Discover how built-in guidance and guardrails empower you to confidently customize your digital banking experience with flexibility, control, and peace of mind.

Banks and credit unions looking to customize their digital banking platform can be a daunting challenge, often hindered by slow processes, technical bottlenecks, and reliance on external providers. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to submit a ticket and wait 3-5 business days just to make a simple change to your website! The need for flexibility, control, and speed has never been greater, as financial institutions strive to deliver personalized, user-friendly experiences while maintaining autonomy.

What if you could achieve seamless web and mobile user interface (UI) customization in a fraction of the time you spend on it today—all with built-in safeguards? Let’s explore why banks and credit unions must be equipped to adapt their platforms swiftly and with autonomy, and how Alkami Theme Builder empowers you to self-service UI elements and updates effortlessly—without the risk of disruption.

Why Customization Matters for Banks and Credit Unions

Banks and credit unions know their account holders better than anyone else, and that insight is key to delivering a digital banking experience that truly resonates. Customization allows financial institutions to reflect their unique understanding of their customers or members by tailoring everything from colors and images to banners and other UI elements.

Having the right tools to make these changes quickly and easily empowers banks and credit unions to create experiences that feel personal, intuitive, and aligned with their brand. In a competitive market, the ability to make these adjustments isn’t just about staying relevant—it’s about showing account holders that you see and value them and how they move, manage and grow their money.

The Challenges of Traditional Digital Banking Customization

For many banks and credit unions, customizing the digital banking platform is more frustrating than freeing. Relying on external providers or internal tech teams often leads to bottlenecks, where even simple changes—like updating colors or images—can take weeks or months.

In many cases, these updates require submitting formal requests through internal IT ticketing systems, kicking off a lengthy back-and-forth process that can slow progress to a crawl. Marketing and digital teams may need to wait for IT approvals, prioritize their requests against security or infrastructure updates, and navigate technical roadblocks that weren’t initially anticipated. As a result, what should be a quick refresh to align branding with a seasonal campaign, product launch, or community initiative turns into a drawn-out effort, leaving financial institutions struggling to maintain a timely and engaging digital presence.

Now let’s say you do have the “keys to the kingdom” and access to make all the customizations you wish. Without clear guardrails baked into the digital banking platform, there’s also the constant fear of “breaking” something, making teams hesitant to make updates at all. These slow, complex processes stifle innovation, preventing financial institutions from quickly adapting to account holder needs or market trends.

Real-World Applications for Financial Institutions

In the real world, even small customization changes can make a big impact for banks and credit unions. Quick wins like updating colors, fonts, or branding elements help keep the digital experience fresh and aligned with your institution’s identity. Simple, self-made adjustments to the user journey can significantly improve how account holders interact with the platform.

Here are some examples of ways financial institutions may want to customize the look and feel of their digital banking platform UI:

• Holiday Seasons: Financial institutions may want to update their platform with festive colors, themed banners, and promotional offers related to holiday savings, special loan rates, or seasonal rewards.
• Company Anniversary or Milestone: If the institution is celebrating a significant milestone (e.g., 100 years in business), they might showcase a commemorative logo, a timeline of achievements, or a special message to account holders.
• Community or Social Impact Initiatives: Financial institutions often support causes like Disaster Relief Efforts, Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives, or Sustainability Campaigns by updating their platform with thematic colors, donation prompts, or success stories.

Guidance and Guardrails within Alkami’s Theme Builder

Alkami Theme Builder is a customization tool that lets financial institution administrators easily modify the branding, colors, and design elements of their digital banking platform without relying on IT or external providers. With pre-designed templates, real-time previews, and more, whilst enforcing WCAG accessibility requirements, banks and credit unions can confidently make changes without needing specialized technical skills.

Guardrails ensure that updates stay within reasonable limits, protecting the platform’s integrity. This approach empowers financial institutions to make independent adjustments quickly—whether it’s updating colors, banners, or layout. It’s the perfect balance of flexibility and control.

Accelerate the Turnaround with Theme Builder

Here are just some of the ways ways that financial institutions can customize aspects of their digital banking platform with Theme Builder:

1. Upload and Change Your Logo: Theme Builder makes it easy to add your financial institution’s logos to the platform in just a couple simple clicks. Alkami’s Platform  supports various logo sizes to ensure they render perfectly across different devices. With predefined sizing and format requirements, your logo is optimized to look professional and consistent, no matter where it appears.

2. Incorporate Your Branded Colors: Theme Builder enables you to seamlessly incorporate your financial institution’s brand colors while automatically adjusting text and link colors to ensure ADA compliance, usability, and a polished user experience. You can have peace of mind knowing that your colors stay true to your brand while meeting modern industry standards and accessibility requirements.

3. Choose Element Shapes: You can customize the shape and style of corners across certain mobile and web elements, including pages, forms, and buttons, with options like rounded, square, and more. This flexibility allows you to create a distinct visual impact that aligns perfectly with your brand’s look and feel.

4. Customize Footer: Theme Builder enables teams to make changes to your digital banking platform’s footer, so you can add the necessary compliance logos, security certifications, and regulatory information, which builds trust with both users and prospective account holders. With prescriptive, user-friendly tools, you can seamlessly update social media links and footer text in a self-service manner, allowing your institution to stay current without delays or reliance on external teams.

Take Control & Start Tailoring Your Digital Banking Platform

Getting started with personalized banking customization means evaluating your platform’s capabilities and determining, How can we improve the user experience and elevate the look and feel of the platform? With the right solution – one that offers built-in guidance and guardrails, banks and credit unions can confidently make impactful changes—like refining navigation, updating branding, or improving accessibility—quickly and independently, without relying on external teams.

What are you waiting for? Chat with an expert today to learn how Alkami Theme Builder can save you time and effort – all while building a digital experience that truly reflects your institution.