If you’re in the process of evaluating and selecting a digital banking platform, we understand that this is a major commitment that will have lasting impacts on not only your financial institution and your employees, but also the account holders that rely on your financial institution to conduct retail and commercial banking on an everyday basis. You face immense pressure to select a digital banking platform that will help your financial institution attract new users, grow deposits, promote adoption and gain greater primary financial institution (PFI) status with your account holders. This means that the digital banking provider you ultimately choose must have not only an intentional and persistent technology strategy, but also a strong culture of innovation to support it.

Is Your Digital Banking Platform Supporting Your Desired Trajectory?

As you’re developing your growth strategy for the next 3, 5 or even 10 years, are you confident that your current digital banking provider is equipped to support your financial institution’s growth?

As stated in the 2024 Banking Outlook report by BAI, “Somewhat unfairly, customers measure their bank’s digital delivery of services against the practices of world-class online retailers.” As consumers use highly tech-forward and tech-funded apps, they are increasingly conditioned to expect modern and performant experiences across the other apps they use – including, and especially digital banking platforms – where they need frictionless and “always on” control of their money at all times.

As the bar continues to rise higher and higher, how can you keep up with these technology standards? You must partner with a technology provider with a strong culture of innovation that you feel confident in pursuing a long-term digital banking partnership with.

3 Indicators of a Strong Culture of Innovation

Here are 3 qualities that indicate that a digital banking provider has a strong culture of innovation.

1. 1. Proactively Investing in Innovation: In order for your digital banking provider to keep your banking experience comparable and competitive with the best of the best megabanks, neobanks and regional banks, they must proactively invest in innovative technology. Software infrastructure and architecture are the foundational elements that play a major role in the quality, reliability and performance of your digital banking platform. Inefficient, or poorly managed software infrastructure will create delays, outages, and unnecessary points of friction that will lead to a rise in support calls, poor app ratings and ultimately account holder attrition.New and improved technologies, tools and ways of working (such as software development frameworks and methodologies)  will continue to arise, with some more disruptive than others. Providers that are able to anticipate these changes, learn from them, and use them to improve their technology strategy will be poised to provide you with a digital banking experience that your users will enjoy using now – and into the future.
   2. Constantly Seeking and Incorporating Feedback: Your digital banking provider must be collaborative and seeking areas to improve, based on real client feedback. In any relationship between clients and vendors, clients want their concerns, opinions and ideas to be heard and taken into consideration. A digital banking vendor and financial institution client relationship is no different.
   3. Partnering with Trusted Advisors: The digital banking provider that you enter a long-term partnership with must similarly be actively partnering with, and getting consultative advice from trusted and reputable advisors in the financial and technology industries. To achieve innovation and long-term growth, companies cannot work in a vacuum, nor follow the status quo, or they risk getting surpassed by competitors.

Approaching Innovation from Various Angles

At Alkami, we’re constantly striving to raise the bar for delivering a world-class digital sales and service experience for our clients and the end users that they serve. Here are some ways that Alkami is actively investing in innovation to keep our technology modern, relevant to the constituents that we serve, and receptive to the ever changing financial services and technology landscape.

Innovation Through Client Feedback

At our client conference in 2023, we introduced a Client Journey Wall to gather direct feedback from our clients to better understand their experience throughout the account holder lifecycle with Alkami – across consideration, implementation, and renewal. We encouraged our clients to provide both positive and constructive feedback, anywhere they wanted across the account holder lifecycle.

We consolidated the responses, internalized the feedback, and we created actionable plans that have shaped many of the projects and initiatives embedded throughout our organization.

This is just one of the many avenues that we use to solicit real client feedback, so we can incorporate them into our strategic plans and continue raising the bar of innovation for our digital banking platform. Our goal at Alkami is to be your trusted partner – one that is easy to work with, that you want to do business with, and who will help you grow your institution.

Innovation Through Industry-Leading Partnerships

In 2023, Alkami embarked on a collaborative modernization project with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their Amazon Modernization Lab, which is an invite-only program to help companies drive growth, accelerate migration and maximize value with modern, cloud technologies.

Through this collaborative partnership with AWS experts, we’ve initiated a number of collaborative modernization projects that will have tremendous impact on the efficiency of our software architecture and allow us to deliver a smoother and more reliable experience for our clients and their end users.

“The digital banking platform that Alkami created for us is a fantastic win for Elevations. Their ability to innovate allows us to compete with larger banking players when it comes to digital tools.”
– Craig Draayer (Vice President of Digital Transformation, Elevations Credit Union)

Innovation Through Collaborative Involvement

In addition to executing on our strategic roadmap, an important part of Alkami’s engineering culture is to create the dedicated time and space for creative problem solving and innovation.

In Fall 2023, we held our first internal TechFin Hackathon. A hackathon is an organized event where small groups collaborate to build a project over a period of time, followed by demos to showcase the work that has been completed. As a result of this internal hackathon, the teams demonstrated 26 unique projects that were focused on accelerating time-to-action, streamlining backend operations, and enabling self-serve functionality for employees and clients.

At Alkami Co:lab 2024, we will be hosting our first external TechFin Hackathon, inviting  our clients, partners and system integrators to develop functionality using the Alkami SDK. By expanding the aperture of the hackathon, we are inviting our external stakeholders to participate in the creative problem solving and innovation in a way that is relevant and meaningful to their respective financial institutions and fintech companies.

Team Up with a TechFin for Long-Term Growth and Success

As you contemplate the long-term goals for your financial institution, it may feel daunting with the fast-paced technology, and evolving user behaviors that are outside of anyone’s anticipation or control. In order for you to “do what you do best” in serving the financial needs of your account holders, you must have full confidence that your digital banking platform can help you stay innovative and competitive with the megabanks and neobanks.

We encourage you to evaluate the 3 innovation qualities mentioned in this blog, and determine if your current digital banking provider aligns with the business goals your institution is looking to achieve. Do you feel like you have the right level of support to be successful? If you’re looking to elevate or expand upon your digital banking strategy, chat with us – we want to help your financial institution reach your growth goals in 2024 and beyond.