- Too many retail checking account prospects are abandoning their application journeys because they run into just too much friction.
- Curinos’ Digital Acquisition Benchmark connects digital funnel performance to the application experience.
- Providers can capture data on the performance across key digital activation steps and apply actionable decision intelligence to improve conversion and funding to drive higher and stickier levels of deposits.
Your marketing is working. Your pricing is optimized. Your brand and proposition are differentiated. You’re confident in your always-on targeted-audience focus, and you’re penetrating the markets you’ve identified as the most valuable. In short, you’ve done everything right up to this point. Yet you’re not converting prospects into customers.
Frustrating, but you’re not alone. Many retail banking institutions are seeing prospects abandon their digital account-opening journey, meaning marketing and pricing investments are being suboptimized. Providers need to consider the key digital-acquisition inflection points and unify the entire experience with a view to delivering cohesive account opening, onboarding and funding. After all the heavy lifting, this is no place for the process to break down.
Leverage Actionable Intelligence at Key Inflection Points
Key inflection points exist across the entire acquisition journey, and decisions made at each of them need to connect directly to the next one to ultimately deliver the bank’s target outcomes for growth and retention (Figure 1). Deeper understanding of the connectivity across the journey can also inform and support business cases for new tech investment and integrations, especially when performance at each stage is benchmarked against industry peers. By enabling diagnostics at the sub-journey and journey levels, Curinos has developed actionable decision intelligence that serves as the basis for driving tactical change to deliver on acquisition customer growth.
Figure 1: Key Inflection Points in the Acquisition Journey
Source: Curinos Digital Banking Analyzer
Combining Digital Performance with Experience Intelligence
Curinos leveraged its detailed experience and capability tracking of thousands of acquisition journeys to develop the Digital Acquisition Benchmark. It provides FIs peer comparisons and more detail “under the hood” so that they can convert prospects into engaged customers more effectively. By connecting digital funnel conversion to the application experience, Curinos has correlated a lower Journey Effort Score, which quantifies the friction encountered by users from the start of an application to logging in for the first time, to higher funnel retention (Figure 2).
The correlation emphasizes the enormous impact that reducing friction can have on key acquisition metrics. In acquiring checking through mobile, for example, a lower Journey Effort Score results in a 1.6x higher application completion rate than a higher score. Even more striking, and meaningful, is that a lower score produces twice the rate of both approvals and funding than a higher score.
Figure 2: Digital Banking Analyzer Journey Effort Score Impact on Mobile Checking Acquisition Performance
Source: Curinos Digital Banking Analyzer, Retail Checking US Onboarding Q3 2024 and Digital Acquisition Benchmark (Q3 2024 aggregated FI benchmark data)
And quarterly measurement and benchmarking can empower participants to adjust and develop their acquisition journeys to drive better yield and activation as the basis for higher growth and retention (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Client Performance Impact Impact of Improved Journey Effort Score
(per 100k Applications)
Metric | Bottom Tier | Top Tier | Business Impact |
Application Completion Rate | 51% | 80% |
|
Approval Rate | 10% | 20% | |
Funding Rate | 4% | 8% |
Source: Curinos Analysis
But revealing friction in acquisition performance takes you only so far. What do you do about it? Financial providers need to tap into the wealth of solutions available to them. These could include a straightforward design choice, the need to revisit journey sequencing or leveraging the appropriate tech integrations to improve conversion.
Amplero, Curinos’ AI decision intelligence platform, for example, recently helped one bank drive adoption of key features by 7.7% over the first 60 days of account opening. That improved engagement and lowered early attrition, a critical step on the path to primacy. Through Amplero, optimized customers opened 28% more new deposit accounts in the first year, and new-to-bank deposits jumped 38% over the same period using message-only strategies alone.
"Through Amplero, optimized customers opened 28% more new deposit accounts in year one, and new-to-bank deposits jumped 38%."
Taking a Truly Mobile Approach
With more than 75% of digital applications coming through the mobile channel, one key decision for many FIs is how to deliver a truly mobile-friendly acquisition journey. Most traditional FIs are still grappling with translating web-based forms onto the small screen, constrained by outdated components and forcing applicants to scroll rather than swipe and tap. The lack of optimization results in higher Journey Effort Scores, prolonging experiences that result in lower conversion.
Mobile enhancement extends to identity and verification processes as well. Whether to facilitate pre-fill or to capture biometric data to prevent impersonation, FIs need to be rethinking how they move with the tide to truly reduce the friction of verifying applicants.
When to Fund and How
Curinos’ Distribution Analyzer indicates a close correlation between early digital funding and retention levels, with accounts funded sooner in the relationship producing higher and longer-term deposit value. That means a provider needs to know when to ask for funding and what funding options to offer. But the effectiveness of those decisions depends heavily on whether to make funding compulsory, as do 52% of FIs, or not. The Digital Acquisition Benchmark highlights the importance of intelligence on those funding decisions to drive early-stage funding and ensure that a high proportion of accounts are booked.
Curinos has also found that offering a sufficient range of funding options can drive higher levels of initial funding. Observing the boom in funding options over the last two years, Digital Banking Analyzer data show that nearly half (49%) of U.S.-based retail checking providers tracked offer funding via a debit card and two-fifths (41%) offer third-party API linking, the fastest growing funding option (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Funding Options for Checking Accounts
Source: Curinos Digital Banking Analyzer, Retail Checking US Onboarding tracker n=98 FIs
Enrolling Earlier is Better
Many providers leave digital enrollment to the end, offering successful applicants the ability to engage with the banking platform after formal requirements, such as account selection, funding and verifications, are complete. The Digital Acquisition Benchmark shows clearly that this product-centric approach to acquisition produces a much higher Journey Effort Score, extending the length of time before a new customer can log in for the first time to engage with their new account.
Fintechs and other digital leaders have moved enrollment into the first few steps of the funnel, creating a relationship early on and encouraging the new customer to access various account services without waiting. By doing so, it enables the provider to demonstrate its full servicing value proposition right away.
The Need for Actionable Acquisition Intelligence
The acquisition journey can no longer be a collection of isolated sub-journeys that stand alone. How well a financial institution stitches together the different stages determines its funnel conversion from the start to first login to initial funding. Only by leveraging journey–level intelligence alongside benchmarked acquisition performance can providers truly take informed action to create value-generating experiences. They can ensure OKRs are being addressed within the end-to-end journey, generate insights on early month–on–book behavior that drives growth, and create longer–term retention.
Decision & Action Takeaways
Decision to be Made | How to enhance digital acquisition using actionable journey diagnostics against funnel performance benchmarked against peers. |
How It Affects Total Customer Value | Links digital diagnostics to a broader acquisition model in which institutions can ensure key growth OKRs are being addressed within the end-to-end acquisition journey. |
Action Recipes
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Guardrails | New-to-brand application funnel performance is analyzed against digital experience performance at competitor level, allowing institutions to transform their acquisition journeys to realize the investment made in marketing and pricing-based plays. |
Expected KPI Lift | Lower Journey Effort Scores have 1.6x the completion rate and 2x the rates of approval and funding. |
Curinos can model your acquisition journey’s lost conversion value — and show how improving your Journey Effort Score translates into real dollars. Request your DAB benchmarking session.
