Radius Bank Overhauls Its Digital Banking Platforms

Radius Bank, with only one full-service branch, identifies the digital channel as the way to grow.

"We are not believers in building the branch out," said Robert Landstein, executive vice president and chief information officer at the Boston bank.  

So in 2014, the $725 million-asset bank overhauled its public website in addition to revamping its online and mobile banking platform in a bid to make them easier to use. In the updates, Radius launched a website feature few others have yet: it lets consumers use their smartphones' cameras to scan their driver's licenses and input data into the mobile application. In so doing, the applicants are saved some of the trouble of manual data entry required of the form.

"It gets tedious on the little keyboard on the phone," said Landstein. The update, which is available through its mobile website and powered by Bottomline Technologies' Andera, is meant to make the process less troublesome.

Interestingly, Radius also chose to use a mash-up of vendors for its public and authenticated website to get what it wanted. "We really wanted the best of breed," said Landstein.

Jack Henry is hosting the public website (with much of design work created internally), while the authenticated website is hosted by Q2. The latter required more work of the bank as it said it is one of the first institutions to roll out the vendor's latest online and mobile banking product.

"We had to do more testing," said Landstein. "It was quite an adventure." One week, the branding colors would be entirely different, while the next week's build could uncover complications in bill pay, for example.

The time invested was well worth it, as Landstein believes the digital overhaul will help land new customers and improve loyalty, and eventually save money.

"It's less expensive than building a branch on one more corner but the reach is much bigger," said Landstein.