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The Bottom Line

The CUNA Governmental Affairs Conference was in-person for the first time in three years, giving many credit union executives a long-overdue chance to have face-to-face meetings.

SRM made the most of the week, engaging with scores of executives, getting a sense of their challenges and opportunities, and lining up discussions to assist in crafting strategies and finding solutions for both.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) has emerged as one of the most discussed and fastest-growing areas in consumer lending. What has been surprising is the unwillingness of many financial institutions to add it to their product offerings, according to a recent survey by IntraFi Network. Though BNPL upstarts like Klarna and Affirm continue to claim new territory, the survey indicates that 80% of community banks have no plans to add these services.

In recent years, challenger banks, neobanks, and other fintech startups have intensified their efforts to compete as financial services providers. Now, regulators have renewed interest in shifting the odds in their favor.

By obtaining a new specialized charter through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), new competitors may gain strategic advantages over more conventional banks and credit unions.

Here is a closer look at some legal and regulatory developments which could determine just how entrenched fintechs will become in the payments system – and how competitive they can be with core banking products and services.

SRM recently released its list of 2021 midyear trends that banks and credit unions should monitor during the second half of this year. Naturally, these developments didn’t appear out of thin air – our top-performing project managers and experts make it their business to examine and spotlight those topics which carry the greatest strategic impact for payments and financial services.

In this post, SRM shines a light on some big acts we’ve long anticipated will draw attention by the millions, billions, and trillions.

Financial Institutions (FIs) have long had a curiosity regarding fintech.

There were concerns that these digital disruptors would create more competition for traditional financial services providers (without as much regulatory oversight), but banks and startups are starting to embrace opportunities to collaborate.

Conversations about partnerships between FIs and fintech intensified in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, as scores of consumers and businesses became digital converts and there was a greater need to make day-to-day tasks easier (and safer) for those customers.

In 2020, SRM conducted three surveys to shed light on the financial services industry’s approach to navigating the pandemic. Our March and June surveys focused on bank and credit union executives’ responses to COVID-19 and their strategies for delivering uninterrupted service to customers.

Six months into the pandemic, we further rounded out the picture by commissioning leading research firm Harris Insights and Analytics to collect data directly from US consumers. This survey assessed how their banking habits had evolved since global lockdowns began, and how they might continue to change in the future. The results were further analyzed by SRM’s Europe-based Data Analytics team, which specializes in consumer behavior and loyalty insights.

The findings revealed some important differences by segment with key insights for go-forward digital banking strategies.  

It’s not surprising commerce continues to migrate to digital channels across all sectors and that the pandemic has pushed further the already speedy digital banking trend. In the FI world, consumers rely on their bank or credit union’s virtual branch to navigate real-life decisions.

A recent family trip to Florida’s gulf coast reminded me of how much importance customers put into “What it says on the website.” We visited an area decimated by Hurricane Michael the year prior; although it remains a beautiful destination, the storm’s impact was still evident. Some businesses only had websites left standing, as we soon came to learn.

The banking industry’s biggest service providers, sometimes referred to as “battleships,”  have grown largely  through acquisitions. When market demand moves toward a new channel for delivering financial services (e.g., smartphones) or potential for a replacement solution opens up a new market tier (e.g., digital banking among regionals), these “battleships” acquire other entities to keep pace and/or unlock a new opportunity for revenue growth. Often, they wait for an upstart to gain some market traction then give its investors an exit strategy worth multiples of their initial stake.

For years, small businesses have gotten very little help from their financial institutions – and no market segment gets a pass on this one. From mega-nationals to community-sized institutions, small businesses have seldom found the assistance they need. Instead, many institutions have either pushed them to retail accounts or offered these small business owners treasury/commercial services.  

While community bankers were already weighing options on core processing and digital solution strategies before the pandemic, these decisions weigh heavily enough now to quickly tip the scales of survival. We’ve already shared our thoughts on how the “shelter in place” environment and its aftermath gave a serious jolt to any bank or credit union leader still on the fence about the importance of a robust digital backbone.