Today’s best digital banking vendors will provide a full platform built for digital sales and service.

Today, it’s not a question of whether to offer digital banking to account holders. It’s about what digital banking can accomplish. The features, the functionality. How it can increase loyalty in the banking relationship and ultimately drive more revenue to the bottom line. It’s about delivering the most attractive benefits to an account holder at the right time, on a convenient, accessible platform.

The best digital banking platforms are built around data and take into consideration the financial journey of the account holder, as well as the goals of the institution. Insights derived from transaction data allows the best performing financial institutions (FIs) to know what products and services their account holders want and need before they even ask for it. High performing FIs turn that knowledge into personalized experiences and offers, on a digital platform that is adaptable, scalable, and showcases an optimized user experience.

Finding that perfect balance can be tricky. For most FIs, offering digital and mobile banking means partnering with a vendor. But how do they select the right one? The one that is going to deliver on the innovative technology and user experience account holders want? Or the one that can deliver extensibility options and success rates?

Today, the ideal digital banking provider does more than just develop a mobile app and desktop interface. Best-in-class providers are true partners that demonstrate excellence across the board. But what does “excellence” in digital banking look like today?

Digital Banking Excellence Includes:

Modern technology and user experience/user interface (for both retail and business users).

A forward-looking product and technology vision, and commitment to innovation.

The ability to extend the platform and integrate with major core providers, card processors and best-of-breed fintechs. The more in-demand fintechs they integrate with, the better. This gives an FI the ability to build an experience that fulfills unique account holders’ needs.

A proven track record of happy clients and great results (successful implementations and return on investment).

Data and actionable insights to help drive MarTech strategy, enable greater connectivity to outside tooling, and create personalized and intelligent experiences for account holders.

Invested time and capital for ongoing platform improvement and education for all clients.

A multi-layered security and fraud prevention approach defending the FI, end users and technology infrastructure as a whole.

Steps for Selecting a Provider:

Identify what is most important to the organization and account holders: Whether that be a desire to modernize with new functionality, faster development cycles to improve speed to market, needing better response times or experiencing too many issues with the existing digital banking provider, or needing access to more third party integrations. As an organization, knowing what is most problematic, desirable, and necessary before you begin your search progress is vital.

Look for peer reviews: Whatever digital banking provider is being looked at should be able to provide client testimonials. But in addition to that, peer review sites such as G2 can give additional guidance.

Schedule a demonstration: Seeing a vendor’s digital banking platform in action is one of the most important parts of the process. The FI can see the app’s features, how it works, the problems it might solve, and even more importantly, what it is NOT equipped to do. If there is a need that the vendor doesn’t address, can the software be customized? Do they have a fintech ecosystem that can be leveraged to add features?

Invite stakeholders to the demo: One of the most important keys to ensuring the success of the new digital banking app is to invite everyone to the decision-making table. When the research team is investigating different options, make sure key stakeholders are available and can weigh in on the demonstration. It’s important everyone is aware of the app’s features, benefits and capabilities. It is recommended that the stakeholder team be cross functional, with representatives from: executive leadership, finance, operations, digital, information technology, product/client experience and marketing.

Training and ongoing support: Everyone at all levels of the FI needs to understand the functionality of the platform. Creating a mutually agreed upon timeline to deploy the new system is vital. But it’s not just employees of the financial institution who need to understand the new system. Account holders, whether business or personal, need to understand the functionality as well. They need to know what it can do for them, which features they can benefit from, and how it might help them deepen their banking relationship. Ensure the new digital banking vendor has this factored into their roll out and that there is a comfort level with their training and ongoing support schedule.

Thinking about choosing a new digital banking platform? Before you enter the RFP stage, here are some additional resources to draw on to help make an informed and confident decision.