Strategy
10/31/2016

One Bank’s Digital Transformation Journey


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Last week Chris Skinner, a FinXTech advisor and fellow contributor, talked about the difficulties of banks shifting to digital, and shared the following: “It is radically different thinking, and is a cultural outlook, rather than a tech project.”

As the head of Radius Bank’s Virtual Bank, I work with a team that has been through the digital transformation process. And I can attest to the above statement: The shift to digital is far more than a project. It’s a total reconstruction of a bank’s culture, organization and systems. It is no easy task but the upside opportunity is big.

Digital transformation is perhaps the most important challenge facing banks at the moment. The penetration of the financial services industry by financial technology and the proliferation of alternative banking solutions presents the stalwarts with a choice: change, or else. Banks are realizing that the adoption of sophisticated, personalized technologies is no longer a “nice to have,” but rather a “need to have.” Never before has the customer experience been more critical to a bank’s success than it is today. I feel lucky that the Radius Bank team understood this early on, and set on a course aligned with this new way of banking.

When I first joined Radius Bank at the end of 2008, we were a small, commercial-focused community bank with six branches in Boston and New York. Mike Butler, the Bank’s CEO and president (and a member of the FinXTech Advisory Board), asked me to join him to help build the virtual bank. We recognized that the traditional model wouldn’t be able to address changing consumer demands. In light of that, we set out to build a bank focused on the future rather than the past.

Over the past several years, our Virtual Bank has actually become our primary retail banking strategy. While we’ve maintained one flagship financial center in Boston, our focus on customer experience, product development and technology offerings all starts with and focuses on the digital channel. We’ve made significant investments in technology to build a forward-thinking and responsive virtual banking platform that has allowed us to onboard and serve many new customers from across the country without the need to visit a branch.

We also realized a while back the importance of fintech partnerships. Let’s face it: Consumers today have more choices in terms of managing their finances than ever before, and many of them are choosing to put their trust in nonbanks. For us it has been about finding the right fintech firms to work with, and over the last three-plus years we’ve launched strategic partnerships with fintechs in areas such as mobile payments, investment management, student loans and alternative lending.

We’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, but the transformation to a digital bank is a journey that’s never complete. It requires ongoing support from top leadership, including our board of directors and management team, and a creative, nimble team that brings marketing, sales, risk and IT together to build an infrastructure focused on security and scalability.

I’m eager to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained throughout our digital transformation process. I’m also eager to learn from my peers in banking and fintech about what’s next. FinXTech asked me to participate to represent the banking perspective, but as I’ve outlined above we’re not your traditional community bank. We sit at the intersection of financial institutions and technology companies—an increasingly productive cradle of innovation and disruption.

I look forward to engaging in these important conversations with you.

WRITTEN BY

Chris Tremont

Chief Digital Officer

Chris Tremont is chief digital officer for Grasshopper Bank. Mr. Tremont leads the digital strategy for the bank, running its small business (SMB) and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) divisions, along with overseeing product, marketing and client services.