Community banks and credit unions have a unique opportunity to capitalize on the fallout from recent, failed financial institutions such as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. When the FDIC intervened, it was a stark reminder of their current rule guaranteeing deposits up to $250,000. While these customer’s deposits above $250,000 were ultimately saved by the FDIC, it’s not a sustainable approach for the agency or the industry–nor should we expect it in the future. 

The former customers of these banks–specifically those who were made whole by the FDIC–are learning a lesson on how to manage their financial risk. Businesses that keep larger balances in their deposit accounts for daily operations–let’s say anything over $5 million–are now realizing the importance of bank portfolio diversification. This is the concept whereby businesses and high net worth individuals spread their money across multiple financial institutions, instead of tying up their assets with a single financial institution.  

While many of you are healthy community based financial institutions, you’re still feeling the vice-like grip of margin compression due to the economic environment. Why not ask these businesses–who are looking to diversify their bank portfolio–for their business? Herein lies the opportunity for community banks and credit unions to attract new customers and increase deposits at the same time.

Put your $250,000 here: How to compete with the big banks and attract new customers

If you haven’t heard, Bank of America was unofficially crowned the winner during the “great deposit reshuffle” – garnering more than $15 billion in new deposits shortly after SVB’s collapse. Now is the time to promote your brand and sense of “safety and soundness” to your community and members. Additionally, entice companies to diversify their working capital with your financial institution–here’s how.

Outreach 

Identify those target businesses–and high net worth business owners– in your markets that could benefit from bank portfolio diversification. Use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to identify these leads, design marketing campaigns, create a segmentation strategy and offer personalized journeys. Talk about the importance of managing financial risk, how diversification helps and why you’re the best–and safest–option to bank with. Capture these sales opportunities with deposit account opening.

Onboarding

To convert prospects to customers, it’s important to transform manual and fragmented processes into digital-first experiences. Tools like Salesforce Experience Cloud enhance and simplify the business account application process. Its native connection to Salesforce Financial Services Cloud automatically creates an opportunity record for Front-Office employees. This allows your institution to build a client relationship while walking them through the journey from application to approval.

Funding

Financial institutions are sensitive–and rightly so–to opening up their funds transfer system to an external web interface. It’s complex and requires a lot of security. Consider using Salesforce Experience Cloud to capture the information a prospective customer needs to create their wire request form. Use the data and pre-populate details like your  bank routing number, account number and signatures needed, that they can share with the bank they are moving their money from. Integrate with document generation and digital signature tools, like DocuSign, to streamline the entire experience.

Automate 

Connect your Salesforce Experience Cloud deposit account application to an integration platform like MuleSoft. This allows you to open the account directly in your core, eliminating manual work and improving account opening turnaround times for your financial institution. If you already have a deposit account opening platform, such as Jack Henry, MeridianLink or nCino, you can still connect it to your core through MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™. 

Haven’t we all been looking for new customers and low cost deposits? Businesses of every size will be looking to diversify their banking partners.  Community banks and credit unions can use this behavior change–driven by recent events–to acquire new customers and their deposits whether that be $50,000 or $250,000. Those who are proactive and personal in their outreach and have the right technology to support customer preferences, will weather this economic situation more favorably.