Two Latest Products in Q2 Will Help Financial Institutions Personalize User Experiences at Scale

Commercial banking is an industry in the midst of a dramatic digital transformation.

For most of the 20th century, retail banking institutions seemed to lag behind the trend toward greater convenience and better service. The industry clung to traditional bank hours and brochures. Apart from the introduction of the Docuteller (eventually known as his ATM) in the 1960s, he went so far as to say that improvements in the user experience stalled completely until online banking became popular in the 2000s. It was slow at best.

However, in recent years, the intersection of innovations in both digital technology and financial services has created many opportunities for these institutions and their clients. Customers can now cash checks on their mobile phones or transfer money in real time via an app. Financial institutions and their customers are realizing conveniences unimaginable in previous generations.

Now Q2 comes into the story. Founded in 2004, Q2 is at the forefront of this digital transformation. Through its range of products and services, Q2 helps banks, credit unions and other financial institutions transform their technology, branding, customer relationships and business to meet the evolving expectations and opportunities associated with digital banking. . If you’ve recently deposited a check digitally or checked your balance on your mobile phone, you’ve taken advantage of Q2’s digital banking platform and services offered to banks, credit unions, or other financial institutions. Very likely.

In the second quarter, this digital transformation will provide an opportunity to advance our mission to “make finance more human”, empowering the financial institutions we serve to build stronger and more diverse communities. .

The company’s digital banking platform currently serves over 20 million end users. His recently launched Helix platform continues to expand on previous innovations and anticipate customer needs.

digital DNA

In the second quarter of February 2022, Helix, the next generation of the company’s banking-as-a-service platform, was introduced. Helix is ​​a cloud-native product built for embedded finance, providing technology companies and consumer brands with the platform and financial partners they need to integrate banking into their digital ecosystems.

Helix offers all the building blocks of banking in one place, including accounts, cards, payments, data and controls, management tools, and monetization solutions, so Q2 customers can meet their unique needs while driving. We can provide customized products to match. Adoption, Engagement, Retention, Profitability.

“With Helix, we are building our second quarter expertise in digital banking and partnering with innovative companies to humanize finance,” General Manager Ahon Sarkar said in a press release last year.

Building on Q2’s expertise in digital banking, we partner with innovative companies to humanize finance. ”

According to Sarkar, Helix’s focus on personalization is a key difference between its Q2 offering and existing large digital banking platforms. Helix is ​​also big: Nationally, he serves more than 11 million users and processes more than $20 billion in transactions each year, but the platform can be personalized for each customer. Without this feature, customer experience would suffer, retention rates would suffer, and Helix would be one unconventional solution that failed to meet the unique needs of its clients and their end users.

“I ask people who are using Helix to deliver these programs at scale what they are missing,” Sarkar told the audience at the Wolfe Fintech Forum in April 2022. It was personalization. What we’ve done with our platform is really taking every aspect of the product and allowing the user to configure them on his level. ”

Making digital finance conversational

EVP and CTO Adam Blue Creates and coordinates Q2’s technology strategy and supports the team responsible for customer satisfaction and innovation. In a recent podcast with Provoke Media, Blue explained how the second quarter will accelerate the adoption of digital banking technology and deliver a streamlined experience for both financial institutions and their banking end users. I explained how I did it.

“It bothers me that not all US checks are deposited by mobile remote deposit capture, and there is reason for users to resist,” said Blue. “And I don’t think they think mobile or remote deposit collection is bad. They resist because of the cognitive workload of trying new things that are tedious and may not work.

Blue said that in 2020, as the pandemic brought traditional brick-and-mortar banking services to a dead end, customers were quick to adopt digital technologies that were previously reluctant to adopt.

“When people say, ‘I can’t go to the branch, but I need to do these tasks,’ it removes the friction they were willing to tolerate when they were first trying to learn this new task. “We had a lot of fun,” said Blue. He said. “And they realized that this was actually a really convenient way to live and work.”

Products like Q2 SMART, the award-winning targeting and messaging platform for credit unions introduced in 2017, are becoming increasingly important as financial institutions move from brick-and-mortar experiences to digital experiences. increase.

“The idea behind Q2 SMART is to take the data credit unions already have and use machine learning techniques to determine how best to serve their members going forward,” said Blue. said in an interview with CUBroadcast.

Blue said Q2 has been in the business of applying machine learning to better service financial institutions since the late 2000s, and has taken an approach initially used for fraud prevention to broader service-based targets. said there is. “It used to be that people would always come to a branch and build relationships, but now people go to digital channels. included in the data of

In the same sense that Netflix and Amazon use user data to provide better service to their customers, financial institutions are using Q2’s digital products to provide customized financial services that are better suited to their customers’ needs. You can rely on it more and more.

“The model is about conversations in digital channels,” says Blue.

INNOVATION, CUSTOMIZATION, COST REDUCTION

Just one year before Helix launched, Q2 launched Q2 Innovation Studio, a product that allows clients to customize their own platform.

“Our goal is for financial institutions and fintech partners to develop innovative digital banking products, services and features.” Q2 Innovation Studio Managing Director Johnny Ora Said.

This portfolio of technologies and programs enables businesses to rely on Q2’s digital banking platform and its efficiencies of scale to build customized experiences that meet the needs of businesses, employees and end users.

“It’s like getting a custom-designed platform without the cost and complexity,” says Ola. “Q2 Innovation Studio provides a wide range of options that financial institutions can personalize and offer to their customers. Leveraging our software development kit and set of APIs, we can build unique functionality on top of the platform.”

Like Helix, Q2 Innovation Studio represents a commitment on the part of Q2 to continue to leverage technology at scale to better meet the needs of individual customers and their end users. The two products build on an increasingly comprehensive set of solutions, including the second quarter Partner Accelerator program, a collection of pre-integrated solutions to improve back-office operations, analytics, customer service, marketing and more for financial institutions. Part of it. Q2 Marketplace, an “app store” for users of financial institutions.

Q2’s suite of products ultimately serves one mission: to build stronger and more diverse communities by empowering financial institutions. And these individual pieces represent the way the company is constantly innovating to advance its mission.