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Leaders in Lending | Ep. 103

Clicks to Bricks: Starting the Customer Experience Digitally

Jenna Stricker, Director of Digital Lending at nbkc bank, shares the importance of laying a digital foundation in meeting customers where they want to be served. 

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GUEST SPEAKER

Jenna Stricker

Jenna Stricker is a passionate and engaging fintech leader with a vision and tenacity for creating a simple customer experience that is front and center of every digital interaction. She brings more than 10 years of consumer lending experience and excels at cultivating partnerships that are transforming the future of digital banking. At nbkc, Jenna leads the consumer lending division, including unsecured personal loans, auto loans, HELOC (home equity line of credit) and small business lending portfolios. She also oversees the strategy and execution for the bank's community reinvestment lending. A skilled planner and designer of lending frameworks, Jenna has always valued the importance of human interactions and how an experience with a bank’s brand, its people and its channels is what builds long-term trust and value in the long run.

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ABOUT

nbkc bank

nbkc bank is dedicated to making banking what it should be: simple, transparent and free. And they’re doing it across all of services — checkings, savings, business accounts, loans and more. Simply said, what you see is what you get. No bank fees. No fine print. No asterisks. Just great customer service, awesome rates, and smart technology backed by smarter people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key Topics Covered

  1. The advantages of starting digitally
  2. How to deliver a delightful customer experience
  3. How alternative data helps banks improve the underwriting experience

EPISODE RECAP & SUMMARY

When building their customer experience, banks have traditionally started with brick and mortar before expanding digitally.

What if banks approached the digital experience first?

Jenna Stricker, Director of Digital Lending at nbkc bank, shares the importance of laying a digital foundation in meeting customers where they want to be served. 

Join us as we discuss:

  • The advantages of laying a digital foundation
  • How to deliver a delightful customer experience
  • How alternative data helps banks improve the underwriting experience

The advantages laying a digital foundation

What are the main aspects customers look for when working with a bank? Simplicity, security and trust, to name a few. For some, digital banking lacks in those categories and can seem unnecessary as an add-on to an established brick-and-mortar bank.

What if banks developed their digital assets as a top priority alongside or ahead of in-person locations? More and more, customers see brick-and-mortar access as a perk and digital access as a given.

Starting digitally provides an environment to set expectations around communication, culture and meeting people where they’re at.

“I want to make sure that what we're doing is giving people what they want and more,” Stricker says. “It's not about meeting the baseline expectation; it's about exceeding that expectation.”

A quick tip for delegating developer resources: 

Building an effective and efficient digital experience doesn't happen overnight. It takes resources, time and strategy. 

“It boils down to quick build by analysis and cross-functional teamwork within your company,” Stricker said. “Find what you’re good at and not so good at, and determine what makes sense to bring in-house.” 

Parsing your strengths and weaknesses internally and outsourcing talent when needed saves time and supports a user-friendly customer experience. 

How to deliver a delightful customer experience

Delivering delightful customer experiences takes consistency. That means building a team in which everyone is on the same page about the company mission, passionate about customer experience and invested in the bank's success.

“Get every single person on board with understanding the benefit — all the way down to your tellers at your bank and your brick-and-mortar locations, your CX and customer experience specialist on instant messaging and phone responses,” Stricker said.

Clarity of intention must be top-down, starting with the CEO. Consistent culture does not happen by accident.  

How alternative data helps banks improve the underwriting experience

Stricker has been using alternative data for a decade and advocates that it has a valuable place in any financial institution.

“Regardless of what audience you're serving, you can see things that aren't on the radar.” Stricker said, “If you're a traditional bank customer and you're evaluating DTI for someone, and they appear to be a mid-prime or near-prime customer, don't you want the full picture of what it is that they're doing with their finances?”

Having the luxury of a face-to-face one-on-one with a borrower is a slim possibility, but that doesn’t remove the need for evaluating financial health. Alternative data can support a smoother underwriting experience void of missing pieces.

Core data will always be key. However, layering alternative data with that essential information makes for a cleaner picture. Alternative data is the cherry on top of the sundae when an answer isn’t clear from the core data alone.

Stay tuned for new episodes every week on the Leaders in Lending Podcast.


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Stay tuned for new episodes every week on the Leaders in Lending Podcast