how come you did that?" The strategy is instead, "Hey Jim, we have this really great interest rate right now, I wanted to see if that's something you'd be interested in." And just making it about the member or the customer doing a care call rather than some sort of aggressive push.

Rachel O’Neill (07:24):

So, they balanced leveraging their frontline staff who wanted to be involved with this. So, they had a great culture with their front-end staff who wanted to help achieve their sales goals. But then they also delivered digital campaigns, email through digital banking on their website.

Rachel O’Neill (07:42):

Because there are a lot of people … they're going to screen your phone call and they won't answer. Even though they have a checking account with you, they're going to wait until it goes to voicemail, read the voicemail — we don't even listen to voicemails anymore, we read the voicemails, and then decide if they're going to pick up the phone and call you back.

Rachel O’Neill (08:01):

So, it has to be a balanced strategy where you are doing the high touch, such as a phone call, but also balancing it with email and digital campaigns for the people who don't want to pick up the phone.

Rachel O’Neill (08:13):

Another strategy for some of our treasury clients is they have lagging indicators where they look at customers who transferred out a million dollars in the last week. So, this is a large commercial client, a million dollars gone, and then they look at where did that money go.

Rachel O’Neill (08:31):

Well, a leading indicator that somebody is about to transfer out money is a trial deposit. So, if a trial deposit hits and it's two pennies, that's the first trial deposit. We always know there's two trial deposits.

Rachel O’Neill (08:44):

So, you have a short window to see, "Okay, Jim had a trial deposit for 2 cents and that was with Merrill Lynch. That's probably worth picking up the phone and doing a touch base with Jim before the money goes over to Merrill Lynch."

Rachel O’Neill (08:58):

Now, if Jim has a trial deposit with Venmo, we're not going to raise the red flags. Do we want Jim to use Venmo? Probably not. We want him to use our peer-to-peer, and we do have to be kind of aware that Venmo and PayPal and Square and all of these products are starting to offer credit cards and other services, but it's nothing to raise the alarms around.

Rachel O’Neill (09:23):

So, trial deposits are a leading indicator that money is about to leave and for highly lucrative customers on the treasury or commercial private banking side, that should be a trigger to do some sort of outreach.

Jim Marous (09:37):

It's amazing that you discuss all these tools that are available and that they actually not only give you these leading indicators that something may happen, but it gives a financial institution an ability to really get personalized in their communication.

Jim Marous (09:52):

I get frustrated, I talk about it probably every podcast now, but I get frustrated that my business bank doesn't pay attention to how I use PayPal all the time, and therefore, PayPal is more information about me than my business bank does just because they're not looking.

Jim Marous (10:08):

Or my personal financial institution doesn't realize that twice a month, I write checks from one institution to them because they don't speak very well with each other because my sending institution doesn't use Stripe. And so, therefore, they don't reach out and try to help me in a very cautious, very willing way to make it so that they're actually looking out for me.

Jim Marous (10:33):

And what you're talking about here is things, these are processes that can be put in place on behalf of the customer, but also on behalf of the financial institution to very subtly help the customer with their journey in a way that shows them a high level of personalization that we talk about all the time, but don't implement it very well.

Jim Marous (10:54):

It's interesting because also, we see institutions that actually use data-driven diversification. So, where they actually utilize data, identify and capture not only new revenue streams, but also maybe build brand new product sets or to reach out to a new Segmint — not to use your old company's name in a different way.

Jim Marous (11:17):

But how do you see this being done more successfully now? Because organizations are trying to find out how can they stand out in the marketplace in a really cognitive way that can make it so the customer says, "Oh, you get where I am and what I'm doing?"

Rachel O’Neill (11:34):

That's a great question. So, there's a few things. The data and the trend … where people spend their money tells a lot about who they are and what's important to them. And a lot of us know whether, if it's my mom who's a baby boomer, well into her 60s, she starts all of her research Googling first, and she might convert in the branch.

Rachel O’Neill (11:58):

Where somebody like me, I want to do it all digitally. if I have to go into the branch, I'm kind of huffing and puffing about it. It's got to be online, and the data can tell you what's important to the individual. So, I gave a few examples that were maybe a little bit more salesy, but sometimes people need to be educated.

Rachel O’Neill (12:20):

So, if you understand that maybe I'm a homeowner and I have a dog, you could leverage that, of what's the value of your home equity. Some people, younger generations may not completely understand the value of a home equity, and then how that could be leveraged, for example, to fence in a backyard, or if they have children to baby proof the house or put in a playground or help offset finances. So, leveraging transaction data to then trigger the right educational messages is also really important.

Rachel O’Neill (12:54):

We look at our transaction, the transaction of our customers all the time, and we find that there are a lot of people who make over 184 buy now pay later transactions in one month. There are 30 or 31 days in a month. This means this individual is just making a payment every day and buy now pay later, they make it really easy to check out.

Rachel O’Neill (13:22):

So, you sign up for it once on one website, and then I go shopping on another website, "Oh, I could just check out with a firm or Afterpay," and it becomes this vicious loop and this vicious cycle. So, those are the individuals who maybe need some sort of education of, "Yeah, buy now pay later, might not be hitting the credit bureaus right now, but if you default and you're not making payments, that could ruin your credit score." So, again, educational content.

Rachel O’Neill (13:48):

Also, on the commercial side as well, looking at transaction data to see if businesses are using like a Stripe or a Venmo or a PayPal, and then maybe instead we offer them our merchant processing and give them the benefits of that.

Rachel O’Neill (14:07):

One of our clients, they had an annual golf outing, and they looked at their key lifestyle indicators in our data, the transaction data to identify who were golfers in their customer base to promote the golf outing, but then they looked at what local merchants do our customers also shop at?

Rachel O’Neill (14:29):

And not only did they sell out on ticket sales for the golf outing, they identified new local businesses that became clients because they went to these local businesses and they said, "Hey, we have a lot of customers that come to you, it makes sense for us to be partners, we're both local in our community." And so, they actually got new business relationships out of it.

Rachel O’Neill (14:49):

And then finally, you asked about new segments. A big use case for our business and commercially focused clients are what employers do our customers work at, and employers, it's kind of its own merchant knowledge base.

Rachel O’Neill (15:05):

So, if we identify that we're both in Cleveland, maybe there's a lot of customers who are employed by, I don't know, the Cleveland Guardians or the Cavs or something, maybe there's some sort of partnership there, or the Marous Brothers Construction Company. Maybe there's some sort of partnership that we could go and partner with these businesses because we're both local to our communities.

Jim Marous (15:28):

So, when you're working with financial institutions — I mean, it's going way back, but I worked with a number of financial institutions in the past, and you have to balance this privacy with trust issue.

Jim Marous (15:39):

If you do it well, you actually build trust because the customer realizes that you're looking out for them, you're understanding them. But a lot of financial institutions get cold feet when you start using not only the data you have access to, but in some cases, data that is outside the financial institution that really makes things better. I’m going to use credit bureau information.

Jim Marous (16:02):

When a customer is going out there and test driving a car, you have a hit to the credit bureau that doesn't count against your credit bureau, but it shows that you have credit worthiness to actually drive that car as a test drive off the lot, and that gives you an indication that, "Boy, this person's shopping for a car, I can offer them a car loan."

Jim Marous (16:19):

How do you work with financial institutions to make them feel comfortable that what you're able to do needs to be done? I mean, how do you get them over that hump? Because you've done it for years with Segmint and now, with Alkami, where you're able to give just a huge amount of insight into what the customer is doing.

Jim Marous (16:40):

But a lot of times financial institutions go, "Yeah, I understand you can do that, but should we?" How do you get over that hump of really helping the financial institution understand this is what you need to do for yourself?

Rachel O’Neill (16:52):

Great question. So, today, us as consumers, we're actually used to this experience. I could go on a retail website and I fill my cart up like I do all the time, and I don't buy anything. I'm like, "Oh, I'll come back to this later." I get distracted, and then I get an email that says, "Hey Rachel, you left some stuff in your shopping cart."

Rachel O’Neill (17:14):

Now, we could argue that's probably a little bit more intrusive than personalizing an ad to Rachel that says, “Top benefits of leveraging your home equity.” And it shows me, or shows somebody my age range with a dog in a backyard that's fenced in.

Rachel O’Neill (17:35):

Clearly, I'm a cliche millennial who has a dog and is obsessed with their dog and no kids, but that's just an example of personalization. It's not saying, "Hey Rachel, we know you have a dog and no kids and you have a home, you should be leveraging that home equity." It's all about the messaging and positioning, and we are used to that experience.

Rachel O’Neill (17:57):

We receive follow-up from retailers nonstop. Our emails are inundated with it. So, the fact that a bank can do that in an authenticated space is really authentic rather than, let's flash back 10 years ago, one of my bank clients in Ohio actually worked for another large bank before, and they spent I think like 5 million building a custom analytics platform and they were able to deliver a single ad within the mobile banking app.

Rachel O’Neill (18:32):

And I'm a customer of this bank, and I said, "Oh, I received that. And you know what? They advertised to me sign up for bill pay." That's what they advertise in their mobile banking app when they had this one little space.

Rachel O’Neill (18:44):

And if they looked at my data at the time (this is well over before I started at Segmint), they would've known I was in college and I didn't really have any bills to pay yet, and that really wasn't a good ad for me. So, one part of the answer is it’s all about the messaging.

Rachel O’Neill (19:08):

The second part is of course, compliance and security, is the first part of every decision that you make and every vendor that you're interacting with. So, we don't today leverage personally identifiable information PII, instead we use a unique ID and that's a really great way to safeguard customer data.

Jim Marous (19:32):

So, financial wellness is becoming a major differentiator. In fact, financial wellness is almost a misnomer because maybe a person that isn't unwell, but the reality is everybody wants help in understanding how to better manage their money. How are financial institutions today using data analytics not just to sell more products but to actually help improve a customer's financial wellness and health and engagement in a genuine way?

Rachel O’Neill (20:03):

Great question. So, I mentioned the buy now, pay later example, but transaction data can also tell us how many credit cards is an individual paying every month.

Rachel O’Neill (20:16):

You mentioned earlier, if PFI is even a thing anymore, the example of primacy, I think a lot of us are probably loyal to two primary financial institutions. Whoever our bill pay account is, and maybe whoever our primary credit card is, those are probably our two primary because those are our big transaction accounts.

Rachel O’Neill (20:39):

But if my bill pay account, we're seeing somebody pay four, five credit cards a month and student loan payments and buy now, pay later, and maybe we see that they also have unemployment payments — this is kind of worst-case scenario.

Rachel O’Neill (20:55):

Hopefully, one person isn't doing all of these things, but there certainly are individuals doing that. So, one of our institutions about right when student loan payments started again, they deployed a campaign for debt consolidation.

Rachel O’Neill (21:10):

And it was a three-pronged approach looking for people who had student loan payments, credit card payments, buy now, pay later and within a specific credit score range for credit worthiness income range, meaning they didn't make too much money and they really didn't need this offer. There was a lot of different criteria. And depending on how the person responded to a survey, how much debt do you have?

Rachel O’Neill (21:37):

If it was five grand or less, the institution offered a credit card for debt consolidation. If it was five grand or more, the institution looked at do you own a home, or do you not own a home? If they did not own a home, they offered them a personal loan. If they did own a home, they recommended they open a home equity line of credit.

Rachel O’Neill (21:57):

So, that was a really creative way of helping customers through three different product offerings and making sure they were offering the right products that really had the most likelihood of getting the conversion and the customer being able to open the product, but also drove conversions for that financial institution if they didn't offer all three. So, that was a really creative way of helping customers in need who just started receiving student loan payments again.

Jim Marous (22:27):

So, we've talked about all these front office applications, these ways that we can help customers with what they're doing in their banking lives daily and how financial institutions can really leverage data to improve, I'm not going to even say selling, but building a more organic relationship with a customer and you build more engagement.

Jim Marous (22:46):

Let's talk a little bit about the back office. What are you seeing being done with data where you're actually able to streamline operations or improve the way the back office is operating? What are you seeing out there right now?

Rachel O’Neill (23:01):

Great question. So, it's got to be automated. Marketers, sales teams, operational teams have been doing the game of, "Hey data and IT, pull me a list, download the list, upload the list, download the list." "Hey, data and IT, can you tell me who converted, how it performed? Did we hit the right mark?" And it's been a very manual process.

Rachel O’Neill (23:25):

For decades, campaign windows for financial institutions have been based on the season of the year: mortgage in the spring, HELOC in the summer, credit card in the fall or the winter, it's very based on the time of the year. That's not putting your customer first, that's putting the calendar year first.

Rachel O’Neill (23:45):

So, if it's automated, campaigns are always on, meaning you're getting the message in front of the customer when they need the product or service, when it would be most beneficial to them based on their life.

Rachel O’Neill (23:59):

So, for example, I bought a house in December, which someone would argue … or I sold my house in December, I'm sorry, which some would argue would not be a right time, but our realtor was like, "You know what? You get the serious buyers in December. You don't get the serious buyers in the spring and the summer. You get people who will just come and look at your house and never make a move."

Rachel O’Neill (24:18):

So, unfortunately, our lives do not line up with the calendar year that a bank sets for their campaigns. So, when it's automated, meaning the data is analyzed, automatically flowing through into digital banking, into the email platform, but also the sales platform, whether it be a CRM or some other sales or teller platform, the campaigns are triggered at the right time for the customer and not necessarily the time that is convenient for the bank.

Jim Marous (24:51):

So, you run into all these financial institutions, and you meet with them and this all makes all the sense in the world. Everything you said and all the case studies are just amazing. We don't usually have a podcast that comes on with so many success stories on the show, but obviously, everything doesn't flow the way we think it should. Otherwise, you'd have every customer in the world.

Jim Marous (25:14):

I said this back in the day when I worked with Segmint on a couple things with them and said, "Gosh, you're selling gold, why is it sometimes so hard?" I'm going to ask that question to you. What is the challenge financial institutions have in actually doing what you say that they should do, especially when you can give them case studies on how to be successful?

Rachel O’Neill (25:38):

Great question. So, way back when you were talking to Segmint, we didn't have all the integrations that we needed to make it automated. Fast forward to 2025, we have a lot more integrations. While we are an Alkami product, we still integrate with all of the leading digital banking providers. We also have integrations to Salesforce, HubSpot, constant contact on the email side, financial institutions are also more progressive.

Rachel O’Neill (26:07):

So, if we don't have an integration, we've seen a lot of them step forward and say, "Hey, we've got a team who could do that. If you've got the APIs and the documentation, we will do that." So, for the institutions that don't have a team, we have integrations in place. For the institutions who do have a team, we have APIs available.

Rachel O’Neill (26:28):

The second thing I would say is it's the reason a lot of growth has happened, COVID and the force of digital, meaning a lot of institutions were forced to adopt data in digital. We saw a huge growth from that because these are the channels people are engaging in.

Rachel O’Neill (26:49):

And then finally, I guess the one reason an institution might not move forward, even if we have integrations in place, is a culture, the culture of the institution. Maybe they don't value marketing as much as they should. Where marketing has changed a lot in the last 15 years, it's a lot more complex.

Rachel O’Neill (27:12):

It's not just hanging posters in a branch and sending a postcard, marketing is social media, it's PR, it's crisis management, it's digital. So, sometimes teams are structured where things are still very siloed and digital maybe is not valued the way that it should be, even though it's the number one engagement channel at the bank or credit union.

Jim Marous (27:39):

So, a lot of organizations will say, "Gosh, I really like this a lot, but my data is a mess." Am I correct in assuming that that's one of the things you can bring to the table? That they don't have to have the perfected data, the data in all the right places. You actually help them leverage the data in the way they have it to make early wins that then can be built on to improve their data set in their organization to make it work. They don't have to have perfect data to work with you, correct?

Rachel O’Neill (28:08):

Exactly. That's our specialty, that's our bread and butter. We don't have a platform unless we cleanse, categorize, and structure data at a world class level. So, we don't ask our clients to concatenate and parse out extra characters and do all this stuff to the transaction data. We say, "Hey, send it to us, that's what we do. That's what we do at a world class level and that's part of our job."

Jim Marous (28:33):

So, it's interesting too because I know for a fact that what's interesting about what you bring to the table is you don't have to be the biggest financial institutions in the world to be able to leverage what you're doing. In fact, many of your most successful and best-case studies are actually in that mid-range and smaller financial institution way.

Jim Marous (28:52):

So, if an organization's smaller and they're saying, "Geez, that really sounds very high tech, it's above our pay grade and what we can actually do," you actually can help them there as well, can't you? You can make small organizations actually out punch their weight with regard to what they can do in their asset class, correct?

Rachel O’Neill (29:10):

Oh, absolutely. And smaller institutions are usually more agile, so they're not bogged down with layers and layers and layers, so they can move a lot faster. So, where it might seem overwhelming where we have all of this new data, I want to make sure we could use it all.

Rachel O’Neill (29:28):

But the fact is we have so much technology in our lives where we only use a fraction of it at any given time. Like our cell phone, there are so many features in my iPhone that I don't even know about. But I use the main core features, texting, camera, of course the apps and social media, QR codes obviously exploded over the last few years, and there's certain features that I use every single day.

Rachel O’Neill (29:53):

It's no different with our platform, where once you set up a sequence of triggers and campaigns, those are going to be always running. And then maybe you set up the first 10, and you add to that over time. We're not going to build the Taj Mahal in a week, we always say crawl, walk, run, or if we want to use a running analogy, you got to do couch to one mile, one mile to 5K, 5K to 10K, and eventually, you will get at a full marathon if that is your goal.

Rachel O’Neill (30:24):

So, we pair all of our clients with the client success manager whose sole job is their success, and we give them the tools such as out of the box campaigns that pre-select a defined audience who should receive a message. We also have AI models that predict somebody's likelihood to open a product, predict somebody's likelihood to a trite, so we're giving them the tools to make things a lot easier.

Jim Marous (30:53):

Yeah, and they're tested tools. I mean, that's the thing that's most important, is you don't have to start from scratch, you're starting with somebody that's already done this journey over and over and over again to make it easier for you to get that early win to say, "Okay, if I'm a marketing manager, I can say, what I need right now is a win to make it so I can get more funding for things going forward," and you can help them do that. Obviously, that works well for your organization, but also works well for the client.

Jim Marous (31:19):

Let me put you in a situation. Let's say you leave or you're working right now and you join a financial institution (it doesn't matter what size) that basically hasn't even started their data analytics journey, really haven't leveraged their data, are not really data-focused, they don't have the team in place. What is your most critical first step that you are going to do to make it so that you can build into a more data-centric organization?

Rachel O’Neill (31:48):

Great question. I think a fundamental element of any data strategy is having a unique ID per customer or per member so that it's not your email address, it's not your social security, it's a non-PII based unique ID so that when you're integrating systems, you have the single identifier to understand who the customer is, and then all the analytics kind of wrap around that.

Rachel O’Neill (32:18):

But then it makes it easy to connect to like a CRM or to a platform like Segmint where you're using that same piece of data identifier to identify each individual, I think that's a huge thing.

Rachel O’Neill (32:33):

And then secondly, I think the culture of the institution. I think a lot of institutions are moving away from the, "We could build it, we could build it," and really realizing we don't have the expertise to be experts in data, experts in the architecture of all of our systems, we should really find the right partners.

Jim Marous (32:56):

That is so key. I mean, actually, I think it's the biggest change I've seen since, I'm going to say 2019, maybe 2018, is that organizations now realize they've got to partner with the organizations that have to be the best at what they do. It may be a very narrow segment, a very narrow part of what the business is.

Jim Marous (33:15):

But you're competing against organizations that are very good at what they do, but you always have to stay ahead of your game, both via case studies you can bring to the table as well as your partnership capabilities, and how you integrate with not only Alkami services, but organizations outside of Alkami.

Jim Marous (33:31):

And it's so interesting because if you're a small organization today, you can punch above your weight in every category because you have partners out there that have to be the best at what they do. The big decision that I always say is that you've got to get out of your own way.

Jim Marous (33:47):

You can't keep on living the world you've lived in the past and hope to move forward no matter who you pick as a partner, if you're not going to have the mindset of saying, "I'm going to embrace the things that they're going to ask me to do to make it so I can be better at what I do."

Jim Marous (34:00):

So, you're really in the sweet spot of what's going on in the organization and banking world today with regards to personalization, leveraging data, AI, generative AI, all those things. Looking ahead, what gets you excited about what's going on in the industry today and what you're bringing to the industry?

Rachel O’Neill (34:22):

Great question. So, I think there's obviously a ton of buzz around AI and some concerns, and I think marrying up predictive analytics like predicting somebody's likelihood to open a product or is this the right product that they need and helping marketing teams scale. So, the appetite and risk tolerance for AI is definitely opening up.

Rachel O’Neill (34:50):

And what we do is predictive AI, and that's going to help the team scale in terms of making sure we're offering the right product to every customer, but then pairing that with like a gen AI, which helps them scale on the content side, because a banner ad could be effective for so long and some people are super rate driven. But then other people need to be educated, so how can we create content to then get the right message in front of our first time home buyers?

Rachel O’Neill (35:20):

“Here are the top five things you need to be aware of when you buy your first home. Here are some of the things that happen when you're buying your first home that could kind of be a pitfall.” So, I think blending the two things together of leveraging predictive AI to pinpoint what is the best thing for our customers right now and using it to put the customer first, not necessarily the bank or the credit union first, and then pairing that with a way to scale on the content side, which is hugely important for digital.

Jim Marous (35:52):

Rachel, it has been a blast. I don't think we've had a podcast, at least on my memory for a long time, that shared so many ideas in such a short amount of time on how an organization can make use of the data, and it's exciting.

Jim Marous (36:07):

I'm going to do an unpaid endorsement here that when Alkami acquired Segmint, I was worried about what would happen to Segmint because I was very excited about what Segmint was doing in the marketplace, and I thought, "Geez, all they need was the ability to scale which is everybody's challenge at the time."

Jim Marous (36:24):

But the fact that they kept all the good parts of Segmint together and made it so that it allowed the organization to grow, actually is a testament to Alkami in the way they partner with new organizations in that they really make it so that they can accelerate the growth using the tools and the capabilities that were in place before.

Jim Marous (36:46):

So, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We will have you back again because I'm sure you have a lot more case studies and stories to tell, but it's important, especially as we start talking about leveraging data to build really cognitive, personalized experience that increase the engagement more than just improving the experience, actually make it so that I want to go back to my mobile app, I want to go back to my financial institution’s messages to me.

Jim Marous (37:12):

And you brought up earlier about wasting space on the mobile app and I keep on going back to the fact that I think that's what an organization has to do, why organizations don't find that minimal line of credit they can offer me in my mobile phone all the time that says, "By the way, it may only be a hundred dollars, but it's going to save you from paying a fee if you have an emergency or $200 or $500.”

Jim Marous (37:37):

And not put the rules in place that we have traditionally done where we say we're not going to give lines of credit for anything less than a thousand dollars, or we're going to have to go through traditional credit bureaus when actually, as you've proven today in the podcast, you can use all kinds of other data to show a customer's going to pay back their loan on time without having to take just the credit bureau information.

Jim Marous (37:58):

It may be home ownership, it may just be the length of time you've worked with a financial institution and say, "Why are they all of a sudden going to go south on you when they haven't done it for the last 15 years of the relationship?" Because from the customer's point of view, it makes no sense.

Jim Marous (38:13):

As you said, if I go into my finance institution's office, they know I'm going to go in going … they love my expression that I go, "You screwed up again on something that makes no sense to me” and most of the time, I'm going to know what caused that screw up. because I've been in banking my whole career and I know the rules of the game, but it doesn't mean that it makes sense anymore when you can get better service from your local drive through restaurant or your pizza place that remembers your orders from the past.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (38:41):

And I had a situation this weekend where I went in and said, “I don't remember what I ordered before, I always do it by phone, can you look something up?" And they did. And I made it so I didn't have to just make a guess at what I had to come in and pick up.

Jim Marous (38:54):

So, I really appreciate your time, and I think it's really important for organizations of all sizes to realize that don't get stymied by what the challenge is out there, take that first step because if you don't, you'll never get to the second one. It seems kind of logical, but we sometimes get in our own way. So, thanks a lot for being on the show today.

Rachel O’Neill (39:14):

Thank you, Jim. And you're exactly right, I think a lot of financial institutions, they've just got to get started and set realistic expectations and goals, and I'm here for it. If you want to have another story time, I've got plenty of more stories and case studies.

Jim Marous (39:29):

I love story times. Thanks a lot Rachel, appreciate it.

Rachel O’Neill (39:33):

Thanks, Jim.

Jim Marous (39:36):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoy our work, please give us a positive review.

Jim Marous (39:45):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Chris Fafalios, and video producer, Will Pritts.

Jim Marous (39:55):

If you've not already done so, remember to subscribe to Banking Transformed on both your favorite podcast app, and on YouTube for more thought-provoking discussions on the intersection of finance, technology and leadership.