Taylor Adkins (00:55.435)
Hey everybody, welcome to our webinar, From Metrics to Momentum, Turning Digital Banking Data into Measurable Growth. During this webinar, Cornerstone and Alkami will discuss the new 2026 Digital Banking Performance Metrics Report by Cornerstone Advisors, commissioned by Alkami, and go beyond the data to break down five critical findings that are shaping digital banking performance today.

From account opening, abandonment, and onboarding friction to limited visibility into user behavior and misalignment between features and customer needs. Through a combination of research insights, real world market perspectives, and practitioner experience, you’ll learn what the data actually reveals about retail and business banking performance, why many institutions struggle to translate metrics into meaningful outcomes, and how leading

Organizations operationalized success through journey-based data-informed and extensible strategies. We’ll close with a practical framework and clear next steps that will help you measure what truly drives growth, prioritize the highest impact opportunities, and align your digital banking strategy to deliver measurable results. Now,

My name is Taylor Adkins and I’m the VP of Digital Banking at Alkami and I will be your moderator today. And I’m joined by Liz and Ron from Cornerstone. So Liz, would you mind introducing yourself followed by Ron?

Elizabeth Gujral (02:34.271)
Yeah, of course. So I’m very excited to be here. Thank you so much, everyone. So my name is Elizabeth Liz. I’ve been at Cornerstone for just a little bit over six years, and I work in our what we call our research and fintech advisory practice with Braun. we do, but we spend every day working on commission research and trying to understand and solve problems that our banking credit unions, even fintechs are seeing in the market. And I know this one is such a fun one to do every single year because we we are able to get those year over year benchmarks.

But before I jump into that too much, I’ll let Ron introduce us.

Ron Shevlin (03:08.698)
Thanks, Taylor. Thanks a lot. And thanks, Alkami, for having us. Ron Schevlin, Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone. I’ve been here 11 years and look forward to doing this every year.

Taylor Adkins (03:19.789)
Yeah, awesome. so before we dig in to the findings from the report itself, I’d like to invite Liz and Ron to introduce the 2026 Digital Banking Performance Metrics Report and potentially provide an overview of the study before we really start to double click on the findings themselves.

Elizabeth Gujral (03:40.761)
Yeah. So I would say, Taylor, the most important thing about probably this title is that it’s 2026. We’ve been doing this for six years now, which is absolutely crazy. But the huge benefit to that is that we’ve been able to see and measure real year to year trends since COVID with over 100 participants every single year on the retail side. we track and the report covers everything from the digital count opening to loan origination to

to active rates of mobile and online banking users, to P2P, to bill pay, to feature utilization, and so much more. it covers a lot of what our banks and credit unions in the market need to be measuring. And what’s something new this year that we added was actually the business digital banking benchmarks. And we did that because the industry didn’t have the data. We didn’t have it, our clients didn’t have it, so we thought, well, why can’t we have it? Why can’t we gather it?

because businesses are digital users too. It’s not just consumers. When banks and credit unions are thinking about their digital transformation and their roadmaps, they sometimes do forget about what their business customers want. Do they want mobile application? What do they want in their mobile experience? How are they using all these different treasury products? So it’s very important to me from a competitive standpoint too because over the years we’ve had fintechs like Bluevine and Mercury and Square and even Cash Up.

starting to pick up some business customers that should be going to our community financial institutions. I’m very excited to jump into

Taylor Adkins (05:17.283)
Yeah, interestingly, interesting, Ron, anything you want to pile on about the study itself before we really kind of dig into the findings and kind of the practical strategies that our audience can take away from them.

Ron Shevlin (05:32.41)
Yeah, would just quick comment. I don’t know that it’s obvious from just looking at the metrics in the report, but there is actually some thought and a framework about how to look at the metrics in the first place. If you remember your vowels, A-E-I-O-U, the framework actually mirrors that, although not in the same exact order. So we’re looking at A, we’re looking at adoption, we’re looking at

how many people use a particular service or capability. We’re looking at the investment side, how much is being invested in the digital channel, the output, and usage as well. So there is a framework, there is a thought to this, and I think it’s important as financial institutions look at benchmarking their performance, but more importantly, tracking their own performance, is that they look at this from the framework perspective and capture metrics across all of these constructs.

Taylor Adkins (06:31.695)
Well, yeah, and you know what? I appreciate you taking me also back to elementary school and thinking about A, E, I, O, and U. I will ask you. I got the A, the I, the O, and the U. What was the E one more time? Efficiency. All right. Good deal. So let’s take a look. Actually, I advanced a little bit. I’m going crazier with the slides. OK.

Ron Shevlin (06:45.539)
Efficiency.

Elizabeth Gujral (06:47.704)
Thank

Taylor Adkins (06:57.975)
Let’s take that deep dive into the five critical findings that we feel are shaping digital banking performance today, starting with finding number one, broken journeys in the path to becoming an account holder or limiting growth. And here’s what we’re seeing. Some of it’s probably not terribly surprising to the audience. Digital account opening is growing quickly. Again, not a surprise. Many onboarding journeys still create major abandonment challenges and

Institutions are leaving significant growth opportunities on the table as it pertains to digital engagement and digital account opening. Liz and Ron, can you tell us more about how broken journeys are impacting digital growth and what the data from this report actually tells us?

Elizabeth Gujral (07:46.307)
Yeah, and Ron, I’ll take this first. So when you look at the data and when you look through the report, you know, was about a third of accounts overall are being opened up online. That doesn’t mean that financial institutions can’t open up accounts online. Everyone has the capability. It’s just that we have a little bit of an abandonment problem. So there’s friction, there’s manual processes where we’re losing.

potential users, potential customers, potential members before they can even open up an account. And to me, that is one of most critical introductions to a financial institution. because the first impression of an institution might be a flyer in the mail, the name, know, credit and your bank’s name on the local baseball stadium, what the great work the foundation is doing. But the second that the out-count opening process has too much friction, we’re going to start losing

by potential members and potential customers. And so they’re leaving so much engagement on the table. I mean, if you look at that data in the middle chart there, five accounts open, abandoned for every one opened is way too high. I would say even two abandoned for one opened is way too high. mean, know, people, consumers only have unlimited patience. And actually, you know, about a year ago, I was on a call with a client and I opened up a SoFi account.

and under three minutes while talking to that client to prove a point because by the end of the call I was like, and I just got my debit card confirmation that’s gonna be delivered next week. And so when we’re building up the digital experience, we have to make sure that the front door actually works and that it’s seamless because otherwise, yeah, we’re leaving so much growth on the table when we can fix it.

Taylor Adkins (09:32.109)
Liz, you speak to financial institutions all the time, and you hear things like, well, a little friction in the process is good from a risk perspective and things like that. How do you see financial institutions responding to the need to reduce friction, even if sometimes from their perspective, it might be at the expense of fraud deterrence and things like that? How do you see FIs responding to the need to balance those things?

Speed versus risk management and things like that as they navigate, you know kind of this situation

Elizabeth Gujral (10:08.267)
It’s a balance, right? Because there will always be fraud. it’s really the risk appetite and the balance of how much risk we’re willing to take. We can make it as easy and seamless as possible. We can’t lose all the fraud controls in the background. If that creates a tiny bit of friction, that’s okay. Because I think consumers too do appreciate it a little bit because if I know that my account is going to be secure and I have that impression by the account opening process, I’m more likely to trust my financial institution with my money.

But at the same time, if it’s awful account opening experience, it’s not something I’m gonna positively talk about to my friends and family. And financial students have lost potential. Your members and your customers are some of your best marketing. So it’s really hard to balance that and it’s constant debate with every client that I talk to. I don’t know if that properly answered the question.

Taylor Adkins (11:01.177)
yeah, of course. And Ron, from your perspective, is there anything you’d pile on here about what you’re seeing about how broken journeys are impacting digital growth and performance?

Ron Shevlin (11:11.782)
Yeah, so a couple of things I’d want to comment on. First of all, I think the financial institutions that have participated in the study should first be congratulated with the data you’re seeing on the screen are the medians and the 25th and 75th percentile. But what’s in the report that you don’t see here is that the overall averages year by year over the past three or four years has increased from, think, 16 % up to 27%. So it’s

The number is getting larger. There’s no question about that. And that’s a good sign for a lot of financial institutions. I would say this, though, that I’m not sure it necessarily reflects a better process. I think it reflects demographics. The percentage of new accounts that are being opened is coming predominantly from Gen Zers and millennials who don’t want to go into the branch to do it in the first place. And I think we ought to put it in the perspective that we’ve

not in this study, but separately of track consumer behavior and account openings over the last couple of years. And last year, Liz, you mentioned SoFi. SoFi opened up more new payments slash checking accounts last year than all credit unions put together. And so it goes to show the importance of that three minutes. But I also want to comment on Liz, your comment about the friction. Yes, it’s always going to be fraud. And yes, some friction is good.

But what I think a lot of financial institutions need to be doing a better job of is asking where in the process should we be introducing or allowing or creating that friction? I think part of the problem that a lot of financial institutions have is that they’re asking for a lot of data upfront that the SOFIs aren’t asking for, or they portion it out and ask, they push some of the friction, like the SOFIs and the digital banks,

push the friction out to a different part of the process. So it takes, it’s not just a technology decision, it’s a process design challenge. And I’m not sure every financial institution’s going through that process.

Taylor Adkins (13:20.655)
Well, yeah, in some cases it can be pretty simple, You want a date before you get married. And in many cases, in the account opening workflow, we’re asking for a marriage proposal or agreement on step one, right? Well, with that, let’s journey to our second finding. In our report, we found that top performing institutions are turning digital banking into a cross-sell engine.

It’s clear that institutions across the board are driving new product expansion regardless where they are in the spectrum of the median and percentiles on either side. They’re driving product expansion through the digital channel. And so I’d love to get your opinions, Liz and Ron, on what the data is telling you relative to this finding. What separates

the lower percentiles from the higher percentiles and how do you read into how financial institutions are actually influencing driving relationship expansion through the digital channel? That was like a stacked like 12 questions at the same time. So yeah, do with it what you will.

Elizabeth Gujral (14:28.385)
So I would.

You’re good. think to us, the big difference between those in the 75th percentile and those in the 25th are the ones that are higher, are the ones that have really optimized and really thought about what their digital experience looks like and how they’re engaging their users. To me, this data makes a lot of sense. mean, customers, one thing we tracked in the study too was how often are users logging into the platform?

People log into digital banking way more than they ever walked our branch. And so when we think about cross-selling, upselling, deepening relationships, it’s so much about real estate and that platform, mobile, even a mobile experience, the online experience, it’s the natural place to surface those cross-sell opportunities. I you have to be where your users are. Otherwise, if I’m logging into my mobile banking app like twice a week, and sometimes I check my mail,

you’re more likely to catch my attention through the digital channel.

Taylor Adkins (15:37.773)
Yeah, Ron, what would you add to that? To me, I’ll make a quick comment. It’s kind of interesting. It shows that even in the lower percentile, and this may be me reading too much into the data, it appears that the digital channel itself and just the way users interact with the channel creates opportunities for product expansion, even if FIs aren’t necessarily drying. It’s interesting, the lower percentile is still seeing.

a lift from digital engagement while we’re seeing a significant expansion for those who are actually putting effort into it. But Ron, I’d love to get a sense of what the data is telling you here.

Ron Shevlin (16:16.994)
A couple of things, and again, we’re not showing here on the screen the year by year, which is up, I think, close to 50 % from little over one couple of years ago to one and a half on the average. This, I think, comes down to a couple of things. Number one is data and the ability. I think it reflects the organ, the institution’s ability to capture data about the member, use it to understand what

Elizabeth Gujral (16:24.865)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Shevlin (16:45.124)
the financial life looks like and what the needs are and then doing something that’s I think uncomfortable for a lot of financial institutions and about being aggressive about asking for the sale. So on the right hand side though, I think that’s a very important difference. It does not look like a huge difference in number 1.3 versus 1.56.

But that’s really important because it’s really showing a couple of things. Number one, that the digital channel can be a better mechanism for asking for and getting the sale. But also, I think it reflects the underlying demographics of the member base where those digital banking users are going to be probably much younger on an average basis than the overall member base for a credit union. And those younger consumers do represent the in general a

greater percentage of the demand for new products and services. So it really kind of says, what do you need to be doing over the next couple of years is getting a lot better at data utilization, driving it to marketing decisions, and then being able to execute on those marketing options and offers through the digital channel.

Taylor Adkins (17:57.231)
Agreed. to me, it’s also interesting. The next step once an FI gets really, really good at that is being able to target successfully so that you have a second access here, or axes here. You’re not just talking about number of accounts. You’re talking about quality of deposits and things like that. So I see a lot of opportunities for FIs to not only engage, but to engage well. Now, quickly, let’s buzz on to

finding number three, which is mobile-first engagement is becoming central to digital strategy. Not surprising, we’re seeing more and more retail engagement trending to the mobile channel. However, in the business banking space, we’re seeing a similar trend, although maybe not as expansive. Liz and Ron, can you talk about what you’re seeing relative to mobile trending and adoption?

in terms of the report, but also in terms of your own experience and your interaction with financial institutions every day.

Elizabeth Gujral (19:00.119)
Yeah, when I first saw this data, I was like, oh, this makes sense. can’t remember the last time I checked any of my banking accounts on my laptop. On the desktop, I do everything through my phone, which I know is like a personal bias when you’re doing research. But when you look at this, have four or five digital banking users are now using our active mobile banking users. And the top performers are 90%, so nine out 10. Again, when we were just talking about

engagement. It’s all about if we’re going to be designing these experiences to increase engagement to cross-sell. It just shows that mobile is the place to be. We live on our phones. Gen Z lives on their phones. Millennials do. think a lot of older people do too. On the business side too, although a little bit to a lesser degree, when we think about how do business owners and operators run their business,

It’s not always on mobile, but it’s still very important with almost a third of active mobile banking users. Although I would say when it comes to treasury management and payments and cash management, even reporting, they’re more likely to do that on the desktop. But you still have to have a digital experience curated for the mobile when they just need to check a couple of reports or check their balances. It’s not an area that should be ignored by financial institutions when they’re looking at businesses.

I would be so excited to do this again next year just to see how much it keeps increasing.

Taylor Adkins (20:30.447)
So Ron, like kind of two questions here. One is, again, I’d love your overall just kind of insights and observations around the data and what we’re seeing here in general. But also to kind of piggyback off of something Liz said, I’m curious what your opinion is. I know you spend a lot of time with commercial FIs talking about commercial banking, treasury management, et cetera. How do you see the trends accelerating or not?

on the commercial side. We tend to find ourselves talking about greater expectations from businesses for consumer grade experiences. But I’m always curious how much that means mobile versus how much of that means more automation, more intuitive workflows, kind of things like that. So I’d love to get your impression on that question while also kind of getting your point of view more generally around mobile adoption via either vertical.

Ron Shevlin (21:24.976)
Yep, let’s take both halves of this slide one by one. First on the left hand side from a retail perspective, the importance of these numbers and the importance of the growth from 2024 to 2025 actually relates back to the prior finding around the cross-sell growth. Look, the digital channel and the digital users are going to be, if the digital users are the best prospects and the digital channel the best place to reach them, then driving that

active mobile banking number becomes absolutely critical for for relationship growth success. The right hand side from the business side just screams to me huge huge opportunity for better engagement and growth. These numbers are obviously much lower than the retail side but they’re they’re just way too low from from any perspective.

You’ve also got to look at this through the differences. As consumers, we’re used to Liz mentioned she doesn’t do anything from a desktop perspective anymore. It’s all mobile. And that’s definitely becoming common. I think we tend to think about the business user as being desktop driven, desktop locked. But that’s not the case. They’re running their own vertical SaaS applications off of mobile devices these days.

And they’re very engaged in those industry specific applications. And so being able to tie into those applications and being able to drive the adoption from the business side of the coin is actually absolute huge imperative over the next couple of years. These numbers should double over the next two to three years.

Taylor Adkins (23:15.417)
Yeah, 100 % agree. Liz, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you mentioned right at the end of your comments that you can’t wait to see what the report shows next year. You’re obviously leaning into linear to exponential growth here too and mobile usage across the board, I’m assuming.

Elizabeth Gujral (23:33.271)
Because to me the real value in this report that we do every year is being able to see the trends. Because this is the first year we did business, we don’t have the trends, but I think it’s pointing to a very interesting and exciting direction for

Taylor Adkins (23:49.849)
So now I want to move to this is a question I’m really looking or a finding that I’m really looking forward to, you know, kind of hearing your points of view on. So like if we pulled a broad cohort of community financial institutions and ask them what differentiates them from mega banks, I think we’d all receive some version of a similar answer. And that answer would be some derivative of personalized service. Right now.

As foot traffic in the branch has been replaced by digital traffic in the mobile channel, financial institutions have lost the ability to do the thing that separates them from other institutions. Or maybe they haven’t lost the ability, but that ability has become greatly inhibited simply because the FIs previously had visual line of sight into what account holders were doing.

and a direct line of communication to account holders in the branch. However, now that visibility is gone for many FIs, leading us to finding number four. Institutions can’t optimize what they can’t see. So Liz, Ron, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue and how you see financial institutions responding to this challenge, because this is a big one.

Elizabeth Gujral (25:04.407)
I don’t think anyone tuning in is shocked by that statement at all because it’s a data issue. For everyone listening to this, my big question for you is what do your users do in digital banking? What features are they using? What products are they utilizing? What tools are they using every single month? If you can’t answer that question, then you can’t optimize your platform.

You can say, and in some of the data in the report you say, maybe users aren’t that interested in subscription management. Or is it being offered but it’s not being appropriately marketed? It’s not in the right spot so people can’t find it. They don’t know that it’s being offered. So you have to, you can’t make improvements to your digital experience without knowing how your users are currently using the platform.

Low usage isn’t a verdict on any feature or product. It’s really about placement and marketing and UX friction that really need to be addressed and measured so that our institutions can improve and optimize what they’re offering.

Taylor Adkins (26:17.437)
yeah, and it’s amazing. The right data can also kind of inform a financial institution into an account holder’s emotional state at a given point in time. You know, this is something that clearly I have a lot of energy around. And at Alkami, we’ve made investments in a new product called Alkami Engage, which provides visibility into what individual users are doing online, et cetera, to provide a window into this really, really critical information.

So Ron, again, I’d love your perspective on this. How do you see this impacting FIs and where do you see them succeeding or failing in regard to leveraging data to really understand what their account holders are doing via the digital and mobile channel?

Ron Shevlin (26:58.694)
Yeah, thanks for that for teaming me up for that. One thing I would say, though, before kind of answering that and actually I may skirt the whole question altogether depending on where I know of this here. But I think I think it’s important to recognize that this is to me not even a digital banking metrics finding, nor is it something that is simply about features or design of the.

Taylor Adkins (27:07.439)
Yeah, please do.

Elizabeth Gujral (27:08.471)
Yeah.

Ron Shevlin (27:26.67)
of the platform itself. This is about an underlying business capability and approach to understanding members’ financial lives. The idea of you can’t optimize what you can’t see really goes to understanding where are your members moving money to? It never ceases to amaze me that so few financial institutions do a

you know, a payments movement analysis to see where are their members moving money to? And that’s one aspect of it. And it’s not going to tell you why there is, but at least it gives you a basis for guessing why. If you start seeing movement to Coinbase, to Robinhood, well, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re investing in crypto. It’s a very good bet that they’re

not using you or the traditional providers for investment capabilities. How much money is being moved back and forth to PayPal, places like that. And it starts to give you clues. This is not about platform design. Yes, it’s about understanding what features and functionalities you want, but it becomes, it’s about market research. It’s about better understanding your members.

So this is a funny area. This might be a bit of an orange in the apple basket here with our other metrics.

Taylor Adkins (28:59.503)
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Now, let’s take a look at the final finding. And again, these findings are not representative holistically of everything that’s in the report. Again, these are five really interesting findings that we’ve built this webinar content around. finding number five, institutions that modernize digital strategy are better positioned to compete. Now,

A lot of financial institutions are considering updating their digital banking technology or already have. Ron, Liz, I guess it’s a great opportunity for you to talk about what you’re seeing out in the industry and also give our audience some recommendations in terms of how they should be approaching themselves and future-proofing their strategy as they look beyond 2026.

Elizabeth Gujral (29:58.465)
Yeah, and Ron, I’m actually gonna let you go first, because this data is directly from our What’s Going On in Banking report that you do every year.

Ron Shevlin (30:05.156)
Yeah, thanks. There’s a treasure trove of insights that come out of these numbers right here. The first thing I would really kind of focus on is the discrepancy between the completed and the planned. And this says a lot about a particular institution, whether or not they planned to do it and did or didn’t do it in the year that they said they’d do it. What happens is there’s a

general feeling like, we really need to get on a new platform. We see a lot of limitations from the platform that we’re on. But then as the year progresses, stuff happens. And maybe the budgets don’t get allocated to it. Too many fires have to be put out. The team, whatever happens, it just doesn’t happen in the year that it’s planned.

And it says a lot about innovation execution, says a lot about how an institution is organized and plans for it, how tied the execution is to the strategy. So it doesn’t surprise me to see the discrepancies between the completed and planned. We actually look at this across 30 or 35 different types of applications in a financial institution. And it’s really telling to see that things like

fraud and risk management, there’s not a huge difference between the planned and the completed, meaning it’s getting the priority, it’s getting the funding, it’s getting the focused. But yet when we look at the online and mobile banking platforms, much bigger discrepancy. And that’s telling me that you get too many banks and credit unions out there that are just mouthing it. Yes, we got to improve the digital banking environment, got to improve the performance of that.

but aren’t making the commitment to getting the job done. I know we’re probably going to have a lot more credit union viewers for this than bank viewers. So they’ll be a lot more interested in that second line. But to me, this is a very positive sign for the credit unions that that plan number for 2026 went up. Didn’t go up by much, okay, to 15%. But what it’s telling me is that the banks don’t get it.

Ron Shevlin (32:32.76)
on the retail side. And maybe they don’t get it because they don’t care. Maybe they’re refocusing a lot of their efforts away from retail. I mentioned earlier that SoFi gained more accounts than all credit unions did. Well, they also gained more accounts than all community banks put together as well. So maybe this reflects a difference in prioritization and focus on the bank side where the credit unions are saying, we’ve really got to double down on retail and on the consumer side. Liz, any thoughts you want to throw in there?

Elizabeth Gujral (33:02.246)
I do because when I think about when you’re going to be replacing a system whether it’s digital or core or whoever, you can only replace a system if it’s usually coming up for renewal. So that 13 % that planned to were the ones that said, okay, we have a window, we have an opportunity in 2025 to change digital banking. But like you said, it’s the fires, people are very opportunistic about what they can get to in that year.

And if they don’t, then to me the risk is that they don’t get to it, the rule is passed, and then they are locked into another three to five year contract in a digital banking platform that’s not right for them. So by not making it a priority, it’s impeding the growth for financial institutions. It’s such a critical decision, it impedes your growth for the next few years because you’re not making it a priority and you won’t be able to make that decision again.

Ron Shevlin (33:58.906)
Good point.

Taylor Adkins (34:01.099)
Okay, so I’m going to use this as an opportunity to transition a little bit. So I’m actually going to hand the mic over to Ron, Liz. You guys can fight over the opportunity to introduce our first poll question. which of you would like to take it?

Elizabeth Gujral (34:20.47)
Yeah. I can take it. So we’re very curious from everyone that joins today, what topic areas of the report resonate the most with you? Because when we’re thinking about doing this again in year over year, we want to know what’s been most interesting, what was the most surprising to you? And we’ll give you a minute to respond as we prepare to switch gears into the next section of the discussion.

Taylor Adkins (34:56.089)
So now we have an opportunity to take a lot of great insights and turn them into practical strategies to actually drive digital performance. what I’m going to do here, Liz, Ron, is I’m going to hand the mic fully over to you. I’ll advance the slides as you really talk through the next few slides, I think the next six or so slides. So just let me know when to advance and I will do your bidding.

Elizabeth Gujral (35:29.396)
run. It’s all about the A-I-E-O-U from elementary school. You want to kick it off.

Ron Shevlin (35:35.366)
Yes, so yeah, I actually probably forgot that this was going to be in there at the end of this, but when I started off, but I think since probably everybody forgot what I was saying in the first part of this, I think it’s important that it’s developing your metrics framework, that you’re including metrics, not just the ones that are easy for you to report on, but that tell a full picture of the story of what’s going on.

Elizabeth Gujral (35:44.47)
Thank

Ron Shevlin (36:05.082)
So it isn’t simply looking at utilization and adoption. It is absolutely imperative to be looking at how much are you investing in this and what particular areas of the digital platform and digital channel. And then also looking, I think, very importantly at the output and the efficiency. One of the things that I’ll tell you is a frustration that I’ve got. I don’t know if we were going to get into this, so I hope I’m not foreshadowing something. But you know.

to the question that you had posed in the poll about report findings that resonate most with you and what you’re looking for. One of the things that I have found frustrating over the last five or six years of doing this is that the adoption and usage metrics tend to be the easiest to capture. The investment’s been a bit harder, and we really struggled to get the output, the impact.

metrics, which tells me that a lot of the measurement approaches are falling short. So it’s important, I think, to get a better sense of the output and the impact metrics, I think is a big improvement area.

Taylor Adkins (37:15.055)
Okay, and quickly, I’m gonna go off script here. How do you guys wanna walk through these items here?

Taylor Adkins (37:26.649)
I was kind of following the talk track that Emily had emailed and it had just kind of said that you guys would kind of step through these.

Ron Shevlin (37:35.475)
yeah, so I probably should have said go to the next slide, right?

Taylor Adkins (37:38.877)
OK. Actually, think Andy can just put the right slide at the point that you’re talking about. So did you kind of cover everything in your talk track right there that touches on each of these?

Ron Shevlin (37:44.802)
Okay, yeah, that was step one.

Elizabeth Gujral (37:52.415)
I you did.

Taylor Adkins (37:54.242)
Okay.

Ron Shevlin (37:54.31)
Yeah, it might be easier just put this up there, not walk through each one by one and just have it there, because I it was basically was talking to point step number one.

Taylor Adkins (37:59.404)
Okay.

Molly Irelan (38:02.919)
Yeah, we can do that post-production.

Taylor Adkins (38:09.249)
Okay, and so that part was step one. Do you want to go ahead and continue Ron with steps two through four?

Ron Shevlin (38:19.812)
Yeah, so let me let’s we’ll probably you guys will cut this, say so we’ll go back to your off script and say, so let me just. So Liz, why don’t you kick off step number two?

Elizabeth Gujral (38:34.422)
Yeah. number two, so focus on the highest impact opportunity. We only have so much time and funds and in the day, in the month, in the year to work on everything that we want to work on. So, and we don’t want to try to fix everything at once. You have to think about where do you want to prioritize who, what areas are going to have the biggest impact for the digital banking experience for your customers and your members. So

what is actually gonna move the needle. And to do that, you do have to be able to measure what your users are doing in digital banking. Where are you potentially falling behind from a benchmark perspective? Because once you can do that, you can decide, okay, this is our biggest opportunities to improve the experience.

Ron Shevlin (39:21.958)
Yeah, Liz, let me just build on that for a little bit because, you know, this could be interpreted as motherhood and apple pie kind of a thing. And it shouldn’t be. This is this is where the management team in the in the credit union or bank really needs to be spending a bunch of time, not just at the strategic planning meeting point in the fall, you know, as a line item, but really on a month by month, quarter by quarter basis at the executive team level and at the board level.

Elizabeth Gujral (39:31.7)
But no.

Ron Shevlin (39:51.054)
This should be what you’re arguing and fighting about is what is that highest impact opportunity? And really understanding and asking the questions, do we really understand our members needs and behaviors and attitudes well enough to determine what that highest impact opportunity is? I don’t know that that kind of conversation is really happening. I think what happens too much is that the management of the platform just gets pushed off to the digital team and they’re left with

in absence or a gap of really knowing, what are truly the strategic drivers for the organization and what do we really need to be improving and who are we going after and who are we trying to get as members? So I wouldn’t want to go over this too lightly. I think there’s a lot of meat behind this step.

Elizabeth Gujral (40:41.65)
Mm-hmm. I mean, and you stepped into number three pretty seamlessly through your arvin right there where strategy and technology must be aligned to execute. You can’t just throw the changes for digital banking into one team. It has to be what are you trying to change and why are you trying to change it? How does it play into your broader strategy to be competitive with other credit unions in the market, other banks in the market, or even all the fintechs? So it has to be aligned to your strategy as well.

Ron Shevlin (41:10.65)
Yeah, and I would throw in one other point here is that it’s about aligning the budget and the investment levels as well. I think there’s a big challenge that a lot of financial institutions face around the institutionalization of budgets, the institutionalization of processes. After doing something five, 10, 15, 20 years and having a budget that’s allocated to the particular functions and areas of the business, it’s really hard to change that.

And so that strategy process has to really define the things in number two, step number two around what’s the highest impact opportunity and then refocusing budgets and capabilities. So yeah, it’s important to align the strategy and the technology, but you also got to align the budgets and where the money’s going.

Elizabeth Gujral (41:59.051)
Right, and when it comes to budgets and when you find out, okay, this is what we think we should actually be doing to optimize the platform, that goes into step four of you’ve got to so much as put your big boy pants on and take action when it’s hard or find the budget to be able to do something because sometimes the biggest risk to growth is in action. I not doing anything is a strategy and it’s usually the wrong strategy.

You have to be able to know what you want to improve in the platform, make sure it’s aligned to the strategy, and then be able to do it and not just put it back on the back burner because it’s going be hard or too expensive. You have to be able to balance out your priorities to improve.

Ron Shevlin (42:47.332)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. It’s not even in the the digital banking metrics report, but in some of the other research we’ve done, like what’s going on in banking survey where we ask questions about A.I. investment or investments in tokenization and stable coin. And we obviously the numbers are all over the map in terms of financial institutions that are doing it, experimenting with it, talking about it and things like that.

But among those who’ve not made investments in areas like AI and tokenization, we ask why, why not? And one of the most common reasons is waiting for regulatory clarity. And I get it that that’s important. But I think it’s really important to understand that if you’re going to, first of all, are you really ever going to get regulatory clarity on a lot of things? Number two, regulatory clarity changes with the whims of the politicians in charge.

Number three, you’re probably waiting too long to make decisions if you’re waiting for regulatory clarity. So I think the point on the slide here that the biggest risk is not making is making no decision at all. That kind of nails it. You can’t make excuses for pushing things down the road. You’re you’re the executive team. You’re the senior managers at the organization. You’re not getting the big bucks for not making decisions. You’ve got to make these decisions. You’ve got to make them today and then adjust as you go forward.

Taylor Adkins (44:11.843)
Well, you made me think, Ron, about equating regulatory clarity to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And so I’ll let the audience think about that one for just a minute. before we wrap up with final thoughts here, I would ask the audience to do us a favor.

Ron Shevlin (44:21.444)
You

Elizabeth Gujral (44:22.942)
Thank

Taylor Adkins (44:38.691)
and select an option from the poll on your screen right now. If you’d like to receive any follow-ups from Alkami or from Cornerstone, please take an opportunity or take the opportunity to indicate your desire in the poll question. We’ll give you just a moment to do that.

Taylor Adkins (45:01.729)
And now I’d like to take a moment to allow my co-presenters to share some parting thoughts with us. How about this time we’ll start with Ron.

Ron Shevlin (45:16.038)
Okay, final thoughts. I’ll try to make it quick so that we leave enough time for Liz because I could go on forever on this one. But here’s what I’d really like to boil this down to. I think, I mean, obviously we’ve been doing this report five, six years now. I think it’s important, but I do want to really stress. I think you can get a lot out of this, not simply by looking at the numbers and the metrics and seeing where you compare, but using

the metrics in this report to guide and create discussion among the management team and board. Why are you higher? Why are you lower? Why are you on par with the medians and the averages? These are the kinds of things that it’s the qualitative side of this that really needs to, I think you get the value out of this report. The other thing is, there’s been this feeling I’ve had over the last couple of years as we’ve seen

less variability in the numbers year over year, that the nature of the digital channel is evolving from a support and access channel to a driver of strategy, to a need for where new products and capabilities are going to be created and delivered. And so don’t limit yourself to the discussion at the management team to just the numbers. Go back, go deeper and ask.

What role is this, are these opportunities and these technologies playing in our organization? Liz?

Elizabeth Gujral (46:47.403)
Now you actually stole it because when all of our participants, when they participate, they get their own data anonymized back and it’s benchmarked against other institutions their size. And so they get those individual benchmarks, but then they also get, I also offer them, I’ll sit down with you and walk through your benchmarks with your team. And something no matter who’s in the room, whether or not it’s an executive team or just the digital banking team, something that always happens is they’re going through the data with me and I’ll ask them, like, why do you think this is

why your P2P is so low, what’s going on with your bill pay, what do you think? And the amount of times people just kind of look around the room and they’re like, I don’t know, that needs to be a takeaway or somewhat like an executive will ask the digital team, why do think this number is? And a lot of times people just don’t have the context. So I really encourage you all to look at the data in this report, think about, measure yourself against it and then really ask the why.

And you can’t be a top performer in every benchmark. So really think about too, where do you want to perform best? Where do you think there’s biggest opportunities to improve? So just don’t take the data and just say, okay, we’re higher, we’re lower, we’re higher, we’re lower. Really ask about the

Taylor Adkins (48:00.365)
Yeah, and to add, inaction is not a strategy. I’ve heard that at least four times in this session, so I’m going to reiterate it. Now, before we sign off, I’d like to encourage everyone in the audience to go ahead and download the report. If you haven’t already, you may have seen the QR code earlier in the presentation to download the 2026 Digital Banking Performance Metrics Report by Cornerstone Advisors.

Elizabeth Gujral (48:06.753)
Thank you.

Taylor Adkins (48:30.441)
Use the QR code on the current slide, download it. Again, there’s some really powerful data in there that you can and should access. Now, finally, I’d like to thank Ron and Liz from Cornerstone for your great insights today. And I’d like to thank the audience for your attention and participation today. I hope this information was valuable to you. And you took away some practical strategies you can use to drive digital performance at your institution. So.

Thanks again and we’ll see you the next time.