Ally Financial Has Millennials to Thank for Its Impressive Retail Deposit Growth

Ally Financial Inc.’s robust marketing strategy for its retail bank has paid off, as the bank today reported that half of its new retail customers were millennials. Of Ally Financial’s 230,000 new retail deposit customers via its retail side, Ally Bank , 126,500 were millennials, according to bank’s earnings report released today. "Millenial customers accounted for 55% of new account openings during the year, an attractive future prospect considering the generational wealth transfer of $30 trillion that will occur over the next three to four decades," Ally Financial CEO Jeffrey Brownan, said in the earnings call today. Indeed, the millennial demographic has been a key target of Ally’s marketing endeavors. “Younger customers are attracted to our digital functionality as well as our competitive and transparent banking products, with Millennials accounting for 55 % of new deposit customers in 2018," Jennifer LaClair, Chief Financial Officer, Ally Financial told Bank Innovation in an email today. "Our customer-centric culture focused on “Doing it Right’ while making a difference in our communities, also resonates with Millennials...” In 2018, Ally made a concerted effort to engage with this demographic through all social media forms, a blog, and a YouTube channel, a strategy Andrea Brimmer, Ally Bank’s chief marketing officer, previously told Bank Innovation is as "innovative and disruptive as our banking strategy.” In addition to the heavy social media presence through Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and YouTube, the marketing team carefully constructs seasonal campaigns such as Ally’s November campaign called “Banksgiving,” to gain new customers but also to retain existing millennial customers. In the "Banksgiving," campaign, Ally gave away random amounts of money to some of their customers calling into the customer service helpline from $25 gift cards to $55,000. Customer retention rate is 96%, according to the 4Q report. <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It’s worth noting that Ally Bank is a digital bank, which makes it a perfect fit for the millennial audience, which prefers smartphones to branches. <span style="text-align: left; color: #333333; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; word-spacing: 0px; display: inline !important; white-space: normal; cursor: text; orphans: 2; float: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;">Also Read: Mobile Banking App Population Sees Biggest Growth in 3 Years. But it's not just millennials, 45% of that growth comes from non-millennials. “Ally has an early mover advantage which means they have a mature platform and mature customer service,” Jason Grohotolski, VP-senior credit officer Moody’s Investors Service, told Bank Innovation. “Customers like the products, but also the customer service... So, Ally's numbers from the 4Q earnings don’t surprise me. I think they are positioned well to take advantage of continuing to grow their retail deposits, as they have consistently done in the past years.” And indeed, as Ally's Brownan<span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> pointed out in the earnings call, Ally had a 14% year-over-year retail balance growth compared to an industry-wide retail growth of around 2%, "an indicator of our strong value proposition and momentum in direct digitally based banking," During the fourth quarter of 2018, Ally reported deposit growth of $4.5 billion, its highest quarterly growth till date. Ally Financial had a total of 1.65 million retail deposit customers in 2018, a 16% YOY increase from the previous year. The total deposit was $106.2 billion in 2018, up $12.9 billion YOY, according to today’s report. <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Based in Detroit, Mich ., Ally Financial has a market cap of $10.9 billion. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #00043a; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">To learn more about digital banking, join us for Bank Innovation Ignite 2019 on March 11-12 at the Hyatt Olive 8, Seattle. Early registration ends this Friday, February 1st at midnight. Register here to secure the lowest possible rate!

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Ally Financial Has Millennials to Thank for Its Impressive Retail Deposit Growth

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