Banks and fintechs rejigged their digital roadmaps during the initial sting of the pandemic and, six months later, continue to re-evaluate their backlog of technology projects and ventures, panelists said at the Bank Innovation Build conference today.

At the $171 billion dollar KeyBank, that backlog is reprioritized every month, according to Stephen Schroth, head of digital consumer banking and global experience design.

The Cleveland-based bank accelerated a feature for EasyUp, a savings tool that automatically transfers money to a savings account from a checking account each time a customer makes a purchase with their debit card. KeyBank built out EasyUp so that each time a customer saves with a transaction, the savings are automatically linked to pay down a debt, Schroth said.

Given the recent growth in mobile banking, KeyBank has also moved up the launch of new navigation and self-service tools for its mobile app platform, Schroth added.

KeyBank is not alone in focusing on providing customers with more tools geared toward savings and paying down debt. Brex, a corporate card and financial product company, shifted its engineering power to flexible payment plans, which VP of Operations Camilla Morais said “was never a priority” prior to the pandemic.

The Brex leadership team decided there was a “need to change our strategy right away,” Morais said. As such, Brex shifted “all the engineers to a completely different project” and shaved down launch timelines to seven days from six months. Now, customers can choose flexible payment plans and flexible credit card limits, a move she said not only helps customers, but helps Brex maintain strong financial standing with lenders and investors.

The Green Bay, Wisc.-based Associated Bank is another that accelerated projects based around API development. Chief Information Officer Michael Meinolf said on the panel that the bank honed its take on agile methodology, ensuring it permeated throughout the organization to speed the launch of products to market.

“With the PPP loan program … API development became first and foremost a priority for us, not that it wasn’t before. But we certainly accelerated certain services and API development into the core that would’ve been a little bit on the backburner,” Meinolf said. “Change is hard, but pushing change forward under the backdrop of this crisis helped us move forward and demonstrate capabilities that I think our lines of business may have been more skeptical about under other circumstances.”