How Digital Identity Raises In-Branch Trust and Convenience

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JPMorgan Chase recently made headlines with its announcement of launching 500 new branches. This trend is not isolated. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, the pace of bank branch closures has decelerated since mid-2022, coinciding with several major banks unveiling plans for branch openings and expansions into new markets. 

Join JPMorgan Chase and Mitek Systems for a discussion about the role of a modernized bank branch in delivering an integrated and trusted omnichannel banking experience.

What you'll learn
  • Customer preferences across generations
  • The role of AI fraud prevention, digital identity verification, and biometrics in improving in-branch security, personalization, and convenience
  • How modern technology is bridging the physical and digital channels to enable a consistent and connected experience across the banking journey

Transcription:

Carter Pape (00:09):
Awesome. Thanks everyone for coming. My name is Carter Pape. I'm a Cybersecurity and Fraud Reporter for American Banker. We talk about how digital identity raised in branch trust and convenience. This is a great topic. I think I've been reporting a lot in the past year about the various forms of fraud that have been happening more frequently inside of branches, and I think that this topic really intersects in important ways With that, so I have with me Stefan Schubert. Stefan is Managing Director and Head of Identity for Consumer and Computing Banking at JP Morgan Chase. He has 17 years of experience in fraud, authentication and identity within financial services. He began his career in a call center and moved into fraud strategy across various roles. He's managed digital payments, cards, identity theft, account takeover, credit abuse branch and call center authentication strategy, and he's created new functions and teams from scratch. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and two children.

(01:12):
I also have Kerry Cantley, she's Vice President of Digital Banking at Mitek, which as you probably heard earlier, is a digital identity technology company. Kerry joined Mitek just over a year ago after a 30 year career in financial services that span multiple executive leadership roles at Bank of America, including Senior Vice President of Global Technology and Operations. Kerry has more than 30 patents related to image processes and bank operations. So I want to get started with you, Kerry. So we're here to discuss how digital identity raises trust and convenience and branches. Just set the stage for us. Why is this topic relevant?

Kerry Cantley (01:52):
Yeah, so certainly, and I think there's some statistics that we'll talk a little bit about the branches. The financial centers are still important. Customers want an experience that translates from an online to an in-person experience, and they want to do that with trust and confidence regardless of it. It starts online and then they need to go to their branch. There's still a significant amount of even Gen Zers who want that personal connection. We actually are seeing from a statistics perspective, more people use the branches for different types of activities, including deposits, as well as connecting with someone from a trust and partnership perspective when they're opening new accounts. Identity goes a long way to that. So I want you to know who I am. I want you to understand what I need, and if I'm transitioning from one channel to the other, I want that experience to be the same. And so those branches are still playing a big role. When you think about in-person, customer service and the relationship experience that customers want, regardless whether it's financial institution or either in the retail space, we're seeing that still be a need.

Carter Pape (03:11):
So for Stefan, as my colleague Jim Dobbs report earlier this year, there's been an uninterrupted march toward fewer branches that has permeated the banking industry since 2010. But JP Morgan Chase is different in this respect. It's one of only a handful of large banks that has opened more branches in recent years than it has closed. Specifically the number of JP Morgan, branch Chase, JP Morgan Chase branches has increased by nine between 21 and 2022 or 23, sorry. So Amman, but bucking the trend. So in February, the bank announced its plans to open more than 500 new branches, renovate 1,700 locations and hire 3,500 employees over the next three years. So how are these new and renovated branches going to differ from the branches that you have today?

Stefan Schubert (04:04):
Well, what's really important, we have a saying at Chase, which is that the branches make everyone better. So myself, I sit in a digital product, but we see our branches helping push the services that I create. So we see our branches as our anchors in the community. That's how we're able to get to know our customers in the first place. And we offer a huge number of financial services, and most other banks in the room probably do the same. So we don't want to just have a website that just pushes one specific service. We want you to go to our branch, work with a financial services professional who can find the right service for you. And this becomes a gateway for us to onboard that customer with different services. And also really importantly, we view our branches as community centers. So on top of, we have some branch growth, but we also have a huge amount of branch renovation. We're in the process of completely rebuilding the way many of our branches look entirely to reflect their communities, and we want them to be places where the community feels welcomed and empowered to do more than just banking.

Carter Pape (05:02):
Awesome. So for Kerry, you've worked with financial institutions globally and you have decades of experience in the industry with Bank of America. So how are you seeing banks change their branches?

Kerry Cantley (05:15):
Yeah, I think to Stefan's point, customers expect that regardless of its retail, financial services, et cetera, that you reflect the experiences that they would want and need in the community. So you have to reflect that You're seeing that differentiation in the way that a retail store looks in New York versus where I live in a kind of more rural community where they want more sit down time, they want the relationship to look a little bit different, and financial services is no different. They need that experience. They want to have, if I want to spend an hour with my financial advisor, I want to be able to do that in the branch, but I want them to know me if I want to make a deposit and when I walk in the door, I want my financial service manager to know me or to understand what I need.

(06:11):
But that's different depending on where you live, how your community works, the relationships that you have in that community. And so we have to reflect all of those experiences now like you would in any other retail store. But we have to remember the importance of the fact that we're dealing with people's money and the protections and securities that come with that. And that's why identity and that trust factor is so important. When you walk in the door, I want you to make sure it's me. I want you to know who I am, but I also want you to know the needs that I have and that experience should reflect that.

Carter Pape (06:50):
Yeah. So actually I have another question for you. So one of the things that we've seen, I mentioned at the beginning changing with banks is branches are becoming increasingly targets for various forms of fraud. And I guess I'm just interested to have you talk a little bit about how the changing branch affects that piece of things.

Kerry Cantley (07:16):
Yeah, so fraudsters move fast. They're agile, they're nimble, they understand weaknesses. They understand just as you would the community that we're talking about that experience. They understand the differences in the community as well as the financial centers that live in that community, and they find the weak points. The other interesting thing about course fraudsters is they communicate a whole lot while we talked about the sharing of data is important across the financial institutions, their ability to share data is fast, and they know how to leverage our weaknesses sometimes in those areas and form those, I'll call it rings of fraud depending on the community. So if one person has an issue with an ATM a lack of a fraud protection in an ATM, they know that and they're willing to share it. We've got to do the same thing. We got to start collaborating a little bit across not only just the fintechs and the financial services, but with our customers around those same areas, but they know how to perpetrate those gaps, whether that's on the identity side with some of the things that are going on with synthetics or even check fraud. We're seeing that they know how to walk in, open a new account, deposit a check very quickly, and take that money before that communication back happens. So they're willing to take what I call the test and learn approach and walk in and figure out where those gaps are and perpetrate. Yeah.

Stefan Schubert (08:50):
If I could add, I think two things are really interesting about that is when I started out in this industry, I've always been an anti-fraud, sending a fraud to the branch. Used to be ironclad like, I'm going to put a note on this account, you got to go to the branch, I beat you, I won. And now we're seeing the opposite, right? Fraudsters choose to go to the branch. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that, but one of which is that in our digital environments, there's so many more passive signals we can pick up about you, your device, your geography, your behavior. I have all that data available when you walk into a branch and you talk to a person, that data's much harder to access. And so it's a lot harder for us to build models off that. And the last thing I always think of is our call centers and our branches deal with the hardest things. If I could figure this out on the app, I'm not going to the branch. I'm going to the branch because it's hard and it's not working. So we've kind of shifted our most problematic volume into one channel. And of course for officers are taking advantage of that. So it's something that explains how we got here. I think we need to talk about how we get out of here. Yeah,

Kerry Cantley (09:51):
I agree.

Carter Pape (09:51):
Yeah. Yeah. It's like pushing people to the branch is almost like inviting them to engage with social engineering instead of trying to do a hacking or something, which for some fraudsters is easier.

Kerry Cantley (10:04):
And in the branch you're in person. And so there's a real security concern with approaching someone who could be potentially perpetrating fraud. And so there's that balance of protection of the employee protection, of customers, protection of everything around you, everybody that's involved that you have to consider versus just kicking them out of an app, which is pretty easy. Right.

Stefan Schubert (10:30):
Exactly! I remember really distinctly the first time I heard the banker feedback of Why did you send this transaction? It looked like fraud. And the banker said, because I was scared and I had to stop and think, okay, well I was never putting myself in your shoes. That's an awful experience to be in. How can we get you out of that experience?

Kerry Cantley (10:45):
Exactly.

Carter Pape (10:46):
Yeah. So Stefan, so we've talked about bringing digital identity verification capabilities to some of your branches, and as we're talking about preventing fraud is one of those main things that you're trying to do with that. Is there anything else that bringing digital identity verification capabilities to the branch is helping with?

Stefan Schubert (11:06):
Well, yes. One, it's helped with fraud. It's really important. So we've been able to turn away bad guys. It's also helped systematize what used to be a very human process. So I now have a data audit trail of what happens, and I can say, this is why this person wasn't able to pass our authentication tools as opposed to asking a banker to eyeball an id, which probably isn't a fair expectation to set for your frontline employees who are paid to be experts in financial service. They're not paid to be experts in 50 states driver's licenses and 180 countries passports. So we've been able to take that weight of responsibility out of our banker's hands, let them focus on what they're good at, and we've created for ourselves a much more trainable model where we can go understand what's working and what isn't working.

Kerry Cantley (11:53):
It's kind of that balance of a seamless technology integration with a good person to person customer experience. That's important. And so how do you leverage, we heard it, even the keynote kind of the systems that work, why I have that conversation with you. So as you approach me around opening a new account, some of that authentication could already happen. If you've got that authentication done in an online mobile app, that omnichannel is I think going to become more and more important. I start in one channel or one device or one system, but I transition to the other. Being in person, that experience and my knowledge about you should be equal. And that's how you have to think about technology. It's an integration with the in-person experience versus technology sits over here. It's an add-on effect. Right.

Stefan Schubert (12:43):
No one's ever excited to talk to a chat bott.

Kerry Cantley (12:45):
That's exactly right. This is going

Stefan Schubert (12:46):
To be great. No, they want to talk to a person. Yeah.

Kerry Cantley (12:48):
Yeah,

Carter Pape (12:49):
I am, but I'm not a typical customer. So Stefan, can you share any early outcomes from the changes that you've been implementing? What are well, our branch employees embracing these changes and how are customers responding to the changes?

Stefan Schubert (13:08):
So with ups and downs, I think really critical to where we've had success is employee buy-in. So working with our branch bankers to understand how the service is going to work, letting them understand what it can't do, this is what it will not replace for you, and getting them excited about it works really, really well for us. We actually had feedback when we first started launching digitized identity verification solutions. Our tellers and our bankers loved it. They said, I don't have to worry about this anymore. It's one and done. It's great. Where it's not worked is where we overcorrect it on that. And they thought, okay, this is solving all the problems for me. I don't need even think about it anymore. And to your point actually a minute ago, Kerry, is that we still want to leverage the human part of this interaction. So it hasn't worked as where we've over relied on the technology. Where it has worked is where we found good harmony between the two.

Kerry Cantley (13:56):
And you have to remember, your employees are customers too. And so you've got a great voice of customers sitting there. And so how do you leverage their experiences and their knowledge, both of the people walking in the door, but them as users to make that better? That integration of technology. Sometimes we forget our employees have to use the tools, but they're also customers too. So as we develop back office, front office experiences, we should consider that they know how to use that on the customer side. So if you make it easy both ways, you're better selling it to your customers along the way and onboarding and transitioning to the other channels with that customer because they're confident in the technology you're implementing.

Stefan Schubert (14:41):
Absolutely. I mean, anyone that's ever been in a frontline position, if you've been in a call center or a branch, when you have a tool that doesn't work, you just kind of stop using it, right? And so it's very easy for that person who's managing the customer interaction to say, you know what? We're going to avoid that one. That doesn't work. Use this one.

Kerry Cantley (14:57):
We do it old school, we're going to go paper.

Stefan Schubert (14:58):
Exactly. Exactly.

Carter Pape (15:00):
So Stephen, I'm interested for you to make this a little more concrete for us. I want to talk about two examples. One is check deposit, and another is account opening. Where are you trying to get to at JP Morgan Chase with how those processes work when you walk into a branch, how is it going to differ from today to go in with a check and deposit it?

Stefan Schubert (15:23):
Yeah, let's start with check. So today's experience, I mean, depends really in which branch you go to. So we have like 5,000 branches. They're all a little bit different. They have different levels of technology adoption, but we're trying to standardize that as much as possible. So we want customization and the experience with the teller and the banker. We want standardization and the technology and approach. So when you deposit a check, it should feel very quick and easy. I should just hand that check to the employee and move on from there. And that's print. Where we are today, the difference that we want is to have the same identity verification process be just as quick and easy as the check depositing process. So I hand you my ID walk over to a machine that you can see as a customer, I want to see where my ID is and then scan.

(16:04):
It'll come back and say, I'm done. We talk about the account opening experience. That's obviously much more complicated because we're not doing a transaction for an existing customer whose information I have. I have to collect information. So really just double clicking on the identity portion of that. We're trying to make it as standard and fast as possible. We've recently launched we call assisted account opening, which is an experience which really aligns the in branch account opening experience with the digital account opening experience because we found that putting a lot of the information in the customer's hands the same way you would on the website, very effective. So we want, again, as much standardization as possible while really, really leaning into what our bankers and financial specialists do best, which is customer service and financial advice for customers.

Carter Pape (16:52):
So Kerry, you help build technology that enables these things. I'm interested to hear from you what, what's also possible. Stefan's talked a bit about Chase's vision, but where could we get to with

Kerry Cantley (17:06):
These things? Yeah, I mean, we talk a lot about omnichannel and the industry and experience being similar. Whether I start in a mobile app or end at a financial center or start in a financial center and then transition over to a mobile app to do a deposit. I think when I look at the future of technology capability, at the end of the day, the experience should be equal to Stephen's point. You want it to be controlled, you want it to have the right controls and processes in there so that from a regulatory and customer protection and trust point of view, you have all of that covered, right? That's just kind of the building blocks foundation. Everything else is about experience. I was reading some studies around customer experience and it's kind of changed a little bit. We thought everybody's going online and great and no more customers in a retail store or financial center.

(18:00):
However, that's not true. Customers want personal connections, but I also want you to know me wherever I start. And so I think you're going to see technology transition to experiential driven UI UX is critical, our experience driven capabilities, but it also needs to be customizable to me. And you love chatbots. I do not right my husband, but I'm willing to do that up to a certain point and then I want to talk to somebody or I'm willing to do that to a certain point and then I'm going to walk in. But when I walk in the door, I imagine a world where you know me, I'm authenticated in your online mobile app. I should get a text message when I get into your financial center or branch area that says, Hey, come on in. We've got somebody ready for you. We know you're here because you started this transaction in the mobile app.



(18:56):
So I think technology wise, there's got to be seamless interactions and steps that get me to where I need to go fast and easy. We actually were having the conversation about friction. It's not about frictionless, it's about protecting me, and I'm willing to have that protection if you're telling me why. So we've got along the way be educating our customers in that technology about the why and the when and the how, but making it right, the experience be seamless. And I think that from a technology perspective is where I see us going. We're not there yet. People are trying to do that in bits and pieces. But I think if you get the customer journey, whether that's onboarding day-to-day interactions, offboarding, all of those things, if you do it right, people are going to be happy about your brand. When they're happy about your brand, they're willing to bring you more business. And that's what we see and thinking about that is really important.

Stefan Schubert (19:52):
Yeah, I have a hot thought about friction. Can I share this? Yes. So pretty cool, right? You go home, you get out of your car, take out your phone, you press a button, your front door unlocks. That's great. That's really cool. Easy friction. I like it. Other experience, I get out of my car, I walk up to the door, it's a text, my phone automatically unlocks it. That's interesting. Okay, other alternative, I get out of my car, walk up to my house, the front door is wide open. No friction. That's

(20:16):
Great, Right? Everyone wants that. No, nobody wants that. No, that's right. So I think friction is not itself a bad word, it just needs to be understandable to customers. That's right. And most importantly, passable, right? Correct. Few customers will complain that you made me jump through a hoop, but I jumped through it successfully. They will complain that you asked me to do something, I couldn't do it. That's what drives the satisfaction. So I don't think friction by itself has to be a bad thing. It's more just understandable, friction and completable friction,

Kerry Cantley (20:42):
Alright, I did what you asked me to and I still couldn't prove in it, and I'm walking into your branch anyways because it didn't work the way you told me it was going to. So those experiences are really important.

Carter Pape (20:53):
Yeah, it's interesting. I read about a lot banks and vendors talking about how to educate customers about fraud and preventing it. And the more that you teach a customer about the potential ways that they can be defrauded, the more sympathetic that they're going to be to the various friction points that they encounter in the user experience.

Kerry Cantley (21:14):
I call it the Are you sure? Sure. Are you really, really sure you want to send that $10,000? Are you really sure that you want to open this account? Are you really you? And if you tell people along the way as they're doing those activities and integrating with you on the technology side or even in your financial center or a branch, I think they're going to be more willing to be okay with it and comfortable with it because you're doing it on behalf of them for trust and security and safety, all the things that you should be doing because you have my money

Stefan Schubert (21:46):
Who's really comfortable with friction, people who've been victims of fraud or who knows someone that has, right? So obviously I don't want that to happen to all customers, but how can we take that same feeling and make sure other people aware that this is for your protection, it's healthy for you.

Carter Pape (22:01):
So Stefan thinking, we've talked about the short term medium term goals of what you're hoping branches will look like, but I'm interested in the longer term of what's next for the bank and where are you're trying to go by changing how branches actually work.

Stefan Schubert (22:18):
So the biggest thing we're trying to focus on is fewer systems and more services. So most of us who financial institutions that have been around a long time, you've got all sorts of heritage services. Your employees might have to navigate five or six different applications to get something done. We want to get away from that, and at least for me, I want to make sure that identity and authentication ones are one system so that again, our employees can focus on what they want to focus on, which is helping customers. We also want to get to a place where since we're very community focused, we want to make sure we can offer identity services to the entire community. So if you look at people who are traditionally hard to bank or hard to offer credit to, it's a really direct correlation to people who are hard to identity proof because there are emerging credit bureaus are also emerging identities. Our recent immigrants not going to have a great identity history. So we want to make sure we have the tools that are ready to service all of those populations.

(23:16):
We consider ourselves a bank for all. It's really important for us. And the last thing we're considering is just very long term our banks as sort of an identity proofing center. So if anyone has TSA or clear, you've gone through a process where you worked with someone to help you bind your identity, essentially get your identity proofed that you're now a level three user, a level five user, whatever you want to call it. We're thinking about the same thing for ourselves, which is to say, if I go into a branch and I prove my identity while an associate works with me to get that done, I have a really high level of confidence in that person. How can I then bind that to something that they can use to transact everywhere else? Got really quiet here all of a sudden. That's a good point, I guess, yeah.

Kerry Cantley (24:00):
Well, I think identity proofing is absolutely important. I think it goes beyond just that one relationship that you have with your financial center. It's about how you message me, how you communicate with me. Do I trust that it's really you sending me that text message or that email? I mean, there's a whole lot of things when you think about binding my identity to who I am and what I do that in the future we got to consider when we talk about communication as well as verification about that that hasn't been stolen or I haven't been compromised and compromised signals I think are just important proof points as I am who I say am, and you got my ID and it looks right. So everything's for sale these days. We all know that. Go to any social media platform and you can join a group that says Chase Paradise or something else, and you may find your data there or breach data. So once you're validated, improved, the other thing that's really important from my perspective as a customer would be to make sure that along the way when my identity is used, that you're protecting me around that compromised data position as well.

Stefan Schubert (25:18):
Absolutely.

Carter Pape (25:19):
So Kerry, I'm interested to hear from you as the branch changes, the bank branch changes, what are the regulatory considerations that banks need to be making as the regulations change to keep up?

Kerry Cantley (25:32):
I'll talk about a big picture and then definitely want JPNC Stefan's perspective on this. I think I'll say it from two points of view. One regulatory environments way behind. If you look at laws that are on the books at even the state level or the larger US or global level capabilities of technology have advanced beyond some of the regulatory requirements. And so how do you balance the regulatory and laws that are on the books now with advancing your innovation capabilities is very difficult. Well, I'll put that there. So I think there's a lot that has to happen. However, I think there's also some industry collaboration that can be done that helps along and kind of helps everybody be in regulatory compliance or protecting their customers, whether that's a consortium or a data model of sharing around financial crimes data and all the things that you're starting to hear in the industry.

(26:41):
So it is a challenge to maneuver through all the different regulations and requirements and even audit and CFPB rules and things like that and making sure that you're complying across everything and keeping everything protected. But there is a value proposition to sharing and finding partners that can help you protect your customer's privacy and security and all those things, but helping to protect the industry, therefore helping to protect the customer. So big picture answer it is a challenge and some of the rules and regulatory things that are happening today need to be advanced because technology is advanced. However, it is a very difficult challenge, especially with some of the new things are happening at the state level, even with identity protection. Anything to add?

Stefan Schubert (27:32):
Going to tread carefully on this one.

(27:36):
So it might be weird to hear a banker say this, but I think we do need more regulation in some of these places. I think what's very difficult is when you have fractured regulation. So when states are giving state specific guidance, it's very difficult to adhere to all those laws and we might ultimately not do what's best for the customer if we have conflicting laws that make it challenging to adhere to. So I think the best thing we could get is more federal preemption and say, this is what you should do across all states to make it easier for us. I would say also anyone that's been in this industry a long time could probably tell you that sometimes the regulations are very out of date. Some of the regulations we have to adhere to are 20, 25 years older. They don't take or older or much older, and they were written by a lawyer. They were not written by a technologist. So they need to adapt a little bit to the modern world. I would encourage everybody though, just never make the regulatory minimum year minimum should never be the case. Always do what's right for the customer and consumer. And if that means for us, we make this conscious decision to have an expensive process that falls regulation and a secondary process that we think performs even better, we're going to do that and everyone should do that.

Kerry Cantley (28:42):
And consumers and customers don't understand all the regulatory regulations and laws that are out there either. They don't understand that one check is governed by this and credit card is governed by X and real time payments are right. Zelle and movement of money is governed by Y. They just want the experience to be the same. Check fraud's, one of those reasons. Examples, you got 45 days or longer to remediate a check fraud claim where credit card is almost instantaneous, ACH and wire is very different. So they don't understand that and we've got to help them through that. I think on the front end, you got to make the customer experience the same and figure out underneath it how to maintain compliance. And if you have information along the way, I think we heard data, data, data, ai, bring all that data together, make that experience very similar. You probably know from even a check fraud perspective versus an HCH fraud perspective, you probably know within days if you have an issue and can remediate that with your customer, do the right thing. And I think that helps everybody, but you may have to have different layers that regulatory compliance may not equal customer experience. You have to figure out how to maneuver through that to make it better. Your customers are never going to understand all the regulations

Stefan Schubert (30:01):
And they shouldn't have to. It's not their job.

Kerry Cantley (30:02):
That's right. Yeah, I agree.

Carter Pape (30:05):
Well, Kerry, I want to let you have the last word. So I want to just ask you what's next for tech and then also key takeaways that you want people to take away from this. Yeah, certainly. Sorry. Well, after she does, we'll have time for a few audience questions as well. Might walk my mic up to you or if we have another mic we'll walk them around. But go ahead.

Kerry Cantley (30:26):
Yeah, so I think we've talked a lot about it through the questions or these questions together as a group, I think the convergence of who I am and what I do is going to be critical. So when you think about even Mitek capabilities, we have identity, we have biometrics, we have a consortium around check fraud, payments, fraud from a payments perspective comes next. When you start to bridge all of those intelligence signals together, we're thinking about it across the customer journey. So onboarding through day and day interactions and how do you bring all of that together to make it efficient, say yes in the right places, help our financial services customers or any customer quite honestly, that uses our technology, put friction in the right places, but make the experience the same and seamless. Whether I am opening a new account online versus in a branch, whether I am making a check deposit in my mobile or depositing in a branch. Those experiences and the protections should be similar. Real time is truly real time. And so I think technology of the future, especially for the financial services needs that. And yeah, there is a lot of legacy out there. And so helping to solve that legacy problem and bringing that right layer of customer experience across the entire customer journey is our focus.

Carter Pape (31:52):
Awesome. Alright, well we have time for some audience questions. If anyone has any. We covered a wide range of topics that you might want to ask about friction, how in branch fraud occurs, that kind of thing. So if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to walk my mic over to you. Actually, I'll repeat it over the mic. Okay.

Audience Member 1 (32:17):
So I'm just curious on the assisted how experience, how customers are responding to that and what does that experience look like of having that self-serve?

Carter Pape (32:31):
Yeah, so just to repeat the question, it's about assisted account opening and how customers are feeling about their ability to self-serve in the branch to do that.

Stefan Schubert (32:40):
And it's still early, right? So just not definitive answer. Early feedback is very positive. Early employee feedback is very positive. It's important that the way we've built it out is it's not doing the majority of the activity. They're doing a small portion of the activity on their own device. It works really well for everyone who has a smartphone, which is almost everyone. If you don't, we have to figure that out. But I think from the customer's perspective, it's almost become a little bit more accepting. I went to rent a U-Haul truck a couple months ago and I had to take out my own phone and do my own identity proofing. If you told me that two years ago, I would've said that's ridiculous and I'll never do that. But it was fine. So I think it's becoming a much more common experience across the financial and other industries to have customers use their own device to finish up the identity proofing process.

Kerry Cantley (33:28):
How does that work for small business and commercial?

Stefan Schubert (33:31):
We're getting there. We're not there yet. We're not there yet.

Carter Pape (33:32):
Go ahead.

Audience Member 2 (33:35):
So one of the things you're using new technology branches, finding them skillset about hiring.

Carter Pape (33:48):
So there was a question about the new technology that's coming into branches and the skill sets of people that you have to hire. Is it matches? Is it changing with the technology

Stefan Schubert (34:00):
Bold statement? I would say if we required a change in the skillset, we have failed to do our job. So when we roll out new technology, it has to work for every type of customer and every type of employee. So that means our frontline employees need to be able to figure this out very intuitively. Of course we do training, but ideally they wouldn't even need the training. They would just figure it out by looking at it. So that's the standard we've set when we roll out these technologies is I should be able to look at it completely clean and understand it. That usually works. It doesn't always work. And when it doesn't work, that's what we have the trainings to fall back on. So I think short answer is no, we haven't really required upskilling. There's certainly no changes in hiring and I'm hoping that's our forever goal is we never need to do that.

Kerry Cantley (34:40):
If it's complicated, it's too complicated. Yeah.

Audience Member 2 (34:45):
Has there been a shift your organization employees with,

Carter Pape (35:00):
So the question is about, the question was about whether there's been a shift within your organization about how employees talk to customers about fraud and fraud mitigation?

Stefan Schubert (35:12):
Sadly, there's had to be, right because there's a lot more fraud out there, there's a lot more attacks out there. We certainly have a lot more training available to all of our employees on how to spot fraud. We spent a lot of time focusing recently on scan prevention. It's obviously a really hot topic. We want to make sure that there's a lot of tooling we have available to us to detect account takeover, identity theft. We need the customer to be engaged on scam protection. So we spent a lot of time training our employees how to talk to our customers, thinking through the content we put on our website. So yes, it's been evolving. I would say it's getting more voluminous in how we communicate to customers and we're going to have to get better at it because I think a lot of the fraud of the future is more targeting customers. So they need to be educated. And again, if it's complicated, it's too complicated. It shouldn't be their job to be a fraud expert. We didn't explain this to them in a way that's very easy and actionable for them, and we're going to continue down that path.

Carter Pape (36:13):
As a person who covers fraud full time, it's just hard to wrap my head around some of the schemes that are out there and the models, business models that fraudsters create. And it's important to communicate that effectively to customers. Any other questions?

Kerry Cantley (36:29):
Well, I think to that point, educating consumers and I mean, heck, I tried to do this for my kids. They're going to attack the emotional side of things and then emotional turns into the financial. So training folks on to stop and consider and think about what they're being asked to do and step back from that because they are, right. Whether you're getting a synthetic voice call and saying, Hey, I need you to wire me, ex mom, or the scam of you're going to be my friend. I just need you to do me a favor. All of those things, they connect emotionally and then they ask for something. So I think education for consumers is important. The other thing is understanding your customers from a data perspective is there. You've got all the data helping them along the journey to put that, we keep saying friction, but those kind of allowing those breaks to go on during the transaction or whatever that is, is really important to help them. Whether that's a scam, attack or something else. That's the way it starts and then it ends in a financial transaction.

Stefan Schubert (37:40):
Yeah, I love that example of the slowdown, like the intentional slowdown right before you're about to send that $10,000 wire to your digital girlfriend you've never met before. That's right. Let's just pause for 30 seconds. Just catch your breath. We're going to give you a message and think about it. That's right. And that's already proving a little effective,

Kerry Cantley (37:56):
Even if it's a ask for reverification on your behalf, because that just gives them a little bit of a pause to step back from the transaction and think through it.

Carter Pape (38:07):
Awesome. Any other questions?

Kerry Cantley (38:11):
Okay. So I think we had some key takeaway kind of elements up that take a print screen, a phone picture, photo, write it down. If you're old school like me, sometimes branches aren't going away. They're an important part of the ecosystem. I think retail's learning that too. It's just a matter of reflecting the community around you. So consider the strategy of what your branch or financial center needs to look like to reflect the community, I think is the most important thing that we're seeing as a trend. The brick and mortar traditional, it doesn't necessarily work. You got to focus on the experience of the customers and the community around you, modernize your digital technology so that you're creating that seamless experience from one channel to the next is going to be important. And then helping your customers from an identity perspective, make sure that number one, they're authenticated, it's protected.

(39:10):
Digital identity or identity in general is going to be core, but identity just doesn't go. It goes beyond just the traditional photo ID or the passport. It's more about the relationship, the transactional experiences, the experiences that they have with your financial center. So how do you hone all that data using all the technology around you, the AI driven those that can massage the data quickly, the consortium data model of sharing for fraud. Think about how that looks and the modern technology and consumer and customer driven experience that you want as you think about the future and identity. Those are important things to consider.

Carter Pape (39:51):
All right, so I think we'll give you some of your time back. Thank you all for coming and enjoy the rest of the conference.

Kerry Cantley (39:57):
Thank you. Thank you guys.