How to Drive Customer Engagement with Superior Mobile Banking Experiences
By Nicole Volpe. Contributor at The Financial Brand
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Many small financial institutions talk about the need to punch above their weight. Central Pacific Bank (CPB) of Hawaii is one financial institution that’s doing it.
In a phased series of service launches this summer, the $7.37 billion-asset, full-service banking company has been rolling out a new mobile app that aims to make good on a vision of seamlessly embedding its services in customers’ daily lives. The bank’s goal mirrors that of many banks and credit unions, of all sizes, as they compete for customers who have come to expect engaging, predictive, and even addictive, mobile experiences.
CPB’s new mobile deployment shows how a bank can deepen engagement by making common financial tasks faster and easier. The project focused on turning routine interactions — such as checking balances or moving money — into opportunities for customers to do more within the same environment. Its larger goal was to expand product penetration and position themselves as an accountholder’s primary institution.
Working with MX, CPB launched a redesigned mobile app that includes integrated direct deposit switching, credit score monitoring, mobile-first account opening, and savings and budgeting tools. These features were introduced in phases, with early results showing sharp increases in usage when services moved from desktop to mobile.
The rollout demonstrates that a bank can bring a distinctive look and feel to market on a third-party platform — without the major effort or investment that an in-house development project would require. It highlights how smaller institutions deliver a mobile banking experience that elevates their brand and supports customer primacy.
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Optimizing for Omnichannel and Mobile
For the CPB team, achieving the bank’s mobile app ambitions required thinking both “globally” and “locally.” On one hand, the bank’s strategists were strongly committed to an omnichannel model. On the other hand, they wanted to “let mobile be mobile” — to actively leverage the specific ways people access services on their phones, without allowing that experience to be “muddied” by, for example, the assumptions and feature sets that underlie website design.
In a recent interview, CPB executives described how their view of digital evolved from seeing it as a separate track to treating it as one part of a broader system and relationship. These required them to shift from a mindset that separates “digital customers” from “branch customers,” toward an approach that sees people engaging across channels.
A key goal was to align digital and branch activity so customers could move naturally between them without friction, according to Brandt Farias, a CPB Executive Vice President and its Chief Marketing Officer. “We’ve really moved our thinking to an omni-channel experience where most customers touch the bank in all of those ways at a given time,” he said.
At the same time, the bank wanted to take full advantage of what mobile could do on its own terms. “Yes, we’re trying to develop some level of parity between what you can do in online banking and what you can do in mobile,” said Jason Lazzerini, an Executive Vice President and the Chief Digital Officer at CPB. “But we don’t want to muddy it so that the app’s mission is diluted.” That meant designing processes and functionality that fit the phone’s capabilities, such as credentialing a customer once and carrying that verification into new actions. “Can I keep it clean and simple, so that the message of our mobile app resonates better?”
These shifts in thinking shaped the features prioritized for the app. The first addition was an in-app option for consumers to switch their direct deposit, which quickly changed behavior. While the bank previously saw only a handful of direct deposits set up each month when the process was available on desktop, the mobile version produced a surge of enrollments within the first week. Lazzerini said: “We embedded our direct deposit switch into the mobile app, and the results have been unbelievable… the day we put it on a mobile device, we had 60 conversions in the first week.”
Next, CPB launched credit score monitoring. This gave customers a way to track their standing without leaving the app, while creating a natural link to loan products. By embedding the tool in the same environment customers already trusted, the bank made it easier for people to monitor their credit health and take action when opportunities arose.
A savings and budgeting feature, designed with gamified elements, and a streamlined mobile account opening flow rounded out the initial rollout. Together, these tools gave customers more reasons to stay inside the CPB app.
Putting Their Own Best Face Forward
Central Pacific Bank wanted its app to stand apart from other institutions. Rather than presenting customers with a generic interface, the bank invested in design choices that made its app feel distinct and closely tied to its own identity. Visual branding, the end-user workflow, and interactive resources were all treated as part of a total customer experience, rather than generic navigation.
Executives stressed the importance of creating an application that customers would recognize as uniquely CPB’s. “You need some sort of differentiating factor,” Lazzerini said. “Can you make it different so it doesn’t look like everybody else’s mobile application?” MX gave the bank the building blocks, but CPB’s choices governed how they came to life.
“CPB was deliberate in deciding which features to roll out first. They weren’t chasing shiny objects — they were focused on what would drive adoption and value,” said Karmen Cooper, Director of Product Design at MX. “When they moved direct deposit switching into the app, it was a turning point. It showed what happens when you put the right feature in the right channel — customers respond immediately.”
CPB’s executives recognized that mobile offers a more concentrated environment than desktop banking. On a phone, there are fewer competing screens and distractions, so features placed inside the app are more likely to be noticed and used. Where desktop banking often serves a single, purposeful task — with more physical screen space to accommodate more complex tasks, the mobile interface encourages customers to explore and interact.
For CPB, such thinking especially influenced the way features are surfaced. For example, banners in the mobile environment occupied significant screen space, drawing customer attention in ways that desktop notifications could not. Executives noted that this focus helped explain why moving direct deposit enrollment into the app drove far higher adoption than the same process on desktop: “It’s 30% of your phone, and that’s your world when you’re looking at it,” said Lazzerini.
The result was an ecosystem that encouraged customers to stay engaged. “We want you to be in our mobile ecosystem for more than just the basic stuff you need to do,” said Lazzerini—”so we’re trying to make it fun and make it branded.”
Cooper points out that consumer expectations for really great mobile experiences are growing — and that budgeting and personal finance ideas are coming from many disparate sources, including TikTok and various fintechs. But yet people have a low bar for what they expect from their bank, leaving lots of room for these financial institutions to surprise and delight.
“People deserve to have really great financial products from companies that care about them, like their regional bank, which is grounded in their community and really serves their community, gives them really great rates on their savings accounts, and more,” she said.
Lessons and Learnings
Start with what customers do most. Executives emphasized that the first priority is making common tasks — like payments and transfers — simple and reliable. Once those basics are handled, new features can build on top. Lazzerini said: “Make sure that the things they’re doing all the time are easy and accessible, because most of the time they’re doing very easy things. They’re paying their friends, they’re sending money.”
Layer value-added tools. CPB deliberately sequenced its rollout rather than releasing everything at once. Direct deposit switching came first, followed by credit score monitoring, account opening, and savings tools. Each addition was chosen to provide immediate value while creating opportunities for customers to do more. By pacing the deployment, the bank ensured each feature could stand out and gain traction.
Use mobile’s security advantage. Fraud prevention was a major concern, and CPB pointed to the unique security benefits of mobile, particularly biometric verification. Lazzerini explained that sending verification through the app is far stronger than relying on email or passwords alone: “That mobile device, because of the biometrics in there, really is a very secure way to use multi-factor authentication.”
Adopt an omni-channel mindset. Leaders stressed that mobile cannot be treated as a separate track. Instead, it needs to be seamlessly connected with online and branch services into a unified customer experience. “The consumer doesn’t separate the platforms. They just think about ‘the bank’ and accessing their money,” Farias said.
