Berkshire Bank re-imagines digital account opening with Narmi

Despite having 12 million unique visitors to www.berkshirebank.com, Berkshire Bank struggled to open new accounts digitally due to a lengthy and complicated legacy online account opening process. The poor user experience their previous vendor provided led to high abandonment rates and limited room for improvement. Even more concerning was their abysmal account funding rate, with limited funding options and archaic infrastructure resulting in only 52% of opened accounts being funded. 

Ultimately, Berkshire Bank needed a partner that could convert website visitors into deposit-growing customers through a quick, omnichannel, and user-friendly account opening experience true to Berkshire’s unique brand.

Data showed that half of all opened accounts started with a $0 balance and could take up to 10 days to receive any funding at all. This left little opportunity for new customers to engage with Berkshire, and hindered their progress towards becoming active customers.

To address the challenges Berkshire was facing, Narmi delivered a frictionless account opening experience with an intuitive funding flow that allowed Berkshire Bank to convert more digital customers and lift new account funding to 100%. By fully automating their process for reviewing, verifying, and approving new account holders, Berkshire was able to grow at a much greater rate – resulting in the ability to book new customers to the core in 2 minutes and 13 seconds.

1. New Berkshire customers are now directed straight into online banking immediately after successfully opening an account

2. Narmi gave Berkshire the ability to require a minimum initial deposit, and the flexibility for approved customers to initially fund their accounts with debit cards, credit cards, or external ACH transfers

3. Enabled Berkshire to offer new customers a bundle of basic accounts and products, ensuring all new customers had what they needed to get the most value from Berkshire

Berkshire faced the challenging obstacle of moving from a legacy digital account opening system to a new one. In order to feel confident about a smooth transition to complete account opening automation, they needed a partner with substantial expertise on core integrations – specifically with the FIS IBS core and CodeConnect.

With comprehensive knowledge around core banking systems and a proven track record of successful core integrations, Narmi executed a smooth integration with FIS IBS’s latest open-API platform, CodeConnect. The seamless integration allowed Berkshire to keep its existing core banking processes in place and focus efforts and resources on converting customers to grow deposits.

1. Successfully integrated the expertise of 23 cross-functional stakeholders and 8 core project team members

2. Narmi was able to accommodate Berkshire's aggressive timeline thanks to alignment between leadership and operations.

3. Modern architecture and an agile implementation strategy allowed both staff and end-users to prepare for the launch.

In addition to the low performance Berkshire experienced with their previous account opening solution, their staff was saddled with an overly complicated back-end admin interface. Increased manual errors, training costs, back-office expenses, and a subpar customer service experience for Berkshire account holders all resulted from this poor admin experience. Berkshire needed a digital vendor that could not only deliver a seamless experience for their end-users but could also address the challenges employees encountered.

With extensive knowledge of community banks’ back office and admin needs, Narmi helped Berkshire make improving their administrative capabilities a strategic priority. Narmi provided Berkshire staff with an easy-to-use administrator platform, giving Berkshire employees the controls and tools necessary to efficiently support customers. 

These greater controls allowed Berkshire’s support team to gain more transparency into account application states, directly manage settings and messaging for prospective customers, adjust KYC rules, and protect against fraud with intelligent application decisioning automations.

1. Overall time cut down by more than 50% for admin staff

2. Increased in number of approved digital applications

3. Fraudulent accounts denied at an increased rate

With 55% of accounts opened online being fraudulent prior to implementing Narmi, Berkshire was forced to dedicate resources to manually reviewing every account opened online. This arduous step led to significant delays in account opening for customers, and increased back office costs to handle the high volume of manual reviews. As a Top 100 Bank with high compliance responsibilities, Berkshire needed a way to securely and automatically decision applicants without turning away qualified customers in the process.

Narmi’s tightly integrated identity decisioning toolkit gave Berkshire Bank the confidence to automatically decision 100% of digitally submitted account applications. The fraudulent rate immediately went from 55% to less than 1%. Fraudsters were no longer making it through the system while qualified applicants were approved significantly faster than before. With concern around fraudulent accounts essentially eliminated, Berkshire could focus its efforts on growth opportunities and confidently expand marketing to attract new customer segments.

1. Automatic, non-document-based decisioning for 100% of digitally submitted account applications

2. Decreased fraudulent applicants – falling from 55% to less than 1% for all digital applicants

3. Without adding any unnecessary steps for applicants, Berkshire was able to satisfy all KYC/AML compliance needs through non-document-based verification – ranging from e-sign, TIN certification, backup withholding status, and more.

4. Narmi provided automatic integrations with data sources like Iovation, Socure, and ID Analytics to automatically decision applicant identities in 3-4 seconds.

5. Gained the ability to view, control, and add data sources as needed to improve decisioning workflows.

Berkshire launched Reevx Labs, its newest investment in local communities, as a way to give opportunities to the underbanked to live healthier financial lives. It needed a partner that could be flexible and nimble in that arena, providing a customized account opening experience that was different from that of the core Berkshire Bank brand. Berkshire ultimately wanted an experience that would specifically encourage emerging entrepreneurs, artists, and non-profit organizations to open accounts.

Narmi was able to deliver an independent account opening experience to Berkshire’s Reevx Labs in as little as six weeks all the while keeping internal processes consistent and leveraging the same back-office tools. By building a tailored experience for Reevx Labs, Narmi felt proud to help Berkshire disrupt the traditional barriers to banking these communities were faced with.

1. Differentiated the Reevx branding, workflow, and product suite for a unique user experience.

2. Created the ability to open an account with a $0 balance to be more accessible to all people.

3. Created customized messaging for end-users for a personalized feel.