Branch of the Future: Virtual Branches

Learn about SECU's award winning Virtual Financial Center and Bank Independent's Digital Bank SYNC and best practices for building digital branches that increase customer acquisition and retention.

Transcription:

Stacy Suggs (00:09):
Our customers needed, but we also wanted to provide the high touch personal service like we do in our sales offices. So that was probably another factor in leading us up to this point.

Frank Gargano (00:22):
So delve a little bit deeper into what you're talking about when you mean high touch personal service. I think that might be something that's a little bit interesting to draw out.

Stacy Suggs (00:28):
Sure. So when we say high tech, high touch, we want to make sure that we have the technology, the customer needs, but also provide that personal service and that personal touch like we do with the in-person experience as much as possible.

Frank Gargano (00:46):
Eric?

Erik Schwink (00:47):
Sure. I'll be transparent. I think we had the same friction point that everybody in this room had, and that was COVID, right? But if you think about our members, we have a group of members. If you think of our members in a bell curve, we have a group on the one end of the bell curve that's only going to use digital and they're never going to do anything in the branches. On the other end of that bell curve, you have members that are going to come to the branch for everything and never do anything digital. But the bigger part of that bell curve, they're in multiple ways of interacting with you. They're going to go to digital for some things. They're going to go to branch for others. And what we were trying to do at the virtual center is give them an opportunity to bundle those opportunities together. So if you want to use digital, you can go do that, but if you needed the consultation that you get from the branch, you can just flip right over to the virtual financial center and get that consultation on video, same as you would in the branch. So you're really able to ride both waves together and it's frictionless for the member and also allows them to pick and choose when they want to use the different bottles.

Frank Gargano (01:51):
So basically the experience was kind of, it mirrored each other, whether it was digital, whether it was in person, that if they wanted to engage with a specific service or a specific product, the journey for the member was the same either way. Exactly. Got it. Since we're going a little bit chronological, talk a little bit about, was this an idea that came from within your institution or was this something that you saw someone doing elsewhere that sort of sparked your interest in building a digital brand? Whoever wants to go first can take it.

Stacy Suggs (02:19):
I'll take it, I guess. Well, so the idea of a digital sales office really came from within. We began every effort with the customer's experience in mind, and we knew it was not what it needed to be. We also had two strategic initiatives in place at the time where we had identified some gaps. One was create an engaging digital experience. So we really wanted to focus on making the digital experience as seamless and exceptional as our in-person branch experience. The other strategic initiative we had in place at the time was optimizing existing delivery. And this really was about making the most of the systems we had in place and delivering a more consistent holistic approach. So our digital sales office really allowed us to make progress on both of these initiatives to align our teams and make the most of our existing technology.

Frank Gargano (03:20):
And I think that's something that a lot of people here might come across is when they're trying to do something digital like that or they're putting together a strategy towards some form of digital innovation, that one of the hurdles that they have to address is working with existing FinTech partnerships, working with existing partnerships that if you're trying to not just pilot, but if you're trying to build a new platform or if you're trying to explore how that platform fits within your existing tech stack, I imagine it's pretty difficult when you have to go through all the partnerships that your institution currently has. And unfortunately some of them, depending on the direction that you want to take your institution, they just don't fit the mark anymore.

Stacy Suggs (03:55):
Right. Well, and luckily we didn't have to go outside and search for new vendors. We just worked with our existing vendor partners. So we use Jack Henry for our core system. We also use their banner product for online and mobile banking. We use smart pay for mobile deposits for online account opening. We worked with Meridianlink and then for ATM and ITM deposits, we use N-C-R-S-T-S and CFS. So our vendor partners were all great to work with us to really help us create this digital experience and aligning our systems to make the best experience for our customers as well as our team members.

Frank Gargano (04:40):
Thank you. So for Eric, tell me at SECU, was this something that came from internally or was this something you saw outside?

Erik Schwink (04:46):
Frank? If it's a little bit of both, to be honest with you, credit unions tend to be pretty innovative and I feel that we've always been very innovative. We were really trying to get ahead of the curve in the digital space. We've had ITMs for over 10 years, so to be competitive, we felt it necessary to be innovative, but to bring this idea to life really we're kind of stealing from some other credit unions and other banks, particularly on the west coast, knowing that they have a lot bigger footprint than we have to cover in Maryland. So they had to come up with some unique ways to service their membership. So being able to take some of those concepts that they were applying and utilizing what we were already doing, we were able to come up with this concept.

Frank Gargano (05:25):
Now I'm going to go off book a little bit here. Something that I'm curious about is, I know a lot with these discussions that depending on what the makeup of your institution's board of directors looks like, what some of the executives are like, it might be hard to convince people that going in a digital direction, especially when it's something that's new, that's untried, that is the right move for the future of either a banker or a credit union, whatever institution you lead. So what were those conversations like when these discussions first came to the table? Was there a lot of pushback from other executives? Were they very gung-ho about the idea? Tell me about it.

Erik Schwink (05:59):
I think our CEO is very forward-thinking. So he did a great job of really showing to our board how we could use this to really be able to service the entire state of Maryland. Again, going back to what we were talking about earlier, explaining CQ of those 20 some branches, most of them, I mean I don't know, everybody's know how Maryland works. 95 corridor runs from Baltimore to DC and probably about 19 of our branches fall within that corridor. So we really have some spots within Maryland that we're not able to cover. From a branch perspective, building a new branch is pretty expensive, so this was really an alternative to doing that. But we have members out there, particularly because we are state employee credit union, we have a lot of members in western Maryland that are state employees that have been with us for years that have to drive a long way to go to our branches. This is really an option that our board saw as a way to be able to help this, the whole state and that got them on board with the decision.

Stacy Suggs (06:56):
And I would agree too, I think our executive team is very innovative. We try to be not on the bleeding edge, but on the cutting edge of technology. I think one of the things that really helped us though was we had already identified gaps with our customer experience when it came to our digital products and services. And so since we'd identified those gaps, they were already in our strategic plan, those two initiatives that I mentioned. So I think that made it easier for us to communicate the need and really convince management this was the right thing to do.

Frank Gargano (07:35):
Got it. So I think now is about the right time to talk a little bit more about how sort of the digital branch solutions work. And I know we have slides prepared, so whenever you're ready, you want Yeah, go

Erik Schwink (07:46):
Ahead. Okay, we can go bring up the first slide here, Frank.

Frank Gargano (07:50):
Wrong way,

Erik Schwink (07:51):
Wrong way. Here we go. So we utilize Glia in order to connect with our members via the virtual financial center. All our virtual financial center employees are remote, so this isn't tend to by branch employees. We actually have taken of the best of our branch employees and brought them into our virtual financial center. Again, this to give us the opportunity through, we first started off just doing this as an appointment only model, and then we were able to move what we call an open lobby where you could go onto our website right now, click on the bubble and it's going to connect you to a video to a banker almost instantaneously.

(08:31):
The important thing we also did here is this gave us the opportunity to extend hours. Our branches are open till five o'clock every day. The virtual financial center stays open till 8:00 PM So not only is this giving you to flexibility to be able to bank at your convenience for maybe your own home. Also you're able to bring in all the stakeholders we know. How many times have we gone to a branch? Well, my wife or my husband needs to be involved with this. Well, we can have them all together sitting in your living room, but we're also going to do it maybe after you've gotten off work at seven o'clock to be able to do that for you. And then just the, and DocuSign, obviously this is an important part of what we're doing, being able to send documents to our members to sign. Glia does have the ability to send encrypted information, so if we need IDs and things of that nature, that gives us some great ability to help our members.

(09:23):
And what's good to know here is that 95% of the things that we're able to do in the branch we're able to do in the virtual financial center. We are not able to print an instant issue debit card for our members via the virtual center. But everything else we can pretty much do in the virtual center. You can jump over to the next slide, which we go to. So actually we had a video that worked in Maryland, but when it came to Florida didn't work. But this really shows here a member interacting with our virtual financial center. They came in through the lobby connected right to Michael who's able to help them, and that's kind of showing you what the Glia platform looks like for our members. Unfortunately, video didn't come with us to Florida, so we'll have to table that one. We can jump over to the next slide, but really seen some great results since we've been able to go out with the virtual financial center, which we launched in late 2020, started taking appointments in early 2021.

(10:22):
We've had over 15,000 appointments that have come through last year in the virtual financial center. And if you compare that to other financial centers we have at cq, we're actually ranked number one in most every category when it comes to production. And we're able to do that at a very high member satisfaction rate, which we're happy to see. But I think what's important that we've been able to do there is really promote different types of activities with our members, and that's our financial wellness checkups. We don't see members coming in the branches to do those. If you think about you go to your doctor once a year to get a checkup, you should do that same thing for your finances. We've been able to market the virtual financial center to our members that come in for these checkups that we've done close to 2000 a year.

(11:08):
Really it's not product driven, it's member driven really having discussions to help them with their finances, but it really encourages them to make CQ their financial institution a choice. They see the care we have for 'em looking out just not for a product. They're not a commodity to us. We're there for their financial wellness. I think another important factor is 20% of our appointments come in after five o'clock, so it really shows the value that our members are experiencing in extended hours that we're able to add from the virtual financial center. So really this, this started off where we had two or three appointments a day, and now we're not only taking appointments, we have members coming in through our open lobby. It's one of our busier branches. So we're real excited about the progress we've been able to make in a short time.

Frank Gargano (11:57):
So Eric, something I wanted to double back on. You said you launched this in July of 2020, right?

Erik Schwink (12:02):
A little later, closer to October.

Frank Gargano (12:04):
Okay. So I'm sure everyone remembers COVID a little bit in the rear view mirror now, but launching something like that, when everything kind of shifted away from in-person, what can you say the pandemic had I guess impact wise on the success of this initiative?

Erik Schwink (12:21):
I'm glad you asked that. There was a important part of that video that I skipped over to brought up with your question there, Frank. So thank you. One of the things with the virtual financial center, it isn't all about the appointments and the interactions with the member advisors. It's also you can go to the virtual financial center and get tutorials on how to use items from digital banking. So it's encouraging members to go digital, but it's also giving them the consultation option of going to a member advisor. So that was what we're really trying to get out of COVID, knowing that members were looking, maybe they weren't comfortable coming to the branch anymore or they looking for the other options. So we were educating 'em how to use the options, but we also have this virtual financial center that you can come to and get that in branch experience right on video.

Frank Gargano (13:05):
And then since, I guess since October of 2020, what has membership interaction been like with the digital branch

Erik Schwink (13:13):
Member interaction has been great. I literally, I watched one of our videos where a member was interacting walking down the streets of Paris and you could see the Eiffel Tower in the background, but if you think about, everybody saw the fraud presentation earlier when the presenter was talking about having to do the wire transfer and she couldn't do it. She was on vacation and the pain that it was, if she was a CQ member, she could have just came right on our website right now, clicked on the open lobby and she would've been able to do that. So that's really where we're seeing our members. We had another member tell us, they came in to get a quote for an auto loan and it was a later appointment and they said, well, I have appointment at another credit union tomorrow and that credit union has better rates than we do. So we just thought that was going to be lost. She called back to that banker 30 minutes later and said, this was such a great experience and I don't have to get out of my pajamas. I'm going to go ahead and book this auto loan with you now. So really the members experience, hopefully they're all wearing pajamas, but it has been great for our members.

Frank Gargano (14:21):
Thank you. Stacy, do we want to shift to you? Yeah, so what slide do you want to,

Stacy Suggs (14:25):
We can start with the digital sales team, their pictures do you want? Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. So our digital sales office, it's structured much like our other sales offices. We have 11 team members for this office right now. There's a digital sales manager who leads the team, opens accounts and reviews, loan applications. We have four digital relationship bankers that open accounts and do account related service and maintenance. And then we have six sync interactive tailors. They process mobile and ATM deposits and now operate our ITMs. So our digital sales office really allows us to continue what I mentioned before, our high tech, high-touch philosophy and expand our footprint not only with new customers but with also existing customers that may relocate branding. The next slide shows kind of our brand branding is really important to us. So all of our digital tools are branded under the name sync, for example, sync Mobile, sync online sync, ATM Live.

(15:40):
So we needed a brand as an umbrella for all of our digital tools now and in the future. So the brand name of sync is to show that all of the customer's digital tools are working together to keep their money in sync. So that's kind of where it comes from. And just some facts here about our digital sales office. It's continued to be a top performer and has been the second largest branch in our footprint of 33 branches for the largest number of deposit accounts open the past two years. I think COVID has helped with that too, people feeling more comfortable using the online channels. So we've seen that increase as well. We have a more consistent customer experience now where we can provide personal service like we do in our branches with handwritten thank you notes to our customers, which still means a lot to our digital customers as well.

(16:39):
We also do voice of the customer surveys both in our digital sales office as well as our branch offices, our physical offices. And one of the things I've also got here is I attended a Jack Henry SI conference a couple of months ago and I thought this was interesting. They had surveyed all of their banks and credit unions and they noted in one of their surveys that digital banking ranked number two as the top technology spending priority for this year. I think it shows that banks and credit unions we're all going to continue to invest in these tools and it's only going to grow. So I think that's another factor. Then the next slide I have here is really just another added benefit of our digital sales office, and this was prior to COVID that they could also work remotely to service our customers. I know we've all expanded that since COVID and that's a much broader area now, but we had a major snow event in January, so we had in north Alabama up to six inches of snow and ice. So we don't have the equipment some of you have up north to handle that type of an event. So we called it snowmageddon. So pretty much when we have severe weather events like this, we pretty much have to close the majority of our branch offices and most everybody's kind of stuck at home. But the good thing is our digital sales office can continue to work remotely and service our customers. So we've seen a lot of benefit from our digital sales office.

(18:19):
You want me to talk about the next slide or what? Okay, so this is just to show how the response from our digital sales office was just overwhelmingly positive when we started this in 2017 when we did our business case for our digital sales office, we were averaging, you can see back then for mobile deposits about 1500 a month, which has grown to 8,000 a month now. Our ATM deposits were about 400 a month, which has grown to 2200 a month now. We were not doing well online account applications. We had 65 a month, which is up to 200 a month now and we were not doing our online loan applications at the time, but those are averaging about 60 a month now. And then we just implemented ITMs last year. So those are growing, but our monthly volume now is about 180 a month there.

(19:16):
And then just the last slide I have here are just some key points just to reiterate. I think the value of the digital sales office is it supports our digital banking strategy and also our current strategic plan of growing core deposits. It extends our footprint. We can deliver our high tech high touch personal experience and give that personal service even with our digital customers. It centralized our online account opening. Like I said earlier, it's the second largest office for opening new deposit accounts for the past two years. It supports our electronic delivery channels and I think most importantly, it really has provided that foundation and infrastructure for growth. I think we're just going to see this area grow more and more. So I think that's been a big factor in having that available now.

Frank Gargano (20:13):
Thank you. And I think you're both touching upon really core points. It's been a while since we've really heard a lot of news about what was known as the war for deposits. It's still ongoing. It might not be as heated as it was, but there is still a battle for consumer deposits and I think that a lot of what both of you are talking about here and sort of taking a new approach to reaching consumers and members where they are as opposed to sticking with what was generally accepted as the tried and true sticking, oh, we have 33 branches across the state. That's always worked for us. There's no point in us trying anything new. It can be a damaging sort of viewpoint in the long run where if you're considering the mass pace of adoption of technology, the pace of innovation and all of the multifaceted aspects of it and what it can do that to sort of ignore it and say, well, what we have now works, why would we try anything new? Sort of puts you behind or you hear the term laggard that puts you behind in that sort of tech race where it's not just competing against other institutions, you're really sort of failing to meet the needs of your members and your account holders. But at this point I want to, before I jump into the rest of my questions, I want to open up to the floor if anybody has anything that they want to ask are panelists.

Audience Member 1 (21:23):
So branch,

Frank Gargano (21:32):
So to confirm the question you ask is compared to the impact of online branch traffic, how did physical branch traffic fair?

Stacy Suggs (21:41):
So I would say from our standpoint, the physical branch traffic did decrease. We do have more of an increase in our drive-throughs than people coming inside. I think COVID has changed all that, but we do also still value the importance of physical branches. We know that most people in the studies that we've received, when they decide who they want to bank with, a lot of times it's dependent upon the physical branch that's closest to them. And I think that's still very interesting because when they want to talk with someone, they want to talk with someone in person and they want to be close to that office. So we know there's still value in having physical offices, but I think having this digital banking strategy and having a digital sales office has really opened up an opportunity for us to focus on those digital customers and also make sure we're providing the same personal service like we do in our physical offices.

Frank Gargano (22:45):
So it's an either or approach, sorry, it's not an either or approach. You can use both at the same time and still reap the benefits of both. Yes.

Audience Member 2 (22:55):
I've got a question. Hard question. How do you verify customers wire checks? Do you have an after hour solution virtual chat bot?

Frank Gargano (23:07):
So the question just to confirm was how do you verify members when it concerns wire transfers and things like that? And then how do you also do that after hours

Audience Member 2 (23:15):
Solution after? Okay,

Erik Schwink (23:18):
So for the verification piece, for us it's all through video. So it's no different than being in person. And we would follow similar procedures as we would in the branch for doing verifications. We're able to collect the ID through Leah. So it's actually often cases we'll get referrals from the call center because we need to do the verification as far as after hours. We do have a chat bot, so that's capturing if there's certain things and it's routing that to our contact center so that we can follow up after hours.

Stacy Suggs (23:50):
So as far as account verification, we use out wallet questions for that when someone's opening an account online. The other thing that we're doing is really whenever someone is, they can come to one of our branches or call into our call center until 8:00 PM at night. We have talked about extending that even more. We are constantly thinking about that, but I think it's just being available to the customer when they need you. They can also do online chat through our online banking channels and so forth. So I think we're having to expand our digital tools in order to meet the needs of the customer and we're competing with the world, not just other banks and credit unions and in our market. So we really have to expand that network and make sure we're providing the support they need.

(24:58):
I couldn't understand.

Frank Gargano (25:00):
So regarding ITM usage, you're asking what are the characteristics for success?

Stacy Suggs (25:05):
That's a great question. He's got more experience than I do, but I will tell you in the year that we've had ours, the one factor that we didn't think about is small businesses. So if you have a lot of small businesses near one of your ITMs, you may not be able to meet all of those needs of those small business customers as far as cash goes. They need cash exchange, cash orders, those kind of things. So that was probably one factor. I think the location of the ITMs is just something to be very strategic about, but so far we're having good success with ours. We have waited a while to deploy ITMs in several of our markets. Our customers were not ready for it, but they are now. So I think having that video teller, having someone personally to talk to what Eric's doing with his financial call center is I think of great value for someone to feel like they're getting that personal service through an ITM.

Erik Schwink (26:11):
We've been at ITMs for a while, so we went all in. So it wasn't the option of having either or. And I know some places just use the drive up and that's a good alternative. Funny thing that going back to COVID, it seems we keep saying that COVID changed our members mentality. We would still have some members long time members that were still resistant to using ITMs. COVID changed all that. We stopped getting that in surveys immediately when COVID started about I want to have an in-person teller. We don't get that anymore. So I think if you're considering going to ITMs, there's no real better time than now to do. That.

Audience Member 3 (26:53):
Sounds like a lot of success.

Frank Gargano (27:07):
So if I heard it correctly regarding your institution's partnership with Glia, how did you get buy-in from some of the other executives across the institution? What was that process like?

Erik Schwink (27:15):
Yeah, definitely. I think you've reading Frank's questions that thinks one of his next ones, and that's an important part of this process. This wasn't, I'm part of retail banking, this wasn't our decision. This was really all of our stakeholders coming together, determining what our vision was first. I think before we even got that glia conversation is for us to identify what our vision was for this with our digital team, with our operations team, with our marketing team. After we had that vision, we looked at our vendors to see who would be the best to fulfill that vision. And it was really important in doing that. We weren't trying to use duct tape and things like that to put it together. This is our vision, we need you to help us get to this vision. And so Glia had the components that we were looking at for the video, the security, and then also the chat features, the recording of the sessions, things like that that we thought was important. And it's delivering the member experience, which is really the key thing that we expected.

Frank Gargano (28:19):
Stacy, did you want to weigh in on some vendor partnerships?

Stacy Suggs (28:22):
I would just say, I mean I think vision is crucial. It's very important that you have, the vision aligns with core values and your strategy. Our vision is to be the bank of choice in all the communities we serve. So that takes a lot to meet those demands of our customers, our competition. But you got to start with the vision. I think you always have to start with that and evaluate if you're making the right decision there.

Frank Gargano (28:54):
And to your question earlier, one of the things I think is also crucial within these conversations, especially when you're talking about a technology that maybe the higher ups or those that want to buy in before those conversations, there has to be an education component to it as well. Especially if it's something that maybe the CEO has been at the institution for 35, 40 years and this is a technology that they might not be familiar with, but their buy-in is essential for it to even touch the front door of the credit union or the bank. So something I'm curious about, and I'll pose this to both of you, is the technology that you were adopting for your digital brand strategy, was any of it unknown to your higher ups? Was any of it completely unfamiliar or for the most part were they pretty clued into it?

Stacy Suggs (29:39):
I mean, most of our technology was already, we used our existing technology. It was just aligning those teams and aligning those products under one umbrella, under one team, one person, our chief retail officer, she manages all of our branches and also our digital sales office. So I think having that alignment made sense as well. So we made those changes, but the technology was pretty much already there and we had great vendors to work with to help align our systems to make it work.

Erik Schwink (30:14):
Yeah, I think that's a good question. Our chief revenue officer, which really the digital space and the retail space both report under, she's very savvy about what's going on in the industry. So was very familiar with that technology and was really a champion for it, which helped us really take that across the finish line.

Frank Gargano (30:34):
Is there any other questions before I move on? Alright, so the next question that I have for you both is going into the digital transformation process, what concerns did you have and what kind of problems did you encounter that you were eventually able to overcome? And this is for either of you who wants to take it?

Erik Schwink (30:52):
Well, for us, we were taking the crawl walk run approach and the walk approach was going to be the appointment only, but Glia was really, again, making sure they were acting on our vision. They were more comfortable with this open lobby concept. So we really needed to make sure that that appointment model worked because we're sending a link out to our members to click in and come to it as opposed to being on our website. And there was some challenges to that because sometimes all of our members aren't maybe using technology that's consistent with what would work on the platform, but we were able to, through trial and error, really ironing out that process to where now we've identified where there were some maybe hiccups for our members and we're really able to get out in front of them. So pretty much seamless experience at this point. So I think it was one of the challenges that this is we were the first credit union in our area that did this. When we went to ITMs, we were able to go to others and see how it worked. We were really trailblazing when it came to that. So that was the concerns. But I think taking the crawl, walk run approach really helped us so that we didn't get in over our skis.

Stacy Suggs (32:05):
So for us, I think our concerns were more philosophical and less technical. We were asking ourselves was it possible to take our high touch personal service that has made us successful into the digital space and would it even matter to those customers? And we found that it does matter and IT channel matters a lot. So for example, sometimes we would receive incomplete account applications and our digital sales team members would call those customers but not get a great response. But when they started testing those customers through a system we use called text concierge, they got a much faster response. So we learned that channel does matter, but also old fashioned works well too. So as I mentioned, just sending handwritten thank you notes to our digital customers like we do in our sales offices really makes a big impression on those customers as well.

Frank Gargano (33:05):
So something sort of tangential to this that I'm also curious about, and maybe this speaks to a little bit more about the membership impact of each of your respective digital brand solutions. What I guess either age brackets or demographics would you say are benefiting the most or interacting the most with the digital branches?

Erik Schwink (33:25):
Actually I think it's all of them, but I think we're always focused. Everybody here has probably heard we need to get more millennials, we need to get more Gen Z. So the virtual financial center is a great solution for that age group because we know they're comfortable using digital, they want to use it at their convenience, but we also know they need consultation and they're desiring consultation. So we're able to do that for them. But really we're finding everybody that we're finding all age groups using this interaction, this technology. And for us it's been about getting to those footprints that we're not and really opening up to members that did not think they could be part of CQ because there wasn't a branch 15 minutes down the street from them. Now getting that message out to them that you can be anywhere in the state of Maryland and bank with CQ and it's right in the palm of your hand. So we're finding that really all age groups are really excited about that.

Stacy Suggs (34:20):
I would agree with that. Same for us. I think, again, I keep saying COVID has changed a lot of things. I think that really made it easier for all of us. We have more customers using mobile deposits, we have more customers opening an account online. As I mentioned the last two years, our digital sales office is the leader of all of our 33 sales offices. So I think it's used to, it was just the younger generation, the more tech savvy individuals. I think people have really grown to embrace technology, not be as afraid of it. So I think it's really helped.

Frank Gargano (34:58):
And then I figured we can get a little bit more granular about what the response has been from customers and members. What sort of specific insights or feedback have you gleaned since launching your respective digital branch solutions?

Erik Schwink (35:14):
I think for us it goes to we're getting members that we would not have had three years ago. I have another example of a member that signed up through bag at work just to have a credit union and they had a $10 savings account and that was about it. They did an onboarding call for them and they said they were point blank, I'm not going to be able to bank with you. I do need to get an auto loan, but I'm not going to be able to bank with you. I worked till five o'clock, the branch is 45 minutes from my house. I just needed to have a credit union. You're it. And then that person is savvy enough to say, well I can get you appointment six 30 tonight with our virtual financial center. Sent them the link. That person now has an auto loan and they're banking with cq. So just we've been able to expand our horizon so much by having the virtual financial center and the members that are using it, which is showing up on our surveys, really enjoyed the experience.

Stacy Suggs (36:09):
Same here. I mean it's expanded our footprint. We open accounts across the us. I think what's really been interesting is how we have customers that may relocate and through referrals we get more business through their referrals in other states or parts of the country. So there's a lot of value I think in having that. There's so many different ways they can interact with us now online. And so I think the more we've expanded that, the better.

Frank Gargano (36:41):
And then before I get to my final question, was there anything else from the audience that anybody wanted to ask? I know we're about four minutes until deadline. Alright.

Erik Schwink (36:51):
I had a quick question. Does anybody in the audience think six inches of snow is Snowmageddon other than Stacy up here?

Stacy Suggs (37:02):
It's a southern thing. It's definitely, especially ice, snow. Sometimes we can drive in snow and we get out in it. Don't get me wrong, but we do have four wheel drives in Alabama, but when it comes to ice, those don't work very well. Fair enough. But yeah, I think it was because it lasted so long. I mean we were pretty much, we had to deal with it because of the ICE situation for about seven days. So that's a long time for a lot of things to be shut down. But yeah, it was our own, we called it Snowdon. Some of our local weather people called it that too. So it was kind of interesting.

Frank Gargano (37:44):
So the last question I have for you both as we're coming close up to time is explain where you're going next. Obviously this seems to me like this is the first step in a long line of technology adoption that you're each going to add to your respective institutions. And after the results that you've garnered from each of these strategies, what sorts of technology are you looking towards next? Or maybe what are you thinking about on the horizon?

Erik Schwink (38:10):
I think this gives us an opportunity to reevaluate our branch strategy. Instead of opening up a new branch, maybe we go with a microcenter in areas that we're not where it has no employees. It has an ITM that is functional as an ATM and has the ability to connect with our virtual financial center, but really gives a footprint in areas we haven't been able to be in and expand from having a true digital branch presence.

Stacy Suggs (38:40):
And I think for us, I mean one of our current strategies right now is growing core deposits. So whatever we can do with our digital branch to support that we're going to keep doing. But we're always looking at different tools to help the customer. We don't have anything specifically right now. Some of them are financial management tools, some of those things. Nothing on the horizon though.

Frank Gargano (39:05):
What we've got about, I'd say minute and a half left. If there's no other questions from the audience, I'll do one last look. I think we can seed you guys back a minute and a half. Stacey, Erick, thank you both for taking the time to chat with me and thank you everyone for coming. Frank, thank

Erik Schwink (39:21):
You. Thank you. Thank you.