Lake City Bank is a $6.3 billion community bank and an anchor in the Indiana community. Its roots go back more than 150 years, but it’s always been ahead of its time in providing excellent services to customers. Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Lisa Fulton says, “As a community bank, we like to focus on our business sector by providing comprehensive business banking solutions, but also compound that with high-level personal, client relationship-driven services.
“We know Indiana really well, and we pride ourselves in the fact that we're there for our customers. So, because we understand the community, because we understand the businesses, we're able to be there through good times and through bad, and deliver the right services that make us competitive with national as well as larger regional banks in our market.”
With this commitment to the community, Lake City Bank wanted to see faster, modernized digital banking options for customers. They made this a top priority in 2020 – and created a task force – from inside and outside of the bank – to find the best of the best in digital banking.
She says, “Our impetus for digital transformation was frustration: Frustration with our previous digital provider, a lack of innovation, old architecture, disparate processes, mobile apps that really didn't do much, and just a lack of functionality. We didn’t have a united front. We had a business platform and mobile app. We had a consumer platform and mobile app. Each of those channels looked and acted differently.
“Once we had identified the problem, we were able to conduct a market analysis. We understood what was out there and what was appealing to these clients. This journey is what led us to Q2.”
Fulton and her team quickly harnessed and deployed many of Q2’s tools and began getting rave reviews from both customers and the internal banking team. The partnership has helped Lake City Bank double down on its investment to its stakeholders and is helping them compete and win against many of the bank’s competitors, both local and national.
Speeding up Innovation with Q2 Innovation Studio
Upon bringing Q2 on board, Fulton wanted to see results in short order. She and her team were immediately drawn to the Q2 Innovation Studio – a software development kit (SDK) that enables financial institutions to innovate on their own timetable without having to wait for advances from their digital banking provider.
To make their transformation even faster, Lake City Bank tapped into Q2’s in-house experts, the Premier Services Team, to embed themselves with Lake City Bank’s in-house development team, in order to take swift action to upgrade and unify its digital assets. Fulton says, “I wanted a configurable, customizable platform that could be implemented fairly quickly. With Q2’s Premier Services Team, we have dedicated experts who work with us every single day. They know how we're configured, but more importantly, they know what matters most to us. They have given us some pretty good lift.”
Fast Responses, Actionable Analytics with Q2 SMART™ and Q2 Discover, powered by Pendo Adopt
Lake City Bank quickly deployed two solutions – Q2 SMART™ and Q2 Discover – to help it better anticipate the needs of its account holders and have the ability to immediately issue tailored, in-app messages or guides to its digital banking customers through the online banking platform itself.
With the ability to segment audiences that Lake City Bank wants to reach, instant messages can be placed onto the digital banking platform at the exact place where the messages will be most relevant. Additionally, these fully integrated solutions uncover user behaviors that point to their potential interest in additional bank products which they’re not currently using. This enables Lake City Bank to act on its own data in real time to build and manage targeted campaigns. Everything is deployed within a single, easy-to-use platform, removing roadblocks and being more responsive to customers.
Fulton says, “Q2 SMART and Q2 Discover are differentiators for our bank. Because they help us identify what's important to our clients and we can see how they're engaging, we can send targeted messages to targeted audiences quickly. When I interact with my consumers, I want to send a message that's meaningful to them,” Fulton says. “We also use it for important announcements, like when our ATM fleet was down. We were able to post something right away so people didn’t drive to an ATM and end up being frustrated. We got some great feedback from our clients on that.
This speaks to the ability of Lake City Bank to be responsive to its customers. “The partnership we have with Q2 is very valuable. We are committed to the relationship, and it's reciprocal. That's very obvious in how they treat us as a partner and their ability to work with us, listen to us, and help us meet our strategic initiatives.”
Deepening Engagement and Being in the Trenches With Customers Through the Financial Wellness Tool Q2 Goals™
Q2’s innovative financial wellness tool, Q2 Goals, enables users to segment accounts into individualized buckets or savings goals to set aside and track funds for future purchases. Users can save for items like a new car, plan for recurring tuition payments or establish an emergency fund. Within the first two months, Lake City Bank’s users had created 1,700 goal accounts, with at least 20 new goals being established continually.
“It’s been exciting for us. We noticed that 40 percent of our Goal users were Millennials, followed very quickly by 38 percent being Gen Z, so that’s 78 percent being in the very demographic we’re trying to attract. As we've entered more metropolitan markets, that younger demographic is critical for us. In just two months, we have more than half a million dollars in deposits into these goals, and we're just ecstatic about the results.
“We really have a passion for financial literacy. We feel, as bankers, it’s one of our responsibilities to help make our community stronger. We can do that by teaching them how to use the tools and skillsets to become more financially stable and realize their goals and their dreams.”
With the many solutions available to Lake City Bank – including treasury management, payments, chat, and others – Fulton and her team are looking forward to rolling in new features that help customers transact quickly and securely.
At the end of the day, what started as frustration for Lake City Bank has turned into a great success. Fulton says, “Q2 is a wonderful strategic partner for us. Because we engage with Q2 Premier Services and Q2 Innovation Studio, we can not only build a meaningful platform for our clients, we can do it at a pace that keeps us competitive.
“It's really important for us to have a digital platform that's relevant today and will be relevant in the future. Because of the way that Q2 has designed this platform and the way that they have engaged and made it so flexible, it's been the perfect partnership for us.
Want to hear more about Lake City Bank’s digital journey? Read their case study here.
