Poll Results: Digital Transformation’s Next Phase

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which is the largest U.S. bank by assets, spends $12 billion a year on technology, investing in a vast array of technologies that include machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain. The second largest bank, Bank of America Corp., spends roughly $3.5 billion annually on new technology initiatives alone, according to Chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan.

It’s a lot of money – and a level of spending that smaller banks can’t hope to achieve. Executives and directors primarily representing community banks under $10 billion in assets reported a median technology budget of $1.7 million for fiscal year 2021 in Bank Director’s 2021 Technology Survey, with a median increase in spending of 10% compared to the previous year.

Those limitations should have bank leaders thinking strategically about how to allocate those precious dollars. With that in mind, Bank Director’s FinXTech division polled bank executives in January and February 2022 about technology adoption trends, and asked about specific noncore solutions that have had a recent, significant impact toward achieving their goals.

Bankers identified 20 platforms as their favorites when it came to driving that change, ranging from digital lending solutions to data analysis. You can find the companies listed on page 7-8 of the report. To categorize the solutions by type, we relied on input from FinXTech Research Analyst Erika Bailey, who manages Bank Director’s FinXTech Connect platform, a guide to financial technology companies working with U.S. banks.

While the past 18 months found many banks putting digital account opening and lending platforms in place – in response to the digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic – banks shifted plans for the next 12 months to application programming interface (API) platforms, data aggregation and analysis, and workflow automation.

To gain additional perspective on these trends, we talked to the executives of three banks that are actively accelerating their digital journeys. Mascoma Bank, a $2.6 billion mutual in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is in the early stages of implementing an API-enabled, cloud-based core platform that will help the bank customize its product and service offerings. St. Louis-based Midwest BankCentre, with $2.4 billion in assets, leveraged its digital subsidiary to expand its capabilities to all of its customers; it will expand digital account opening to business clients in 2023. And West Reading, Pennsylvania-based Customers Bancorp, with $20 billion in assets, is using data-driven insights to fuel the next phase of its digital transformation.

Click here to access the poll results and learn more about how those banks are moving technology transformation forward in this special report.

Also included is a success checklist, questions that boards and leadership teams could ask to help strengthen their technology strategy.

Bank leaders should start by evaluating their organization’s strengths and how technology can align with strategy, advises Ron Shevlin, chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors. “Stop thinking about technology adoption, and focus more on … the business opportunity,” he says. “Focus on the business results.”