How Banks Can Move from Personalization to Anticipation
By Suman Bhattacharyya
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Financial institutions have sought to build stickier customer relationships for years. Personalization, a tactic pioneered by online retailers, is seen as the key—and customers appear to be open to it. Some 72% of customers surveyed said personalization influences their choice of bank, but only 3% used the personalized tools offered by their primary bank, according to Accenture’s 2025 global banking study.
Though personalization is an opportunity, the challenge for FIs is to make it relevant and useful. Increasingly, that means using data to anticipate needs.
Key insight: “When you think back five years ago, personalization was a broader segmented term … you were looking more at a group of people,” said Amy Krasikov, vice president of digital experience at Raiz Federal Credit Union. “Now you’re trying to get more toward what an individual’s needs are, or what an individual’s goals are going to be versus what you think their demographic need is.”
Experts say personalization has evolved to become an enterprise-wide strategy throughout the customer lifecycle. It involves connecting data across an institution to tailor product and service offerings and how customers interact with the FI. It requires bringing together information across disparate systems and making better use of customer data. Banks and credit unions also say it’s about balance: determining when personalization is helpful, and when it crosses a line.
Personalization That Goes Beyond Marketing
Personalization has evolved beyond just getting the right product in front of the customer. Neil Stanley, CEO and founder of The CorePoint, a consulting firm focused on deposit strategy, says personalization should extend to the product offering itself. If an FI reaches a customer “at the right time with the right message” but its offering looks like everyone else’s, he asks, “are you just talking about targeted marketing?”
Certificates of deposit are one example he cites. Rather than offering customers the same standardized terms, an FI could ask when a customer needs the money back and create a CD that matures on that date. That’s a win for both sides, he says: the customer gets a product tailored to when they need their money, while the FI has another way to retain the deposit without necessarily offering a higher rate.
Key insight: Curating the experience, or how the FI interacts with the customer digitally and in-person, is also an important pillar of personalization. Stephen Bohanon, co-founder and chief strategy and product officer at Alkami, a digital banking technology provider, says it can include tailoring what customers see when they log into a digital banking platform based on their activity and financial situation.
How to Get Granular
Personalization can shape how customers navigate digital banking. Bohanon says FIs can vary what information and features customers see based on their financial activity and needs.
A hypothetical use case could be giving business customers easier access to cash-flow information and upcoming obligations.
Key insight: It can also apply to the offers customers receive. Frankfort, Kentucky-based Commonwealth Credit Union takes this approach using technology from Movemint. For example, a member who has a first mortgage but no home equity loan might receive a home equity offer, while someone with an older auto loan could be offered refinancing. The credit union uses account and relationship data along with credit information to determine which offers may be relevant, according to Jaynel Christensen, executive vice president at Commonwealth.
The platform can then take the member beyond the recommendation; if they accept the offer, they can receive the documents needed to complete the transaction.
When connecting customers to relevant offers, speed matters. Christensen says if the FI doesn’t present an offer when the customer needs it, “somebody else will.”
Putting the Data to Work
FIs are sitting on troves of information about their customers and their financial activity, but that information often sits in different systems, making it difficult to offer relevant recommendations. Gabrielle Champine, who oversees growth and client success at Movemint, calls this problem the “activation gap.”
David Benavides, head of digital UX design and member experience at Alliant Credit Union, says FIs don’t have to solve their data challenges all at once. Instead, he recommends starting with a particular customer pain point and determining what data is needed to address it. The FI can map that journey, identify which systems and vendors hold the necessary data, and then centralize the information needed for that use case.
“Start with a particular use case and say, ‘What’s the data I need to make this use case easier for our members?’” he said.
Prompting the Next Best Action
FIs can use customer data to recommend the next best action instead of simply showing the customer offers for a product they appear to want. If a customer is interested in a mortgage, for example, the FI could use what it knows about the customer’s finances to determine that they need to save more for a down payment and suggest ways to get there, says Benavides.
If a customer is browsing for a mortgage, “the [natural] first step would be to show you some mortgage information,” he says. “A better step would be to know [the customer] still has some saving to do before he can put 20% down on that mortgage,” and advise them on how to save and prepare financially for homeownership.
AI can help FIs predict what a customer may need to do next. Huntington Bank’s Money Scout, a tool that lives in its digital banking platform, analyzes a customer’s historical cash flows and spending patterns to predict future activity and recommend actions. It can identify excess cash and recommend moving it into savings, says Vijay Konduru, head of business innovation and AI products at Huntington.
Money Scout currently combines deterministic models with traditional AI, he says. Huntington hasn’t deployed generative AI in the tool, but Konduru sees it as a way to help customers decide what to do next.
Over time, “personalization is not going to happen through predetermined static products and features anymore,” he says. “It’s going to happen more and more conversationally.”
Deploying Customer Insights Thoughtfully
Just because customer information is publicly available doesn’t mean FIs should use it for personalization. Tapping material customers post publicly on social media can feel intrusive, says Krasikov, whose credit union has chosen not to incorporate that data into its personalization efforts.
“There is … a creepiness factor,” she says. “Just because somebody [posts] something publicly, that doesn’t mean you, as an organization, need to mine that data.”
Bottom line: And while data and AI can help FIs understand customers better, bankers also need to be cognizant of informed customers who will use AI to compare offers and research their options, Stanley says.
“The institution needs enough flexibility and frontline intelligence to respond to an increasingly informed customer rather than merely targeting that customer more precisely,” he says.
