Candescent’s Brown: Credit Unions Need Human Touch to Attract Gen Z

For all banks — but especially for small banks and credit unions — capturing the hearts, minds and wallet share of younger generations is more than just a strategy, it’s a critical pursuit.

These are the customers that will be with banks for years. They are rising through the ranks of their jobs, raising families and taking out mortgages.

As Doug Brown, chief product officer of digital banking at Candescent (formerly NCR Voyix) told Karen Webster, there’s ample opportunity to gain millennials’ loyalty. It boils down to “humanizing and personalizing” the banking experience itself, leading with digital across channels to keep customers engaged.

The conversation came in the wake of the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Local Roots: How Community FIs Can Win the Digital-First Generation,” which found that younger consumers are considering giving local banks a try, making them their first choice to serve their primary banking needs. The report revealed that millennials want financial advice tailored to their needs no matter where they are meeting with the bank, online or in person.

Community banks and credit unions have the potential to offer personalized service, a key differentiator that large banks often struggle to replicate, according to the report.

“This trend hints at a future banking landscape in which competitive advantage stems less from [financial institutions’] global reach and more from the strength of their local roots and ability to nurture individual dreams,” the report said. “For community banks and CUs, this moment brims with potential, calling for next-level innovation that honors their mission of personal connection.”

Moving Seamlessly Between Channels

Personal connection represents smaller, local, community banks’ secret weapon, of sorts. Brown said everyone is suffering from “AI fatigue” and virtualization burnout. These days, it’s nearly impossible during interactions with companies — cable firms or airlines — to get someone real on the phone. Community banks have the chance to attract younger customers and grow relationships with them over time.

“It’s prime time for community banks to seize this moment,” he said, with tools that bring digital convenience into the branch setting and under the umbrella of a single portfolio of seamless interactions. The conveniences of apps, digital onboarding and always-on interactions are natural segues into face-to-face interactions.

The digital-first — but not digital-only — “trend is the friend of the community bank,” Brown said. The digital-first mindset ensures there is a winning experience across all channels, not just one or the other.

Data Leads to Personalization

Underpinning it all is data, which extends the banking ecosystem so that Candescent’s infrastructure, on offer to the company’s installed base of 1,600 banks, can use real-time data through a single point of API connectivity to build new products and experiences on a personalized level, Brown said.

“APIs are part of being digital-first,” he said, helping close the gap between what consumers want and what’s available. Candescent, in addition, offers banks on its platform the ability to tap into “experience groups” that can help community banks and credit unions fine-tune their go-to-market strategies and the products and services being marketed to millennials. The C-suite is becoming more engaged in the design and reach of financial services to optimize the one-on-one relationship.

For community banks, “having that combination of leading with digital but not being digital-only … that’s a one-two punch,” Brown said.

“Think of the small business banker as like a world-class therapist,” he added. “They will ask the probing question that intrigues, captivates and motivates. And that’s where I think the bankers have to do their homework in advance. That means a pre-read of data, pre-run of data, and coming up right with topical points of intercept. That puts more work on the banker. But when you demonstrate that, relationship trust goes up exponentially. They’re willing to listen. They’ll see progress. Hopefully, you can coach them and advise them, and that’s when you start to see an uplift in the relationship model.”