As customer trends and market conditions continue evolving, financial institutions are always looking to implement new technologies and develop partnerships with forward-thinking fintechs. Of course, not every opportunity is a game changer; things like online banking and convenient apps are everywhere, and because they’re standard, they don’t really represent a chance to break new ground and connect with future customers.
What regional banks across the country need are fintech partnerships that offer fresh and valuable ways for people to engage with the financial industry. These solutions should empower customers to build wealth, provide continuity for their families and businesses, and cement meaningful ties that secure banks as the cornerstone of the communities they serve.
By placing these priorities at the center of your fintech partnership strategy, these firms won’t just deliver the ROI for banks it takes to stay competitive. They’ll help forge the long-term bonds with their customers that will define tomorrow’s financial landscape.
Evaluating Fintech Partnerships
Fintech partnerships already play a significant role in the banking industry—95% of banks use these developers to strengthen their digital product offerings, and 87% enlist a partner to help manage critical processes.
If you’re one of the few banks that’s been successful doing everything in-house, congratulations! However, the overwhelming trend in the industry is engaging fintech firms to make consistent incremental gains. That means no matter what community you serve, you’re eventually going to face competition leveraging fintech partnerships.
All of this reinforces a simple fact: it’s not about engaging with multiple fintech firms—you have to invest in the right partner that promotes strategic coordination between siloed departments, expands the scope and value of your products, and meets your customers’ needs. To increase the likelihood that your bank’s partnerships deliver the ROI you’d expect, you’ll need to consider the following factors.
Prioritize Relationships
The future of banking is centered on aligning with the needs of your community and its families. That means looking for fintech firms that provide services that can strengthen existing ties and develop new and innovative relationships and interactions around digital services. Just offering a slick new online banking platform for managing a checking account won’t get the job done.
Find Partners Aligned with Your Values and Goals
Even if a potential partner is highly qualified, shares your objectives, and has access to significant resources, they may not be the right fit for your financial institution—regardless of whether they have a track record of delivering significant ROI for banks. Remember: if their services don’t make sense for your customers and align with their values and priorities, they won’t make dollars, either.
Look Outside the Box
The fact is, banks are competing for tomorrow’s customers, not today’s. Fintech partnerships that don’t open up new ways for communities to interact with their financial institutions and forge stronger generational trends won’t help solve that challenge—they’ll just create a little extra ROI for banks that will ultimately fizzle.
Also, this doesn’t necessarily mean looking externally for opportunities. In many cases, there are internal opportunities for siloed departments like Trusts and Mortgages to coordinate and develop strategies that produce additional revenue streams.
Banks need to examine fintech partnerships that explore valuable new spaces for growth, and one of the most promising avenues is life planning and SMB succession services. These important activities are largely overlooked by today’s banking industry, but they are profoundly meaningful for customers and their families who often get little or no help in the process.
Forming Partnerships for Life Planning and SMB Succession
Even if you haven’t considered introducing life planning and SMB succession services, many of your individual and business clients could benefit from them. Two-thirds of adults in the US have not set up formal plans for their financial futures, and likewise, two-thirds of SMBs have not established succession plans.
When your bank forms a partnership with the intent of providing planning services to these customers, you’ll be able to foster generational relationships that increase deposits, loans, and mortgages while gaining a valuable foothold in a market where most financial institutions are not active.
Partnering with Paige for the Future
Paige specializes in helping community-oriented banks cement their relationships with customers with an innovative life and succession planning software platform that integrates with your existing services. In addition to the value these services provide for clients, the ROI for banks Paige delivers averages of 300% or even higher, putting an exclamation point on the value we can provide for your institution as well as the people you serve.
But even that isn’t the biggest benefit we bring to the table. Along with this high return on investment, our relationship-driven platform will give your bank a chance to build long-lasting, relationship-driven connections with customers that bridge generations and create a foundation for greater engagement with your services and financial products.
Paige does this by providing our partners with:
Services for People
With the help of Paige and your bank, people will be able to get the support they need with:
- Estate Details. As part of the estate planning process, people need to manage deeds, inventories, broker information, insurance details, and other types of info. Fortunately, Paige’s platform can make tracking these details considerably easier.
- Documents and Data. Similarly, people going through the process of life planning must keep track of insurance policies, passwords, account numbers, and wills. Paige lets clients organize all their important paperwork in one easy-to-access place (while helping your bank form new links with beneficiaries).
- Messages and Memories. Finally, clients participating in life planning will want their memories to endure in the form of photos and videos. Paige can protect these files in digital vaults and help people return to them later with powerful timestamp features.
Services for Businesses
Businesses also need to plan for the future—if they don’t, they could encounter surprising difficulties during their succession process. With that in mind, Paige’s services can help SMBs take care of their:
- Vital Documents. Planning for a business’s future closely resembles the process of life planning in one crucial way—it involves managing all sorts of documents. Naturally, Paigee can help companies keep documents explaining their plans, processes, and protections right where they need to be.
- Details and Assets. Preparing for a company’s succession requires a great deal of work on the part of business owners, and that includes sharing a significant amount of information. To simplify this work, Paige can give clients the ability to organize data points such as accounts and contacts ahead of time.
- Succession Strategies. Without a clearly defined succession process, businesses will not be able to change ownership without difficulties. Paige delivers peace of mind for both outgoing and incoming ownership and ensures the health of the business through the transition.
Partner for Strength and Community with Paige.
Financial institutions with deep ties to their community have an extraordinary obligation to the families they serve. Customers not only rely on them to help build wealth, but they trust their banks to develop services that make their lives—and the lives of their children—better and better. That’s why partnerships with fintech innovators like Paige can improve ROI for banks like yours and help you pursue new opportunities while establishing relationships with customers that will last for generations.
Adding life planning and SMB succession services to your lineup is an excellent way to supercharge your bank’s ROI—and to do that, you’ll want help from a partner like Paige. If you want to see massive improvements to both your ROI and your relationships with customers, take the first step by setting up a demo today!
