A small Florida bank wanted a new account-opening system that was unlike anything its rivals had.
This meant building the system in-house — a daunting task for a lender of its size, and not its first choice.
Professional Holding Corp.’s initial plan was to use an off-the-shelf product, but the $2.6 billion-asset bank's market research yielded none that met its specifications, Chairman and CEO Daniel Sheehan said.
“It was the absence of a viable product that fit our business plan that compelled us to invest the time and resources” to custom build an account-opening feature, Sheehan said.
The technology was developed by Professional’s in-house Digital Innovation Center, a Cleveland-based operation run by Ryan Gorney, the bank's chief information officer.
The Coral Gables-based bank unveiled the account-opening system last month for consumers. While Professional declined to say how many accounts it’s opened digitally, reception has been excellent, Sheehan said. Professional’s process is simpler and quicker than most of its similarly sized competitors, he added.
Before the rollout, Professional did not have a digital account-opening capacity. And had it gone with a prebuilt product, “whatever we’re getting off the shelf, it will be available to the next hundred competitors seeking to do the same,” Sheehan said.
A rapid digital onboarding process can help a relatively small bank like Professional stay abreast of megabanks and challenger banks, both of which put premiums on speed and convenience, said Michael Haney, head of digital core at the digital banking software provider Technisys.
“How quickly can I get this account open and active … but still do it in a regulatory compliant way — that’s the name of the game right now,” Haney said. “This is how all the fintech banks launched [and] all the big banks have caught up, now. There are still a lot of small banks that are still on this journey, digitizing their account- opening solutions.”
Other community banks have
“What Ryan and his team rolled out, that’s version one,” Sheehan said. “There’ll be more features to follow.”
That attitude resonated with Haney, who said banks should be relentless when it comes to improving account opening.
“This is not a one-and-done thing. You don’t need to launch your dream stage or your vision stage in your first release," Haney said. "Every bank still has an opportunity to shrink the number of steps, push more to the mobile phone and the self-service format and really just digitize the heck out of these processes.”
A consumer using Professional's software needs a mobile phone, a driver’s license and a $25 deposit to apply. After the consumer uses the phone to upload an image of the license and a “selfie,” Professional’s system verifies the source of funds and completes a series of security checks to authenticate the applicant’s identity.
Once those preliminaries are out of the way, the applicant gets a welcome call from a Professional banker, who sets up a debit card to arrive by mail a few days later.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for people to establish a relationship with us,” Sheehan said. “The vast majority of participants in our industry typically ask for anywhere from 30 to 50 pieces of information to open an account. We’re functionally accomplishing the same with just a few clicks and use of a mobile phone’s camera.”
Professional isn't the only South Florida bank seeking to enhance its application process. The same month Professional introduced its new feature, the $7.5 billion-asset Amerant Bancorp in Miami tapped the fintech Alloy to modernize its digital onboarding experience.
Digital account opening became vital during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted many businesses — including banks and credit unions — to temporarily close locations to slow the spread of the virus.
Widespread adoption has come with its share of problems.
As with any online process, there's still a risk that users could give up before they complete the application. A quarter of the banks queried for
Professional follows up with consumers who abandon their application, Gorney said. In the case of an abandoned application, “Our bankers still call and say: 'Hey, we noticed you tried to start opening an account with us. Did something go wrong? Is there something we can do better?' "
That follow-up call may not only salvage a potential relationship, but deepen it.
“I think it starts a great chain reaction,” Gorney said. For applicants, “it becomes an easy conversation, now that you know the banker, to say: 'I need a loan, or I need a mortgage. Can you help me with my business?' "
