The Battle for New Deposit Growth — How Community Banks Can Win Against Megabanks and Fintechs

Instead of relying on old, siloed approaches based on legacy technology, the Growth Flywheel approach leverages a proactive, holistic, multi-channel, lifecycle model. By combining AI, Deep Analytics, and Workflow Automation, this approach ensures the effortless consumption of your financial products, providing a next generation experience that meets the demands of modern consumers and businesses.

Digital-first banks and megabanks are growing at record speeds, winning deposits and customers with seamless AI-driven experiences.

• 52% of bank leaders say growth is their top priority in 2025.*
• But with complex internal processes and outdated digital onboarding, many feel stuck.

(* Source: Cornerstone Advisors – What’s Going On in Banking 2025)

Meanwhile, digital-first banks like Chime, Revolut, and Jenius have rewritten the rules of financial services, achieving staggering growth by offering frictionless, AI-powered onboarding and hyper-personalized engagement. For example:

• Chime grew from 7,000 users in 2015 to 7 million by 2024, processing $8 billion in monthly transactions.
• Revolut generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2023, marking its third consecutive profitable year with a net profit of $428 million and 45 million customers.
• Jenius Bank reached $1 billion in deposits before its first anniversary.

These success stories underscore a critical truth: first impressions are everything, and the account and loan opening and onboarding experience is a make-or-break moment for long-term customer relationships. However, many banks are still relying on digital processes that are merely replicated legacy methods, falling short of delivering the growth outcomes necessary for survival.

The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your systems to compete. This guide introduces a proven Growth Flywheel that banks have used to grow deposits while automating 97.6% of manual origination steps (Nutmeg State FCU).

This guide outlines a NextGen Growth Flywheel, a practical and technology-enabled framework designed to help community banks win against megabanks and fintechs. By focusing on AI-driven personalization, digital onboarding, operational efficiency, relationship expansion, and real-time analytics, community banks can drive sustainable deposit growth while leveraging existing infrastructure.

You Don’t Need to Rip and Replace: A Smarter Approach to Modernization

Many banks believe that competing with megabanks and fintechs requires a complete overhaul of their technology. The reality? You don’t need to rip and replace.

Modern fintech solutions are designed to integrate with existing systems, allowing banks to upgrade their digital capabilities without disrupting core operations. The shift from first-generation digital account opening (DAO) (which was just a digital version of legacy processes) to Next-Gen DAO means credit unions and banks can now:

• Offer a seamless, frictionless experience that delights both customers and employees.
• Use decision intelligence to increase automated approvals and reduce manual work.
• Apply advanced fraud detection tools to mitigate risk and ensure security.
• Deliver omnichannel onboarding that works across branch, digital, virtual, and hybrid experiences.

Fast, Low-Effort Implementations: Many AI-driven solutions can be implemented in just a few weeks with minimal staff involvement, such as:

• AI-powered digital onboarding → Live in 30 days
• Automated fraud detection → Live in 30 days
• Predictive analytics dashboards → Live in 30 days
• Optimizations and adjustments based on analytics → Custom optimizations for 60 days

The result? Faster, more personalized experiences for customers without overhauling your entire core system. Learn from others who have done this.

How Community Banks Can Win in 5 Simple Steps

1. Engage Prospects Where They Are, With AI Personalized Products

How-To:

• Get a list of all your existing deposit, loan, insurance and investment products from your product portfolio.
• Segment your products by volume and identify the high-volume products and how they are presented to the prospective customers or existing members and customers.
• Work with your marketing agency to ensure that the marketing channels used are the appropriate ones for your products and the ideal customer profile. For example, for Student Loan products, work the channels that are relevant to students and parents. Review the conversion metrics on the digital channels to identify areas for improvement. Make a copy of this Google Sheets Template and use it to fill it out with your information.
• Identify the high-volume products and review the marketing metrics across the marketing funnel to identify which channels are working well and which ones are not working well.
• Take the high-volume products and review available best-in-class digital onboarding templates to create a new onboarding flow that is low friction and that works across mobile, desktop, digital, branch and hybrid.
• Use Generative AI to create compelling offers and landing page copy to ensure that the landing page resonates with the prospective customer and is personalized. Use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Grok as the generative engine. Use the paid version to ensure that you are creating custom models and not using your data to train the public models.
• Use Generative AI to create compelling copy across the onboarding flow to ensure that the flow is personalized to the user.
• Ensure that the onboarding flows are embeddable across the digital ecosystem of your local partners (local businesses, organizations and non-profits) to increase your reach and distribution.
• Embed these onboarding flows across the digital ecosystem from your web site to emails to your digital banking system.

Actionable Step: Start with a pilot program targeting the highest value segment (based on volume or manual effort or strategic imperative) of your products like consumer account opening, consumer loan opening, business account opening or business loan opening. This allows you to test and refine your approach before scaling it across your product portfolio.

2. Personalize Opening and Onboarding Using AI

How-To:

• Streamline the account and loan opening process with user-friendly, automated workflows that reduce friction for new customers and allow them to open accounts quickly and easily from any device. Review best-in-class onboarding templates and customize them to your vision and needs.
• Ask for the minimal information to personalize the flow based on the product that is being consumed.
• Provide a progress bar to show them where they are in the process and pre-fill as much information as possible from other third-party sources or from the Core System, LOS and the digital banking system.
• Use AI to provide personalization and answer questions about the products, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Keep high friction items like ID verification towards the end to ensure users are invested in the onboarding process.
• Provide immediate response on account opening or loan decisions that are simple. Automate decisions using an AI driven, rules-based approach for auditable but immediate decisions.
• Ensure all the fraud detection and KYC, KYB processes are happening in the background and not holding up the user in any way.
• As soon as the first product is consumed by the user, use AI to recommend the next best product or financial step to the user.

Actionable Step: Take the highest value target segment identified in the previous step and create the AI based personalized onboarding flow to pilot the results.

3. Increase Operational Efficiency with AI-Based Decision Intelligence

How-To:

• Identify the internal processes and tools used to decision on deposit, loan, investment or insurance products.
• Identify the fraud detection tools and other manual efforts used in the decisioning process.
• Use a fraud detection framework and plug in available fraud data sources like Socure, Alloy or Effectiv.
• For business products, plug in other fraud sources like Middesk.
• Use a decisioning framework to plug in other sources like credit bureaus and products like ChexSystems from FIS.
• Use a rules engine framework and identify best in class rules that determine auto approval, auto denial (with adverse actions) and escalation to review status.
• Use a rules engine that can also serve up the appropriate document disclosures.
• Provide a secure portal for applicants to provide additional information as needed. Provide a secure portal for bank employees to manage their work queues based on appropriate privileges. Provide a secure portal for your internal developers to be able to do special configurations that your business may need.
• Ensure that you have connectivity to your Core System, LOS, Digital Banking System and CRM in any one of 5 ways (from direct real-time API connectivity to batch interfaces). Review this article to see what the appropriate approach might be for your situation depending on your vendors and volume.
• Alternatively use a platform like Cotribute that provides the fraud detection framework, rules engine framework and the secure application, back-office and developer portals and the integrations with the appropriate vendors.

Actionable Step: Use the steps above to identify which processes and tools you use currently and what can be modified to make your internal processes more efficient. Alternatively, use the Cotribute platform in a pilot mode to measure the operational efficiencies that can be gained to ensure that the value can be realized in your environment.

4. Nurture and Expand Relationships with AI-Based Personalized Next Steps

How-To:

• Identify the list of products and next best financial steps (example: debit card, payroll switch, payroll deposits, additional accounts, additional products) in your product portfolio.
• Use a custom AI model to segment your customer base and identify the next best product or financial step for them.
• As soon as the first product is consumed by a new customer, use the custom AI model to recommend the next best product or financial step to the user, while they are at their highest interest level.
• If they have not responded, use AI to personalize three additional emails or texts that can be sent to them with their personalized next best product or offer.
• Use AI to go through your customer base and send personalized offers to your customers that is the next best product or financial step for them.

Actionable Step: Implement the steps above that leverage AI to provide personalized product recommendations and financial guidance to customers, encouraging them to adopt multiple products that meet their needs. Alternatively, use a growth platform like Cotribute to pilot this with your existing customer base.

5. Analyze, Learn & Adjust Through Deep Analytics

How-To:

• Implement a comprehensive data analytics platform that allows you to collect, analyze, and visualize customer data. This provides valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs.
• Identify widgets and dashboards that can answer the following questions:
  • Ability to select specific time periods for analysis.
  • Ability to slice and dice by product flows.
  • Review week-over-week and month-over-month trends for landing page visits, unique landing page visits, applications started, submitted, approved, denied, withdrawn, fraudulent, auto approved, auto denied, manually approved, manually denied, average time for approval.
  • Prospect demographics, conversion funnel and choke points, average applications per day, segmentation of prospects, results by campaigns, geographic dispersion of applicants, choke point analytics, recapture metrics and recapture CTA metrics.

Actionable Step: Establish a dedicated data analytics team or use the Cotribute analytics dashboard for deeper insights from your customer data and drive data-driven decision-making across your organization.

Final Takeaways: How to Put Your Growth Flywheel in Place in 30 Days

To create a sustainable growth flywheel, banks must take these five steps:

1. Engage Prospects with AI-Personalized Products – Meet potential customers where they are with tailored digital outreach and embedded financial solutions.
2. Personalize Opening and Onboarding Using AI – Streamline the onboarding process with AI-driven verification, cloud-based solutions, and omnichannel experiences.
3. Increase Operational Efficiency with AI-Based Decision Intelligence – Automate decision-making processes, underwriting, and fraud detection to enhance speed and security.
4. Nurture and Expand Relationships with AI-Based Personalized Next Steps – Use predictive analytics and AI-powered financial wellness tools to deepen engagement and cross-sell relevant products.
5. Analyze, Learn, and Adjust Through Deep Analytics – Leverage real-time insights to track performance, optimize marketing strategies, and retain customers effectively.

Benchmark your results against industry benchmarks that have been achieved by your peers. Focus on a compelling customer experience and an efficient employee experience to achieve these benchmarks.

The time to act is now. Banks that prioritize digital transformation, personalized engagement, and operational efficiency will be best positioned to thrive in the next era of financial services. Learn from others who have done this.

See how other banks are winning the battle for new deposit growth.

About the Author

Philip Paul is the CEO of Cotribute, an award-winning fintech platform that provides Next-Generation Account and Loan opening platform for Credit Unions and Banks. Prior to Cotribute, he served as an Executive Vice President and General Manager within a subsidiary of a $62B insurance company that acquired the SaaS technology company that he founded. Earlier in his career, Philip served as a management consultant with an international firm that served organizations ranging from innovative technology startups to Fortune 50 companies.