Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

Branch networks in the United States are growing again, yet only 9% of consumers name branches as their preferred way to bank. Both facts are true because the branch’s job has changed from acquiring new customers to deepening relationships with the institution's existing customers.

Jim Marous examines what the largest banks are actually doing with physical distribution. Chase reports that half of the new checking relationships in its expansion markets come from existing credit card customers. Bank of America clients booked roughly 10 million appointments with specialists last year, with 90% of interactions digital, and the bank reports a 50% increase in digital sales in markets where it opens a financial center. Research from Curinos and Adrenaline finds accounts opened in a branch carry higher balances and are 25% more likely to remain open after a year.

The episode argues that branch business cases should not begin with projected households and deposits, and that branches should be measured on a market P&L rather than a lobby P&L. It closes with a framework for deciding whether to build, remodel, or close, applied market by market rather than building by building.

Hosted by Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and host of the Banking Transformed podcast.

Nick Cowell, Principal and US retail banking leader at Deloitte, joins Jim Marous to unpack the firm's new series, 2050: Banking Beyond, and the question at its center: in 25 years, will banks still own the customer relationship?

They get into why that relationship is the asset most at risk as AI agents, embedded finance, and open banking move engagement outside the bank's walls, why banks know so much about customers but tell them so little, privacy becoming a premium service, and the day talking to a human costs extra. Nick also explains why the next wave of consolidation will be driven by AI readiness rather than asset size, and the three no-regrets moves every bank and credit union should make now.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

The platform may have been designed to transform the institution, but often, the institution ends up redesigning the platform instead.

Two institutions purchase the same digital account opening platform from the same provider. One can open accounts in just 3 minutes, while the other takes at least 9 minutes because it still requires a legacy ID step within the new technology. The provider and the solution are the same; only the results differ.

Jim Marous explores why many digital banking investments deliver exactly what was promised but still leave the institution no better off. Drawing on the barbell concept in digital maturity research from Alkami Technologies linked below, where the largest institutions and the strongest smaller ones consistently outperform the middle, he outlines the three conditions no provider can own for a financial institution: the destination, the discipline to protect the intended result, and the ownership that ensures a decision is carried through the building process.

Report:
https://www.alkami.com/resources/research/reports/retail-banking-digital-sales-service-maturity-model-report/

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

Nubank can change the economics of deposits that it has never won.

The Brazilian digital bank has conditional approval for a U.S. national bank charter and plans to open by 2027, and most coverage is asking whether it can take a meaningful share of the market from American institutions. Jim Marous gives the pragmatic take: Share is the wrong thing to watch. Nubank built more than 130 million customer relationships in Latin America by leading with credit and earning the deposits afterward, in markets where many people had kept their savings at home rather than trust a bank. Its global platform now runs at an efficiency ratio below 20%, compared with a U.S. norm near 60%.

That gap is the story. It lets Nubank pay depositors more than a typical U.S. bank or credit union can, and still earn a stronger margin, using deposit rates as an acquisition channel the way it did with Cuenta Nu in Mexico, where the yield went from 9% to 15% and pulled in $3.8 billion in 18 months. The exposure for American institutions shows up as margin, not attrition. Nubank does not have to reprice every deposit in the country. It only has to reset the price of the next dollar you need to keep or replace, and with a national average savings-account rate under half a percent against the best rates near ten times that, your customers are already comparing.

Jim Marous is co-publisher of The Financial Brand and host of the Banking Transformed podcast. This Banking Insights episode covers what Nubank built in Brazil, why Chime’s track record shortens Nubank’s path, the one fair-lending question that could slow its rollout, and three moves banks and credit unions should make before someone else sets their deposit floor. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

Banks and credit unions have never known more about their customers. So why does so much of banking still feel impersonal?

In this episode, David Acevedo, Vice President at Abrigo, joins Jim Marous to examine the gap between what an institution knows about a customer and what it actually does about it.

They get into why more customer data has not led to better personal service, what separates the banks and credit unions that build lasting relationships from those that do not, and how to move from customer data to customer action at the front line.

The conversation also covers the real advantage community banks and credit unions hold over the largest institutions, where AI strengthens the human relationship instead of replacing it, the most common and most expensive mistakes banks make when they try to get closer to their customers, and the one move David would tell any executive to make first.

Hosted by Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and owner of the Digital Banking Report. New episodes of Banking Transformed are published multiple times each week. Subscribe so you never miss one.