Umpqua expands Tinder-style banking app, ramps up automation

Umpqua Bank is betting on a number of key technology projects around cloud computing, automation and its Go-To app to improve operating efficiency with launch of a new strategic roadmap called Next Gen 2.0. “We launched Next Gen 2.0 [in the third] quarter as a continuation of the great progress we have made these past three years modernizing the bank, advancing technology initiatives and improving operating leverage,” CEO Cort O’Haver said in bank’s third-quarter earnings report Wednesday. [caption id="attachment_182517" align="alignright" width="300"] Customers can text a personal banker from the Umpqua Go-To app. Photo courtesy of Umpqua Bank.[/caption] As part of Next Gen 2.0’s technology initiatives, the $29.4 billion Umpqua is expanding its Tinder-style banking app, Go-To, to business clients. Go-To is a key offering in the bank’s human-digital strategy by which the bank puts customers directly in touch with a personal banker who customers can text, call or video chat. Go-To customers choose a personal banker based on a picture, bio, location and personal interests, and bankers show hours they’re available to chat. Go-To has gained more than 70,000 customers on the app since launching April 2019, and has seen a 38% spike in usage from prior quarter levels as customers used the platform to conduct safely distanced banking amid the pandemic. Meanwhile, Umpqua’s migration to a cloud-first strategy, another key Next Gen 2.0 initiative, will help the bank reduce its physical footprint and the costs of traditional data centers while positioning the bank to scale at will. Umpqua’s store-consolidation strategy, which includes plans to shutter as many as 50 branches in two years, is projected to save the bank as much as $20 million by 2023, or boost its operating efficiency ratio by as much as 1.9%. Additional back-office simplification achieved by automating manual processes and aligning teams of similar functions, and by exiting small and niche business lines, should save the bank as much as $15 million by 2023. Other third-quarter initiatives focused on upgrading the bank’s commercial loan origination and treasury management onboarding system using nCino, slated to launch in 2021, and enhancing the bank’s Smart Leads and Credit Insights tool, which uses transactional data, analytics and custom algorithms to provide bankers with subsequent sales leads. Shares of Umpqua Holdings Group [Nasdaq: UMPQ] were trading up 2.66% to $13.12 at market close. The bank has a market capitalization of $2.89 billion.

Umpqua expands Tinder-style banking app, ramps up automation

Georgia’s smallest bank has new tech and big dreams

Weekly Wrap: API-based data sharing and bank spending take center stage

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Umpqua expands Tinder-style banking app, ramps up automation

Georgia’s smallest bank has new tech and big dreams

Weekly Wrap: API-based data sharing and bank spending take center stage

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