Citizens Bank is moving away from third-party vendors and launching in-house solutions to simplify account opening. 

The $219 billion bank has developed in-house solutions over the past two years, one business line at a time, to make account opening more intuitive, faster and less paper-intensive, Head of Deposits Chris Powell told Bank Automation News. 

This simplifies the digital journey so the customer doesn’t have to think about next steps, he said. 

“We’re trying to make sure that we not only put a simple kind of digital experience in front of the customer, but we’re spending just as much time on the back end, thinking about the paper cuts and the complexities that our policies and processes may introduce to customers during those early stages as well,” Powell said. 

The biggest benefit of in-housing digital solutions is that the bank has more control over several business channels at the same time, he said. 

“Traditionally, we didn’t have the ability to digitally open a business banking account,” Powell said. “Online customers could open parts of [the account], but then they needed to go into a branch. So the ability to control our own destiny, have all of that kind of within our four walls, I think has been really beneficial.” 

Growing appetite for digital channels 

About 74% of Citizens customers are using mobile or desktop channels to do their banking, Lamont Young, executive vice president and head of national banking and digital channels at Citizens, told BAN. 

“We will continue to make investments in digital and mobile experience and enhance key elements to simplify and protect our customer’s financial lives such as increasing timely alerts and personalized communications and adding new capabilities that allow seamless access across the mobile platform,” he said. 

Digital banking solutions are being used for: 

• Payments; 

• Mobile deposits; 

•  Digital account opening; 

•  Digital debit and credit card management; and 

• Alerts and insights. 

To facilitate relationships with its clients, Citizens has also integrated a digital scheduler within its mobile app that can offer online appointments, financial advice and other planning tools, Powell said. 

The tool has “actually gotten really good traction, both with our customers that have opened digitally, as well as from a banker interaction perspective, because it’s another way for us to demonstrate real value to the customer as we’re sitting there and talking about what their needs are and their aspirations,” Powell said.  

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