Next Generation Technology Creates New Advantages for Community Bankers
By Richard A. Leone, President and CEO, COCC |

For many years, community bankers have won new
customers with superior service and aggressive
pricing. Today, these market wins are
increasingly the result of matching products
offered by money center banks.
This is about to change as next generation
technology enables community bankers to expand
their advantage with greater product flexibility
and broader access to bank information, all
supported by dramatic improvements in back room
efficiency.
The Product Big
Bang
Community banks
that have adopted next generation technology are
well-positioned to introduce the new banking
services in demand today.
While bankers who
use older technology struggle to keep up with
today’s pace, community banks powered by new
technology are now combining the new products
with their deep customer knowledge to create
additional market advantages.
As a result,
community bank customers can choose from the
broadest array of products and features we have
ever seen. Customers can deposit checks
remotely, connect to accounts maintained at
global financial institutions, receive real time
alerts for potential overdrafts and fraud
attempts, and much, much more.
Product integration
further enables community banks to help their
business customers streamline their financial
operations. For them, Remote Deposit Capture is
just the beginning of a move to unprecedented
self-sufficiency. Next generation community
bankers are enabling small businesses to
reconcile their ACH, wire and checking activity
online, and to capitalize on information that
had traditionally been confined to big bank
‘back rooms.’
All Information All
the Time
The ‘new normal’
for today’s increasingly mobile customer is a
unified experience between the traditionally
separate teller, back room, Internet, mobile,
payment and archive functions. Customers now
expect all channels to carry all the information
they need to make their own financial decisions.
For example:
· A
business can receive alerts whenever new items
enter its ACH warehouse. Custom views of the
warehouse enable the business to manage its
payment and investment decisions based on
up-to-the-second information.
· A
consumer can decide whether to make a debit card
purchase by accessing her account holds and
pending debits as well as available balance.
· Bankers
can serve their customers in person wherever
they might be, activate or customize accounts on
the spot, and make the changes instantly across
all banking channels.
The next generation
technology behind these services also enables
community bankers to support these solutions
without adding to staff. Using automated
workflows and integrated document archives,
bankers can trace and report every interaction
as required by regulation, removing many of the
limitations that once prevented them from
offering products in flavors beyond vanilla.
The Community Bank
Advantage
Community bankers
have always had the customer knowledge and the
vision to tailor services to meet specific
customer needs; now they have the technology to
do it.
Next generation
technologies are enabling community banks to
rapidly integrate new features and information
sources in support of full service banking via
all channels. The timing of this explosion of
banking capabilities could not align more
perfectly with the customer’s explosion in
service expectations.
The advantages of
next generation technology will become
strikingly clear as customer expectations
outstrip the capabilities of any financial
institution restricted by old technology. Next
generation technology is the game changer for
community bankers who have the vision and
courage to deliver next generation services.
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