How Design & Technology Made me Switch Banks
News
For the last 15 years I've been using a regional bank (top 50 in US by assets, top 10 on Forbes 2014 America's Best Banks ) for my personal and then business accounts. They have great customer service and are large enough to have good security measures for online banking, kind of important in this industry. But with all my traveling and clients all over the US, it's regional reach was always a pain point.
The bank prides itself of being conservative. It had no problem navigating the hurdles of the Great Recession, having had a conservative approach in mortgages and rest of their balance sheet. But that was last decade. In 2014 their online and mobile banking feel antiquated, outdated. A few months ago I opened an account at a multi-national bank (top 5 in US by assets) and started using their mobile app to scan my checks and quickly deposit them. I loved it. I then noticed their debit card has a much nicer design. So does their website, and their bill pay solution. Their ATMs are more user friendly, quicker to use. So I decided to open an extra account and I did it online on a Saturday afternoon. Two hours later I received an email with my new account information, linked to my login and ready to use! They got me hooked. Not just with their customer service, but with the fact that their solutions look and feel great and I can do almost anything 24x7.
This is how I live, give me 24x7 and I'll use it at 2am. My old bank feels like they haven't invested in the design or usability, and they have yet to come out with a mobile scanning check, a year after they announced 'they were looking into it'. Here's what's important: the new bank will probably cost a bit more on business transactions, but after getting hooked with the usability, design and technology, my 15 year old bank is about to lose me. They're too big to cater to a small business, too small to offer national reach, and too slow to realize their brand is not their retail store anymore, it's the website, debit card and mobile app that I use every single day.
