A digital bank and a brick-and-mortar one too

U.S. Bank is in the fore-front in digital transformation, but at the same time, its branch or physical banking too is equally strong:

Minneapolis, Minnesota headquartered U.S. Bank is known for offering the highest level of online and mobile banking to its nearly 16 million customers. For this, the bank has made substantial investments in digital tools and services. Today, as much as 77% of the bank’s transactions are done digitally with its mobile app. During the pandemic, as much as 81% of customer transactions were done online or by using the mobile app, and two-thirds of loan sales were also carried out online, an increase of more than 45% in two years.

The mobile app has a unique cheque deposit functionality. It also offers customized alerts, online banking like account access, transfers and online bill pay. Recently a Smart Assistant, a voiceactivated virtual assistant, was added to the mobile app, which helps customers with everyday banking tasks.

The transformation in the bank is mainly aided by the internal innovation labs, called Agile Studios, which work cross-functionally across the organization, covering every function and business line.

The bank is also an equally efficient brick-and-mortar bank with an extensive network of branches and ATMs, along with innovative digital tools and features.

CO-BROWSING FACILITY

U.S. Bank has recently introduced a unique enhancement to its popular co-browse feature, which allows customers to share their screen with a banker so they can view and navigate online or mobile banking together. In the enhancement, branch staff can appear on one-way video while co-browsing, so customers can see who is helping them. The bank also offers another facility - virtual appointments with bank staff. Using the same two-way video streaming technology, the staff and customers can have the same face-to-face interaction they would in a local branch.

The bank is using customer feedback it receives through a process of customer co-creation to effect iterative improvement cycles to be able to refine the overall process. The bank explains that once a new system, or a new service or a new process is developed and launched digitally, it starts monitoring feedback from customers immediately. Based on this feedback, it immediately makes modifications and adjustments using an agile delivery method. This allows the bank correct the anomaly within weeks, or even days, instead of being put on a ‘project list’.

HELPING PLAN INVESTMENTS

U.S. Bank has introduced a new feature powered by AI in its mobile app - Pay Yourself First - which gives customers intelligent recommendations to increase savings based on their personalized cash flow patterns. The bank has partnered with fintech company Personetics for this. The program analyzes customers’ capacity to save at each pay period, automatically moving an appropriate amount based on customers’ expected cash flows.

TIE-UP WITH MICROSOFT

The bank has recently partnered with Microsoft for analysis of data using the latter’s Azure platform and offer new products to customers. The bank and Microsoft will work together to use AI and ML to modernize applications and personalize experiences. This will also mark the bank’s transition to the cloud to improve security of data, financial assets and customer privacy while strengthening the bank’s technology risk management capabilities.

The partnership is also expected to scale up innovative products to customers and partners and empowering the bank’s agile workforce as newer tools will be developed to help customers easily determine how and where they want the bank and to move money quickly.

COMMERCIAL BANKING PLAN

The bank has also partnered with cloud software company nCino to modernize its lending experiences, especially the wholesale banking l ending processes. Commercial banking clients will benefit from improved cycle time and even fewer paper-based interactions with the new platform, which is expected to go live soon. The bank has been using nCino in its business banking business line since 2019 and the platform has not only allowed the bank to reduce time to market significantly, but it also proved adept and agile when the bank had to create or modify processes to support clients.

The bank has some time ago, acquired Palo Alto-based software company, Talech as part of its plan to increase the digital expertise it can provide to its commercial clients. Talech offers a next-generation POS system that allows small and medium-sized businesses to simplify operations and make better decisions based on real-time data.

U.S. Bank continues to i nvest in i nnovative technology that meets customer needs and helps the customers interact with their financial institution how, when and where they want. The bank’s mobile app was recently named No 1 among all U.S. financial institutions. The bank has customers locally, nationally and globally served through consumer and business banking, payment services, corporate and commercial banking and wealth management. It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.

This article has been compiled based on publicly available information on the web, particularly the bank’s own website.