Inspiration for New Innovation

Hi. We are so happy to be here and talking with you. As you can see, we are supposed to be doing Riff on a Lift, but due to weather, we're actually having to do a little bit of a change of location, but we're always willing to adapt. That's part of what we do in the industry.

Right. So, super excited to be here. My name is Jana Manley and I am the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Digital Strategy for Suncoast Credit Union.

And I'm Brian Costello, and I look after aggregated data strategy and governance for Morningstar.

Well, it's great to be here. I know we've had some very interesting conversations as we met today. And so hopefully maybe we'll just take this to a little bit of a different level and continue some of those conversations. Is there a topic, one of the ones we talked about that you wanna pick out?

Yeah. I really enjoyed talking with you and I think one of the ones that was most interesting was innovating in the financial services world. New, especially as a financial institution, an incumbent financial institution, um, you know, new customer experiences, uh, obviously digitally, um, digitally delivered. Um, we tend to look at, we tend to look at what our competitors are doing more than anywhere else.

But you had a perspective on why we should look outside of our, our, our competitive landscape.

Yeah, I think that was one of the, the, the biggest things that was eye-opening to me because for 25 years, which is pretty much what I've been in the market or in the industry with financial services, we constantly look at what our other competitors are doing in the same marketplace. But the change that's happened and very rapidly even gotten, gotten much more intense is that it's non non-financial competitors that are coming into the marketplace, but they're competing for financial services.

Sure. Um, and so that's sort of made us have to say, wait, we need to step back and not look at what we've traditionally done, what our traditional competitors are doing.

Which those are things you have to know 'cause you still have to compete in that space. But if we don't look at what the more non-traditional spaces are doing, then we're gonna miss out on, on uh, opportunities that are really being sort of chipped away by those competitors.

So you have to start looking at those, um, maybe e-commerce or retail providers Sure. And seeing how they're doing things, 'cause they've done some really innovative things.

And a lot of that could be translated and transitioned into how we serve our customers, in our case, our members in the industry. So I think that's one of the key important things that we're trying to focus on at Suncoast, is how to look at things a little bit differently.

And is that because, do you think you come to that natural more naturally than because you're a credit union member focused, you know, very driven on the personalized service?

Or is it just, um, is it just something that you've realized and decided that you needed to embrace?

Um, I think it's, it's something that I've always had, um, a thought for is that we really need to think differently. We just need to think differently.

But I think that moving into the credit union world, yes, because of the member focus, that thought process has been a lot, easily, lot more easily, um, translatable into action because, because it does very much mean serving the member and it means serving them in a different way. And that philosophy is the mission, uh, of all credit unions.

So that's been one of the spaces that I've found that's been just super exciting to be able to be a part of.

Excellent. Um, so we talked about two non-bank banks, or two non-bank financial, uh, financial institutions, uh, apple and Starbucks.

And there's similar disruption but different, uh, different areas, right? Apple very much to all digital focus and disrupting, um, uh, with their, with their bank and their payments disrupting traditional financial institutions and Starbucks. Um, sometimes first, sometimes second in terms of assets on, on, um, you know, held assets, but disrupting the, the physical experiences, removing friction in the physical experience. And you, you shared a personal story with me about your own family and what you experience. Yes, yes. Um, I love the story and the research that we did. And I, I think it's just, um, one that it is just eyeopening when you look at it that a coffee company actually was the No. 1, um, digital wallet for a while.

Actually be above Apple. Apple I think only took that space over, I don't remember the exact date, but 2019, something like that. Up until then it was Starbucks. So goodness. Then they moved down to No. 2. They're still ahead of Google and some other, some of the other wallets.

And you're just thinking, well, what are they doing? How are they doing this?

Because how do you get to be that big and compete with some of those? So, um, it's really the way that they dealt with their digital space. Mm-hmm.

And they said, I want to feel how that can help my physical space. And so to do that right, they started transitioning more people to using the app and then picking up at the store. Sure. And how great did that do?

And I didn't really believe that to be something till I saw my own daughter do it. And I get the notice, you know, she'd spent the money, but yet she's in her room. Well, yeah, she did that and then she's on her way to school, stops at Starbucks, grabs her coffee, and goes on.

So those are the types of things that to me are experiences.

We could all look at how do you take the digital and physical and put 'em together.

And I think that's the headline. Financial institutions need to look at how do they, um, make better, better experiences by, um, providing more value, but also by reducing friction in the things that, that detract from the experience. Whether it's long lines in the branch or, um, uh, artificial limits on remote deposit captures. Right.

Meet people where they live, help them bank where they live.

Agreed. I think that's a perfect, uh, a perfect, uh, way to sort of articulate that. And to your point, I think the focus has been how do you reduce friction in digital, but it really should be in things beyond, beyond digital. It's in any experience that we have and leveraging digital to help with that, I think is a really good place to go.

There you go. Wise words. It was lovely to speak with you.

It was great to speak with you too. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Fun.