Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

TD Bank's digital leader on letting customers choose their own path to open an account.

This Flashback Friday episode revisits a 2025 interview recorded at the Financial Brand Forum with Todd Purcell, who was in charge of digital transformation strategy, innovation and partnerships at TD Bank. The industry keeps pushing toward opening an account on a phone in 3 minutes or less with 3 fields. Todd says TD is thinking about it differently: some customers want that, and others may want a 10-minute guided journey with a person ready to help. The goal is to let each customer choose their own path.

TD's stores are known for pens, lollipops and dog biscuits, so Jim asks the obvious question: how does a bank make its digital experience feel that human? Todd is candid that TD hasn't figured it out yet. What he does describe is a connected customer experience built on choice, continuity and consistency across digital, the contact center and stores, and a 3-year strategy that starts with making the basics brilliant. He also points to Netflix and Nordstrom as sources of inspiration for connected, human experiences.

They also get into how TD runs the work. Todd put 1 prioritized roadmap in place, reads a report on customer irritants every morning at 8:30 and looks at friction even when scores beat target, and uses a 2-day design sprint on problems that would typically take 16 weeks. Customers interact with TD about 20 times a month, so Todd sees digital as the brand's largest everyday expression. Jim also shares how a partner's decision can change how a customer feels about their bank.

About Todd Purcell: Todd has spent his career in digital transformation, starting in 1995 at Chemical Bank, which became Chase, where he worked on the early build of what became Internet Chase Online Banking. He joined TD Bank in December 2023.

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

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Banks and credit unions can reach a customer before the account closes by giving the people who serve that customer direct access to customer data. Research from the Digital Banking Report found that 44% of institutions usually learn a customer is leaving when the account closes.

Customer data is among the most valuable assets at a bank or credit union, yet only 14% of institutions say they have a customer profile that works across the whole organization. About 6 in 10 say retail and lending leaders cannot build a customer list without help from IT or an analyst, so they submit a request and wait. The result is slow action on signals such as a payroll deposit that moves. 32% say they would not detect a meaningful change in customer behavior at all.

The barriers leaders name first are internal. 46% say no one clearly owns acting on customer insight, and 46% say data is trapped in the core or in separate systems, while budget at 16% and compliance review at 14% rank near the bottom. Leadership can decide who owns customer insight and approve who gets access without waiting for a core conversion, even if delivering that access takes some integration work. Where marketing holds the tools, it becomes the default owner of customer insight, even though marketing does not run the branches, the lenders, or the contact center.

In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous explains where to start. He covers the history of VisiCalc, the next best conversation engine at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and three practical steps: review the last 100 accounts that closed, give branch managers a weekly list of new and moved payroll deposits, and measure the days between a signal and the first call. Banks and credit unions of any size face the same test: whether the institution knows who a customer is when they show up somewhere new.

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.

Citizens Bank says banks stand out by being simple to deal with and human when it matters.

Karen Swiatocha leads branch distribution transformation at Citizens Bank. In this Banking Transformed conversation with Jim Marous, she explains how a big bank can stand out when products, digital and even AI look the same: by being simple to do business with and by making the memorable moments human. She says 70 to 80% of what a customer needs to accomplish is common to the mobile app, the contact center and the branch, yet many institutions still design each channel as if it were the only one.

Digital works well for routine, predictable banking, Karen says, while customers still want a trusted human for complex and consequential decisions. That points to fewer branches in more convenient locations, spaces designed for private conversation, more specialists, and an operating model where bankers, contact center agents and digital teams act as one team. She also describes how Citizens routes new customers, whatever channel they joined through, to branch bankers and to a contact center team that focuses on the first 30, 60 and 90 days.

Karen also talks about the people side of the work: co-creating change with field leadership, rethinking the branch manager role she calls the mayor of the community, and making sure reward systems and policies match the relationship goal. Her advice for a community bank or credit union is to pick one customer journey, experience it yourself, give one person accountability for making it easier, and celebrate the progress loudly.

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

A financial institution that assigns a relationship manager to a small business promises that someone will know the business, and satisfaction with those managers fell 35 points among customers with two years or less.

J.D. Power's 2026 study of U.S. small business banking found that overall satisfaction with banks rose 10 points, while satisfaction with relationship managers fell 15. Sixty-one percent of small businesses now have an assigned relationship manager, up from 58%, yet customer-initiated contacts and face-to-face meetings both went down. Small businesses say their managers are harder to reach and slower to respond, and more of them question whether those managers understand and care about the business.

The drop is sharpest among the newest customers. Businesses that have banked with their institution for two years or less cut their relationship manager score by 35 points, compared with 13 points for customers of three years or longer. Jim Marous owns a small business, and his banker calls every quarter without getting into any detail. His view is that an assigned relationship manager is a promise that someone will know the business.

For a relationship manager to win the battle for the customer, the institution has to supply the ammunition. Jim looks at the form Fifth Third and Bank of America use to give bankers a specific reason to talk, and at how predictive and generative AI are starting to reach calling officers. He closes with four actions for banks and credit unions, starting with a substantive conversation during onboarding.

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.

Banks and credit unions must stand out by picking one rival to position against, according to author Laura Ries.

This Flashback Friday episode features my 2025 conversation with Laura Ries, author of The Strategic Enemy: How to Build and Position a Brand Worth Fighting For. Ries says consumers are surrounded by nearly indistinguishable offers, and that a bank or credit union claiming to be better will not be believed because self-reported claims lack credibility. She explains why a friend’s recommendation, a Reddit thread or a podcast mention carries more weight than advertising, and why repetition of one narrow idea builds a position in the customer’s mind.

We cover how a bank or credit union can choose its foe. For a regional bank, Ries frames the choice as the big national players or the online fintechs, whichever creates the greatest contrast. She also covers visual hammers, including the Wells Fargo stagecoach and the Chase shape, why a bank in a blue category should consider red, purple or green, how names like SunTrust and Truist compare, and how PNC’s “brilliantly boring” theme turns a perceived negative into a positive.

Ries also explains why a legacy brand may need a second brand, citing Kodak and Toyota’s Lexus, and how employees can live a brand promise through simple, repeated phrases such as Avis’s “We try harder” and Chick-fil-A’s “It’s my pleasure.” She closes with DUDE Wipes, a narrow brand with a clear foe in dry toilet paper, and advice for a regional bank CEO on choosing the foe that creates the strongest contrast. Recorded in 2025, the brands and campaigns discussed are as they stood then.

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