What Is the Most Valuable Asset in Banking Today?
HOST (Jason Henrichs): This episode pivots from trending topics like stablecoins and agentic AI to something more fundamental: trust. Community banks are at a crossroads, facing pressure from both technological disruption and evolving consumer expectations. The stakes are high with the $124 trillion wealth transfer currently underway in the U.S.
“They either become an icon of what the future of trust means, or they get replaced.”
Key Challenges Facing Community Banks
● Yield curve pressures and margin squeezes
● Technology spend skyrocketing
● Fierce competition from fintech niche players
● Rising customer expectations for seamless digital and human experiences
How Are Community Banks Adapting to Stay Relevant?
GUEST (Stephen Lewis, CEO, Thomaston Savings Bank): Stephen underscores the importance of adapting to a world where both fintechs and fraudsters are evolving fast. The solution lies in:
● Upskilling teams to provide informed advice
● Investing in digital tools without losing the human touch
● Proactively building Operational Resilience
GUEST (Carrie Kelly, SVP of Digital, Claremont Savings Bank): Carrie discusses shifting from transactional to customer-centric services. Their mission: provide seamless, supportive experiences across all touchpoints, particularly for consumers who prefer digital independence.
“Some people don’t want to talk to their bank. For them, great service is never needed.”
Bullet Summary:
● Move from transactional to relationship-driven models
● Serve both aging customers and their digital-native children
● Combine empathy and efficiency with the right tech stack
● Fight fraud through trust education and advisory services
What Role Does Technology Play in Generational Transitions?
GUEST (Emily Civic, CEO, Paige): Emily shares how Paige helps banks facilitate intergenerational wealth transitions by simplifying life planning and document organization. The platform is not about estate planning transactions, it’s about emotional and relational continuity.
“We don’t replace relationships; we use tech to strengthen them across generations.”
Why Paige Is a Fit for Community Banks
● Aligns with community banks’ role as Trusted Advisors
● Empowers customers through Embedded Finance workflows
● Offers proactive planning tools to prevent last-minute crises
Carrie & Stephen on the Paige Partnership:
● Claremont’s highest depositors average age: 77
● Paige supports high-risk groups like first responders and sandwich generation caregivers
● For Thomaston, Paige is an entry point for broader, deeper trust relationships
How Are Banks Becoming True Trusted Advisors?
HOST: Being “trusted” is more than lip service. Fintechs tout UX, banks tout relationships, yet only 1 in 5 customers feels emotionally connected to their bank.
Stephen:
● Trust is earned over time through honesty, empathy, and listening
● Envisions smart AI in Financial Services alerts (e.g., prompt a conversation after large deposits)
● Emphasizes identifying moments when banks can provide value before customers ask
Carrie:
● Building a hybrid model: human-first today, moving toward digital-first with human support
● Creating new customer value from existing data (e.g., resurfacing documents already on file)
“We already have the data, how do we repackage it to actually help our customers?”
What Metrics Define Success in These Initiatives?
Stephen:
● Primary KPIs: retention, primary account ownership, customer engagement
● Long-term goal: be the first call when customers face a financial problem
Carrie:
● Primary KPI: internal adoption
● Early result: 31% of staff onboarded Paige within days
● Belief: if employees use it, the community will follow
“The best KPI? When you can say: “I actually have something that can help you.”
Unexpected Value and Emotional ROI
Emily:
● Paige gained traction as an HR benefit for small businesses
● Opened new B2B banking relationships (e.g., 401K rollovers)
● Women 50+ and millennial moms are power users—not just for financial needs, but emotional continuity (e.g., baby books, caregiver planning)
“Customers now associate life moments with their bank thanks to Paige. That’s branding that lasts.”
Final Reflections: How Do You Build Trust That Lasts?
Stephen:
● Be honest, fair, respectful, and always listen
● Trust is not built in a day, but over many small moments
Carrie:
● Show up consistently
● Reduce turnover to deepen relationships
● Maintain consistent digital and physical branding
Emily:
● Support customers in real life transitions
● Be emotionally available, not just financially accessible
Raw Transcript:
[Speaker 4]
We could create a way that we leverage trust and build trust leveraging technology, not replacing relationships, but leveraging those things so that we can leverage the technology to connect those generations so that the aging parent who’s a customer who has children elsewhere, if you can do that years before there’s a transition and build that trust through a technology that is supported by humans ultimately, then that is what I wanted to do.
And if I could make that process, you know, just 20% better, that was the original vision.
[Speaker 3]
Trust underpins all of financial services. We have regulation audits to validate that trust is in fact warranted. And we have guarantees like the FDIC insurance that back up our trust.
Nowhere is the importance of trust felt more acutely than in community banking. This week on Breaking Banks, Carrie Kelly, SVP of Digital at Claremont Savings Bank and Stephen Lewis, CEO of Thomaston Savings Bank and I talk about trust as the core asset of banking. We’re later joined by Emily Civic, CEO of The Page that recently partnered with both Claremont and Thomaston to support generational transitions.
Disclosure, Alloy Labs is an investor in The Page, but that’s not why she’s on the show. We found Emily through a proactive search for tools that can help banks be the trusted advisor in generational transitions. She fit the bill perfectly and that’s the partnerships with our banks that we wanted to bring to light.
I’m your host, Jason Hendricks, and this is Breaking Banks. Today, we’re talking about something that might surprise you. It’s not stable coins or agentic AI.
It’s about something much more fundamental, trust, and how the $124 trillion wealth transfer that’s happening right now in the United States is either going to make or break community banks. They either become an icon of what the future of trust means or they get replaced. Now, let’s start with the elephant in the room.
Community banks are getting squeezed from every direction. In a time where we’ve seen basically since the early 2000, just a boom time within community banking, both because of cost of funds being exceedingly low, booming economies making defaults low, some of the phenomenons around ZURP and the bailouts related to PPP, we’ve seen relatively low failures. All of that has begun to unwind.
Stephen, I’d love to start with you. How are you feeling the pressure on your business model? Where is it hitting the hardest or creating the most uncertainty?
[Speaker 2]
I think hitting across different levels. Obviously, we can start with just the shape and yield curve. We spent the last 12 years with a very difficult yield curve that was very difficult for banks with 0% interest rates, which really crushed on our margin.
During the same time, the advent of fintechs, a significant advancement in technology, the digital expectation. Our margin is getting squeezed. Simultaneously, our spend on technology is blowing through the roof.
Those two basic things. Then the competition for customers is getting much, much more fierce. You know, from those fintech niche players that are nibbling in from both ends with very specific areas, whether they’re going after personal loans, whether they’re going after our mortgage business, or after our payments and interchange business.
I think the complexity and the challenges we face over the past, I’d say past decade, has escalated significantly and very quickly. I don’t think that pace of change and pace of challenge is going to go away. I mean, with the advent of AI and the Genius Act, stablecoins, crypto, all these different things coming down on us, the pressure is not going to change on this community bank space.
[Speaker 3]
If anything, what I hear you describing is it’s increasing that actually the past 10 years was the anomaly, and now it’s kind of returned to normal plus additional pressures, not we’re going back to what it looked like. Carrie, do you agree with that? Are you feeling similar pressures?
[Speaker 1]
I do. I feel like with the increase in fintech, increase in new technology, consumers have basically spoken to a point now where they’re demanding a different experience from their banks. So from the banking standpoint, we can’t continue to do things the way that we’ve been doing them for as long as we have, because there are all these new expectations that are being put on banks to provide deeper services, more advisement, more of the things that they can’t get from technology is being put back on the community bank.
And if we continue to operate in the way that we have been up until this point, we won’t survive. So really adding, having that added pressure of needing to have the technology to support us, but then also have the right people to know how to use and understand the technology to deliver a better customer experience has really been what’s been putting pressure on us. We can’t be lean.
We can’t rely just on technology to service our customers. We also need to have people, which is definitely putting the crunch on our numbers.
[Speaker 3]
Is this a consumer-only problem for you, Carrie, or does this cross over into the commercial realm as well?
[Speaker 1]
It’s definitely on the commercial side, too. A lot of people, like I said, have learned how to self-serve their banking needs, and it’s not until they get to a where they can no longer self-serve and they need somebody to step in and provide that additional experience and to provide those advisory tools that they then call us. So the advanced level of knowledge and the type of training that our teams need to be able to support more advanced issues in banking for consumers and for businesses so that they can kind of step out of that world and focus on their own businesses or their own day-to-day needs.
[Speaker 3]
When I talk to fintechs about their unique competitive advantage, without fail, they bring up either user experience or technology. Community banks, conversely, when you ask the CEO, they say, oh, it’s really about relationships. When you press on that, most talk about we know the customer or our kids are in the same school or t-ball or we’re present in the community.
Yet only one in five banking customers report feeling an emotional connection to their bank. And I think one of the greatest competitive advantages community banks have, even if they don’t feel that emotional connection all the time, is community bank customers trust their bank. But it’s us as the bank, we don’t often put enough tangible activities beyond that.
Stephen, I know this is a huge strategic initiative for you around leveraging trust. How are you putting that into practice?
[Speaker 2]
And yes, we definitely have that underlying a lot of the themes through our strategic plan this year. It really comes down to the people. And you have to, as Carrie had mentioned, really raise the skills and capabilities and confidence of your staff.
So when they sit with their clients, they can have an educated discussion to listen to what the needs of those customers are, and then provide them solutions that address the specific needs for those customers, both today and tomorrow. And it has to be done both on the retail side and on the commercial side. So you have different skill sets that have to be built in there.
In the branch side, the clients are typically going to be retail, and you really need to train on that side. But then in the commercial world, you really have to go into the treasuring management services. And then coupled with that, underlying that is the amount of fraud that’s taking place right now.
There also has to be a level of skills to help customers not fall victim to fraud. That’s a little bit of an underlying thing, because that’s where the trust is coming back to us. But the people committing that fraud are so good, they are breaking down that trust with us.
And we have to work really hard to regain it. And unfortunately, sometimes we don’t regain that trust until a customer has lost a lot. So that’s something that I’m fearful of right now.
And I assume, Carrie, you’re seeing this across the board. We’re hearing the amount of fraud that’s taking place is exponentially growing, and it’s because they’re really going after trust. They’re building trust on the phone, through social media, and taking the trust away from us.
And then for us to say that doesn’t make sense is something that’s scary. But going back to the big picture, it’s educating your staff, providing the resources to your staff, and doing those things so they can have that informed conversation with their client to provide the right solutions at the right time.
[Speaker 3]
Carrie, I know a big part of your job is this concept of creating customer centricity. How is that played out across the bank? You’re moving really from a transactional, come into the branch, get a transaction done, or transactional on a digital, like sending a wire, loading an ACH within my treasury management.
Us as banks think of that like, well, that’s natural. It’s not what our customers think of. How are you promoting customer centricity in that mindset amongst Claremont?
[Speaker 1]
Thankfully, the beautiful thing about Claremont is it is a strong community bank in that sense of, I walked in almost having to say like, well, what about the transactional side of things? This bank is so ingrained in the community. Sometimes you’re like, well, yeah, I know you want to spend three hours with a customer, but it’s almost the opposite effect.
It’s been a really enlightening experience and it’s kind of changed my perspective on what it means to be a community bank because of how engrossed people are and how much that second nature is. What I’ve been trying to do is really translate that into the digital world. So how do we provide that same level of customer service digitally to customers so that they still feel as valued as if they were to walk into our branch and be welcomed by our teams?
So that’s really been what I’ve been challenged with is thinking about customer service and what that means for a user. Does that mean that they don’t want to talk to somebody? Maybe being a trusted advisor or really supporting a customer is based on the fact that I don’t ever want to talk to you.
For some people, that’s their truth, right? They don’t want to have to talk to somebody. For them, customer services, it’s all presented to me without having that touch point.
So it’s kind of really understanding the difference between what it means to service a customer beyond just having that face-to-face interaction. And that’s been kind of the mission here.
[Speaker 3]
It’s funny. I tell this to my financial advisor all the time. I get pulled in to talk to these organizations, digital strategy group, and it’s, I don’t want to talk to you unless I need to talk to you, which is 99% of the time I do not enjoy you calling me to talk about things if I can look it up on my own or get an alert, right?
I only want to talk to you when I have a need that only you as the human can solve. And that actually is a great segue in full disclosure here of Alloys Alchemist Fund is an investor in Page with Emily joining us. But we went after this for a very specific reason.
I think the backstory is pretty interesting for people. Stephen, I think some of your team was part of this. When we did a deep dive on generational transitions, one of the problem statements that came up, and I was shocked when it came up, and I was shocked the number of times it was repeated, was issues around the children dealing with mom and dad and planning for the future and the transitions in terms of managing accounts, where are the accounts, and the number of times it fell to whoever was still local with a lot of effort coming largely in the form of phone calls into the branch from adult children who live away.
And we had started searching for solutions, proactively say, who is helping solve the problem of generational transitions? And we found Emily. And Emily, I’d love to start with you.
How did you stumble on the problem? And what is it Page sets out to do? Because it’s very different than, it’s easy to say, oh, this planning is really about, you need an estate plan, you need a will, or if you’re lucky, you have enough money, you have a trust.
But that is, again, a transaction and not at all what Page set out to solve.
[Speaker 4]
Yeah, no, absolutely. So I personally went through a period back in 2018 when I lost three family members in a, I guess it was a six-week period. And because I saw the variances of what I would call the scavenger hunt and the finding of the assets, the elements, the different aspects, you know, one grandmother had everything super tight and organized so we could celebrate her life and process that loss.
The other grandmother, not so much. So there was family frustrations. And then I had a 13-month-old, my cousin’s 13-month-old, halfway.
And while a child doesn’t have assets, there are these these challenges with families. One, talking about it, it’s really difficult to talk about. Two, there’s not a straightforward framework that guides you through, hey, your life is full of all these pieces.
Yes, transactional, some of it, healthcare, some of it, passwords are some of it, all of these pieces. But if you don’t have a straightforward framework to actually put that somewhere, get guided through that, and then connect that to the people you want to at the time they need it, having that is just impossible. It’s overwhelming.
And so if we could create a way that we leverage trust and build trust, leveraging technology, not replacing relationships, but leveraging those things so that we can leverage the technology to connect those generations so that the aging parent who’s a customer who has children elsewhere, if you can do that years before there’s a transition and build that trust through a technology that is supported by humans, ultimately, then that is what I wanted to do. And if I could make that process just 20% better, that was the original vision.
And then finding community banks, I grew up in a very small town. Actually, one of the banks used to be part of Ally Labs, or is still, where I went and deposited my check from Subway. And because of that mentality and where I grew up, I could understand, oh, like, community banks are the perfect place to leverage the relationships they already have, which they do, and the trust they already have, but build on that using technology to connect with that next generation to ultimately, you know, that trust and those relationships are what are going to make community banks win.
If you understand that and do that within families by leveraging that home relationship or that family relationship you already have, and having them kind of push the relationship with the bank and build these emotional connections, that, I mean, I just geek out on this stuff, obviously. But that’s what it’s all about, is building those connections, not just transactional, but relational, too, and emotional, using this technology to tie it back to what, you know, the community banks needs in these communities.
[Speaker 3]
Terry, I’m curious for both you and Stephen, in terms of how you came to the partnership with Paige, did you see the need in your customers, went in search of a solution, or did Emily open your eyes and you started looking and realized, like, the problem was there? Where in the chicken and egg did this come together?
[Speaker 1]
For us, I had met Emily several years ago and loved her, loved the concept of Paige, and really wanted to find a way to deliver that to people that need it. Myself being one of them, I wanted to be one of the people that was able to sign up to the platform and utilize the services. So when I came to Claremont Savings Bank, my day one, I was sitting in a strategic meeting where we were being presented with information on our client base.
And the folks that were doing the analysis said that the average age of our highest depositors at the bank was 77 years old. And to that, I was like, that is a challenge, right? So I’m coming in from the digital side saying, how are we going to provide digital services to an aging population, not realizing the true age of the population?
So that I immediately, day one, thought of Paige and said, there has to be a way that we can provide additional services to these folks, knowing and also having heard stories of people within the community bringing just stacks of file folders and walking into our branch and putting it on the desk of their banker and saying, can you help me find the documents that I need in this scenario? So kind of hearing these scenarios, knowing that we needed to offer some sort of service, also for our first responders, our policemen, our firefighters, those high-risk individuals, and it all just made perfect sense. So from that first day, I was like, we got to get this in the because just knowing that I was at a bank where the essential consumer really provided that.
And then also on the business side, our head of business banking is ingrained in the community. She knows every customer here at the bank. She knows every business customer.
And just knowing the personal stories that she has also shared and being able to provide and looking at Paige and being able to provide different services for the business arm as well, it was just a great synergy for us.
[Speaker 3]
You hit two of my favorite misconceptions when we think about this generational transition, is one, it’s not just an old people thing, right? Like this came up when we were doing our due diligence again and again. One of the most active groups were new parents, that realization of like, I got to get my ducks in a row.
I need medical power of attorney. I’m going to need this. The first time I leave my children, this came up with Samer on our team.
First time I’m leaving my children, I think, oh my God, I need my children because I’m not going to be present. That caretaker needs it. Oh, by the way, we at least need the base of a will.
So I like that first responder and high risk. But especially on the commercial side, the business transition is so messy. And Stephen, not just talking about Paige here, you guys at Thomaston are thinking so much about trusted advisor and where that fits.
What’s the spectrum of things? Don’t give away your secret sauce, but what sorts of things are you thinking about when it’s you are the trusted advisor? How does that manifest itself?
[Speaker 2]
Well, I think, I mean, you hit upon a few of the things and I’ll just, I will leave a little bit with Paige is, you know, we’ve had the same situation, Carrie says, of widowers and different folks that lost the family member, but walking in with the ghost look of what do I do now? Right. So we’ve always been providing that trusted service at the end.
Right. So what can we do to be on the front side of this so when we get to the end, we’re not scrambling. We’ve prepared you for that next step and give you a plan and give you some, you know, action steps you can take now.
So if that unexpected event occurs, you’re not coming in here with the 9,000 folders, totally distraught and destroyed, emotionally wrecked and trying to fix your financial situation. So, you know, I look at it here’s one thing we can do to build on that trust is say, hey, let’s take a few things now, just in case. And, you know, yes, we can refer them over to an attorney, but, you know, reality, a lot of these folks, the attorney is not the right solution for them.
You know, their assets aren’t enough. They don’t trust attorneys. They don’t have, you know, a lot of different reasons.
So I think this is a great pages product is a great first step for someone to start that plan. And if yes, if they are a business and need something more advanced, they’re going to have to get eventually to an attorney. But in the interim to start that process, start thinking about the unexpected for us, I see that as like a great step to build trust with our clients.
[Speaker 3]
Well, one of the things I love what you’ve laid out, Stephen, because I think this is another one of the great misconceptions. And I know our production team was laughing when I said I wanted to talk about the great wealth transfer, because I always rail against people talking about the great wealth transfer, right on stage and online online. My aversion, I think, is everyone talks about it like it’s this discrete event where it’s like there’s an older population that has wealth and boom, the next generation is going to have the wealth.
But it’s it’s not a tsunami, it’s a trickle. And I think one of the things that you did a great job hitting on there, Stephen, is this is a unexpected, but you don’t know when in a 20 year journey, 30 year journey, that trick that event could be occurring, but you need to be prepared for it. And there’s that longevity to the relationship.
And I’m curious, because this goes back to the anti-transaction and Carrie, I’m guessing you have some opinions on this too, is how do we think about like this longitudinal relationship in how we build it, both in supporting the parent or the business owner in the next generation? And, you know, again, we can talk about PAGE, but what are the other ways you’re supporting it as well?
[Speaker 1]
So definitely looking at that, I believe the term would be the sandwich generation, right? Those that have the young ones at home and then potentially even their own parents at home, or at least being their caregivers. But for us, we try to look at the full human.
So there’s the concept of offering a product that’s a checking account, right? Like, or in the next generation of the spend account, right? The spend and save account versus a checking and savings account.
But we’re not looking at it as providing a checking account or savings account to our customers. We’re looking at it as what does that customer need in order to bank with us for life? So we’re not looking at one aspect of their identity and saying, here’s one product that we’re going to try to sell to everyone because it’s the best in class and it’s got the best user experience.
It’s what types of products and services are we going to put in front of our customers that will allow them to continue to have us as their core banking relationship, but will also make it easier for them to use some of the ancillary services that they love. So we’re not trying to necessarily change behaviors from people using financial apps or other systems that they love and they want to keep. We as a bank are just looking for ways that we can help sustain that and make it easier for them to do those things.
So whether it’s actually making financial transactions or doing things in the periphery of finances, like a page or wealth planning or investments or things like that, we’re looking at it from that kind of holistic standpoint of how can we be a full-service bank in the sense that we offer several different types of products and services, but full-service in the sense that we are supporting all the different financial aspects of what makes a person want to interact with their bank.
[Speaker 4]
Yeah, and I think with our, and this isn’t just the page, but having that multi-front door approach is what I kind of call it with our product, but having a way where, you know, if you’re feeling comfortable with doing, you’re a small business owner and you’re thinking about your business and what that will look like in five years, 10 years, or if your son or daughter is going to take over those businesses, if that’s where you want to start and you are supported in that, and then there’s steps to, hey, once you get to this point, Claremont or Thomaston has this great next step that kind of bridges that gap and ties it back, you know, with that level of trust when they kind of outgrow, not outgrow, but they’ve been on this path and, you know, eventually there is going to be a transition point for their business and there will be that supported guide who already understands where they are because of the technology, but it still connects with the people. Then you have, one of the most interesting things we’ve seen is we’ve partnered with a university as well, and what is happening is the sandwich generation moms are actually signing up their kids who are 18 and 19 for the product because they’re realizing, hey, we’re not going to have control over our kids if something happens, if there’s a financial event, and that was something we never expected. So our financial institutions that have close relationships with universities are also exploring, hey, how do we build on the existing customer’s trust to maybe in the sandwich generation, but also connecting with that next generation who’s coming up where this is just a natural thing where we’re talking about it, we’re going through the motions depending on where they are in their journey, and getting, you know, a step ahead of the 20 steps they have down the road, but starting bit by bit and not making it so overwhelming that it’s like you have to do all these things, start here, start with the transactional or start with the emotional and capture a memory. It’s really up to you, and we guide them through that step by step to meet them where they are, which is very much like Keri said, looking at that whole person, meeting them where they are, whether they want to call in or not, or handle these things in certain ways, we enable them to do that in the way they want, but feel supported and have this trusted relationship throughout.
[Speaker 3]
Stephen, I’m curious, how much is that guidance helpful? Because Keri, thinking back to your, we can’t take the human out of it, like this is really the cyborg, we need to melt the human and the digital elements of it. How much of Paramount are you focused on, do you leverage, is it the digital first on the tools and they can ask the human, is the human helping them set up?
How do you bring those things together?
[Speaker 1]
It’s a work in progress, right? But I would say that right now it’s all very human first. And I say that because a lot of the reasons that people, that we find people either call in or that they come to our bank is less transactional in nature, it’s more they have a problem or they need guidance or what type of product to open, or they need cash management services that they really would rather just have that conversation with.
So a lot of it has been really human first with a digital augment. We are kind of shifting some of that into digital first with a human augment using, looking at shifting our call center into more of an engagement center where there’s some of the outbound communication that happens. Though what we found is oftentimes when you call somebody from your bank, it’s an immediate place of fear, not necessarily helpfulness.
So I think they’re delighted when it’s actually coming from a place of helpfulness. But we are trying to make that, I wouldn’t call it so much of a shift, but being able to be both based on what our customers want. The other thing that we’re looking at is like, how can we take the information that we already know about our customers and package it back to them to kind of help them out?
Not from just a data modeling standpoint or from a way to service them ads or things like that, but more of, like, if you take our business accounts, for example, during the time of account opening, we ask for all of their business information, you know, all the sorts of things that you would need to open up a business account. And so we have that information. Why can’t we then store it and resurface it back to them as a benefit to say like, hey, we’ve digitized everything for you.
We need it for our records, but we can also expose it to you to keep for your own records. So those are some of the things that we’re looking at, like where ways that we can insert additional, an additional enhanced customer experience for things that we’re already doing anyway, that would provide a benefit back.
[Speaker 3]
I would love if our bank could keep that copy of our Articles of Incorporation and our Certificate of Insurance, rather than me having to go digging around or download from the state of Delaware every time I need that. Right. Which the problem is, it’s not frequent enough.
So every three years, I’m like, ah, I’m being asked for this. Yeah. Stephen, I’m curious, when you think of Trusted Advisor and how you’re bringing the human and the digital elements together, how has Thomas been thinking about it?
[Speaker 2]
I think, you know, I’ll kind of mimic a little bit with Carrie. You know, it’s a work in progress. You know, it’s really, I think, led at this point with our staff, you know, with the customer typically coming into the branch with that question.
So we’re not, you know, we’re not really driving it. I think it’s the customer coming in and looking for assistance. And then we have to probably help them through the process because sometimes they need help, but they’re not sure what help they exactly need and what steps have to be done.
And that’s where we can lead them through it. But I would like to eventually build out our digital user interface where it’s more of an event activity driven, where it will pick up things within the account that maybe indicate they need some assistance. For example, if a large unusual deposit drops into their account, maybe we send a message to them, you know, we have an investment advisor, you know, we saw some unusual activity.
Maybe there’s an opportunity now for you to invest some of those funds. And, you know, Joe, our investment advisor could help you or, you know, some other activity like that, where we’re triggering it based upon not, you know, an age, not a demographic, not something like that, like a specific event unique to that customer. And I think as AI builds out, those digital user experiences will get smarter.
I mean, and that’s what the FinTechs are doing a lot of, and that’s where we can get better of identifying where the customer may have some needs based upon activity that’s happening within their account. And they may not even know it yet, right? So we’re a little bit ahead of the game.
I think that would separate us where we can call them on the phone, you know, and say, hey, we see this happening, we’d like to talk to you, see if we can help you out. And so little things, you know, down the road, that’s where I’d love to see us get those capabilities. I think it’s going to take a little time, but I think it’s totally doable with some of the technology today.
[Speaker 3]
So Stephen, I love how you hit on the engagement, you can get ahead of these things. How are you measuring success? Like, what have you put as the markers to say with Page, here’s what we think the outcome is both for our customers and for us?
[Speaker 2]
You know, well, we have a variety of KPIs that we put in there. And, you know, obviously, customer retention is really important. Customer engagement, you know, there’s a lot of different ways, you know, whether you’re, you know, I don’t know that these terms primacy or different things.
But really, the way, simplest way I put this is when a customer has a financial problem, I want us to be the first call. Simplest way to explain it, how you measure that, I don’t know if there’s really a way to measure that. But best way we look at it is do we have their primary pen, you know, spending, payment, checking, whatever you want to call it, do we have that primary account?
And how long do we retain it? And then build off that, I mean, that’s kind of the simplest way. But what I’m sure we’re all under, you know, once you start adding different tools, you can start seeing the full wall of a customer and you’ll realize they have their mortgage somewhere else, their credit card somewhere else, their consumer loans somewhere else.
So really, what, you know, how strong really is that relationship? So trying to wind those things back to you, if possible, and having those services, but you unless you can see that you don’t know that. And getting there is very, it’s very difficult to get to that point to have that information to see us.
[Speaker 3]
I took some heat for saying this last time, because people didn’t like how I described it. We don’t realize that our customers are, in fact, polyamorous. We think we are the only one, only to find out they’ve got accounts and money tucked away, and they’ve got a loan here, they’re using buy now, pay later, and all these other little things.
And we’re one of many.
[Speaker 2]
Yep. And, you know, we’ve been trying to get customers onto some of our, you know, onto our digital solutions using like MX, so we can kind of see their full picture. And then from that, one thing we have done is we can see where they maybe have credit cards that are really high interest rate.
And we can offer them a consumer loan product that would allow them to pay that debt off and improve their cash flow simultaneously. Yeah, I, you know, you take your interest rate from 25 down to 12, put it in a five year, you know, fixed rate consumer loan with a fixed payment, they can pay off that credit card debt. And their monthly payment is actually less.
And we’ve had customers actually walk out crying because we did it all within an hour. Wow. And they were blown away and walked out realizing that they’re paying off a credit card and they have more monthly cash flow.
So to be able to do more and more things like that, you know, it’s where we ultimately want to get to. But seeing that customer’s full financial picture is so important. And unless you can do that, it’s very, very difficult to provide all the solutions, you know, using a digital platform.
[Speaker 3]
Terry, how are you guys defining success in the relationship?
[Speaker 1]
Um, we have our KPIs, where we’re really looking, though, is our at this stage, we’re looking at our employee adoption of it. Because what we found with our community is that if our employees aren’t actively using it for themselves, it’s unlikely that the community members who are so similar to the employees here, because they are living and breathing in our community. If they aren’t using it, then our community members won’t be interested in it.
So that’s been our first KPI that we’ve been really focusing on. And with very little on that, I think we’ve had about a third of our employee base sign up for it. Yeah, which is 31% almost.
[Speaker 4]
Yeah, 30%. And we were up to 22, I think in four days. So that yeah, that was a good one.
[Speaker 1]
But it just speaks to if they can rally around it, and they can get excited about it, they are going to share that with the folks that they know most need it, because some of these relationships are 10, 20, 30 years old at this point, for banker to customer. So that was a really important aspect of it for us. And then it’s also the concept of it’s an intangible, it’s not really a KPI that you can quantify.
But there’s the intangible aspect of being able to provide some sort of peace and comfort for people, finances, especially in certain areas that, you know, not necessarily the wealthiest area of the country. When you’re providing financial services, sometimes it can be a point of contention for some people or in a point of angst, where if we can kind of flip that around and say you can come to us for more of a comfort, we are like a soft place for you to fall. We’re not going to be judging you, we’re not going to be critical of your aspects, you can tell us all these, you know, you can be honest with us, and we’ll provide those services back to you.
This gives us another one of those tools where if people come in and they talk about their days, they talk about what’s keeping them up at night, just kind of naturally, we now have a tool that we can say, hey, I actually can help you with that, which is huge, because most of the time as a banker, you listen to them, and you smile, and you, you know, take their check, and you process it, and you give it back.
But when you can actually say, I have something that can help you, and it’s, you know, again, financially kind of tangent, it’s not direct banking product, it’s really a nice thing to be able to say that to somebody and to share your own experience. So that’s really what our goal is with this relationship or partnership.
[Speaker 3]
Emily, I’m curious, because this one always surprises me. Once you’re in it with some of these banks and other FIs, what have been the unexpected learnings and sources of return that you just couldn’t have predicted going in?
[Speaker 4]
Yeah, one of the biggest ones was, I think, carrying it on the head with the employees, being able to start there. But what that actually had was a trickle effect on small businesses in the community, because a lot of the small businesses in your community have employees who may not get the opportunity to have differentiated offerings. So there was, with one of the FIs, where a small business came in and said, hey, I want to actually provide page to my own employees, how do I do that?
And so the bank has an opportunity, yes, they could charge that person, or they could say, hey, if you move your investments, if you move your banking with us, then we’ll provide that as something for your customers and for your employees. So that was an unexpected way. I never anticipated for that to happen.
And what ultimately with the bank that that happened with, they ended up moving some of their investments and their 401ks to that bank, which is not a direct KPI that I would put on our roadmap because of all the work they do in the bank day in and day out. But it was something to say, hey, this is another step in that toolkit for you to acquire and gain that type of customer that you never expected. That’s one.
I think the other piece is, you know, having millennial moms, actually millennial moms and then like 50 plus women who are using the platform on it, logging in like 2.5 times a month and logging in for non-financial, non-transactional things, but then getting guided back into the relationship with the bank that they may not have had prior to that, or they may not have had, you know, because they’re getting invited in from their parents or their spouses who manages the finances, being able to get connected in that way.
We had one recently that was like, hey, can my wife build, I have an American state bank account and they chatted with us and said, can my wife use this too? She doesn’t have an account. And I said, absolutely.
I mean, with AmState’s blessing, absolutely. She can sign up for this because you know that that spouse is likely to be their executor or it’s their oldest daughter who’s going to be that executor. And so if you are there in the moments now, for them to have that relationship is, you know, I never expected it to come from the emotional side of the products, but like we even have people using it as a baby book.
And then when their kids turn 18 and they send all those photos and emails to their kid, they’re gonna be like, ah, I have this because of Claremont, because of Thomaston. I want to bank with them and keep that relationship with them.
[Speaker 3]
As we come to a close, Stephen and Carrie, I would love for you, what do you view as the fundamentals on how you build trust with those advisors, right? Because it can feel amorphous in that becoming the trusted advisor, how do you earn trust?
[Speaker 2]
It has to be earned. First off, it’s not one specific thing you do. It’s something you build over time.
And I think it’s honesty. You know, you have to be honest with your customers. You have to be fair with your customers.
You have to show them respect. And, you know, very importantly, you have to listen. Don’t be talking all the time and forcing them to pick things that don’t make sense for them.
So I think if you can do those things over time, you will build the trust and build that relationship, start small and just continues to get bigger, and then that can last a lifetime. There’s no one magic bullet for that. It’s just, it’s a step that you build over time.
[Speaker 1]
I would echo all of that and also add showing up all the time and being there, being present, being available is also one of the things that’s been helpful. There’s typically a lot of turnover in the branch world. Oftentimes the retail team is kind of like a feeder for some other areas of the bank as people move up in their careers.
And giving our internal team some growth plans within the branches, I think has been really helpful to create that longevity and create those customer relationships, like I said, that have lasted decades at this point. So I think kind of always being present and there and available to support people certainly helps with the trust. And like Stephen talked about at the beginning of this, the fraudsters are constantly trying to erode that trust and to the point where people that have had long-term customers here have gotten into heated debates.
No, I shouldn’t say quite like that, but conversations with our customers saying like, no, you’re being scammed. This is a fraudster and they just don’t see it. So even years of trust can get eroded pretty easily by these fraudsters that are master manipulators.
So that’s been a really important aspect of what we’re trying to do is understand not just our customers that are physically present, but understand them digitally and kind of get them familiar with who we are and having that same kind of consistent tone, consistent branding and messaging out there has been, is one of the things that we’re focused on to try to build that level of at least you guys know who we are, who we say we are.
Go ahead.
[Speaker 4]
I would just echo too, and both of them have hit on this, is being there in those moments of those steps where you’re building that trust over years and years, supporting them in whatever place in their life that they are and helping them kind of facilitate that and be there for them. So it’s being present and listening, but then understanding, hey, oh, you have an aunt that’s aging and here’s this thing that’s happening, or hey, you just bought a house, or hey, you just started a business. Here’s these other tools that can help kind of build on that relationship and help you, customer, where you are in your life, get to that next step wherever you’re going.
[Speaker 3]
Fantastic. Well, Emily, I think that was a great way to wrap up the end. Thank you to the three of you to come on talking about trust, the way your partnership’s rolling out.
Emily, if anyone wants to learn more about Page, where can they find that?
[Speaker 4]
Yes, they can go to go-page.com.
[Speaker 3]
And that is P-A-G-E, P-A-I-G-E. All right. Thank you all for joining us.
