By The Kansas Bankers Association
For two decades, StrategyCorps has equipped Kansas bankers and their colleagues across the country with the power to be present in the lives of modern consumers living, banking, and searching for value in a fast-paced, digital world.
Company leaders say StrategyCorps’ continued success has come due to a consistent focus on three things: market-driven knowledge, product innovation and service intensity. One key has been its ability to help banks generate relevant replacement fee income when checking-related net interest income, interchange income and overdraft revenue trended down.
While net interest margins are being tightly squeezed, debit card interchange (nearly 30% of non-interest income) growth continues to be challenged and quality loan production remains questionable. StrategyCorps’ solutions generate, on average, $500,000 of new revenue per billion of assets for its clients — even during the pandemic — to provide much-needed relief.
“We conduct our own industry research at StrategyCorps, which gives us the ability to understand what consumers want in checking products,” said StrategyCorps regional director Chris Garrelts. “This allows us to create and deliver modern solutions that boost the bottom line and increase customer engagement and satisfaction.”
StrategyCorps’ accomplishments in helping banks build real, lasting relationships with their customers are made possible through two retail checking solutions: CheckingScore and BaZing.
Actionable Analytics to Design and Build Your Lineup
CheckingScore delivers a detailed analysis of every household to optimize a bank’s retail checking performance, helping them answer questions like these:
- Which specific checking relationships are contributing the most to your bottom line? Which ones aren’t?
- Which ones consider you their primary banking institution, and which ones are likely banking elsewhere?
- Where are the specific opportunities for lineup simplification, pricing changes and product improvements?
- What are the prescriptive action steps and product pathing to realize these opportunities? What are the financial returns?
This allows bank leaders to see what’s working and not working financially in their current checking portfolio and to determine what’s missing from their current checking products to better engage, acquire and retain customers.
Using data securely collected from each financial institution, CheckingScore delivers easy-to-understand, personalized reports that reveal the specific product pathing and pricing necessary to optimize retail checking performance. Not only that, StrategyCorps’ proprietary database tracks the performance of more than 7 million checking accounts — represented by nearly a billion data points — to show every client how their financial institution stacks up against peers across 20 key performance metrics.
“Our clients can make fully-informed decisions about exactly how to arm their checking lineup with products that have great revenue production to generate acceptable financial returns, meaningful product difference, and superior consumer appeal,” Garrelts said. “This, in turn, allows them to compete — and beat — their competitors, especially the megabanks.”
Simply put, CheckingScore is an analytical tool that ranks your customers’ total relationships with your bank. It lets banks examine their checking relationships in ways they’ve never been able to before — and make the clear-minded choices needed for designing great products.
Saving Money + Protection = Great Checking Experience
With its white-label customizable capabilities, StrategyCorps’ BaZing mobile rewards app brings modern benefits to the checking experience to create a powerful subscription pricing model that deepens customer relationships.
More importantly, in today’s market — one in which COVID-19-related health and economic conditions have affected almost every consumer — Garrelts said StrategyCorps is most proud of its ability to provide its clients with value-focused benefits that help their customers save money and increase their sense of both safety and security.
“In an environment in which saving a dollar is worth more than investing one, we’ve been able to help account holders at each of our clients stretch their money and bring them peace in an era of economic instability,” Garrelts said. “Whether it’s discounts on much-needed prescription medications, the coverage that helps repair a broken cellphone a consumer needs to hear back from a potential employer, or identity theft protection, we’re here to help.”
With more than 400,000 discounts nationwide, plus services that bank customers may already be paying for today — like cellphone protection, roadside assistance and identity theft protection — banks across the Sunflower State can offer BaZing benefits that deliver impact and add tremendous value to their retail checking accounts.
“We make it easy and frictionless for your consumers to get and stay connected with these modern benefits,” Garrelts said. “It’s how we operate, and it’s what bank customers expect.”
Plus, BaZing gives banks an engaging, unique way to build deeper relationships within their communities. BaZing Local, StrategyCorps’ local merchant acquisition program, provides the marketing and business development resources to connect local small businesses to client bank consumer checking relationships that are already local and loyal.
“Our BaZing Local team, working in collaboration with your bank, adds your small business customers and other popular merchants to our BaZing merchant discount network for only the cost of their point of sale discount,” Garrelts said. “This makes your financial institution a true community connector between your checking customers and local merchants.”
Prosper in a time when fee income is declining
Better products. Better consumer connection. A better bottom line. Your bank’s retail checking lineup has to achieve all these to compete successfully today and in the future. This is what StrategyCorps’ top-performing solutions deliver.
For more information about how StrategyCorps can help your bank offer its best account lineup to the right customers and discover valuable benefits via the mobile app that customers will pay for, visit strategycorps.com.