Excerpts from “Driving Deeper Customer Relationships,” a presentation given by Curinos’ Suraya Randawa, General Manager, Digital, as part of Analyst All Stars at FinovateFall 2026 in New York on September 10.
Leading financial institutions are modernizing digital channels rapidly, continually reinventing the benchmark for customer experience while tying development roadmaps to strategies for deposit growth.
The data show this clearly. Across mobile apps, financial institutions are steadily expanding capabilities that deepen the relationship, from spend controls and subscription management to direct deposit activation, merchant controls and AI-powered assistance. Adoption of many of these features accelerated significantly between 2025 and 2026 according to data from the Digital Banking Analyzer, suggesting we’re in the midst of another major leap forward in meeting customer needs to build customer lifetime value (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Sources: Curinos Digital Banking Analyzer, base: 103 US financial institutions Retail Checking mobile app servicing feature changes over time
Ensuring modernization of digital channels – both app and desktop – is an ongoing imperative for every financial institution. That’s because banking customers are moving beyond simple search and self-service expectations. Across industries, consumers are becoming accustomed to intelligent experiences that understand context, provide recommendations, and help them make decisions. As AI tools become integrated into everyday financial activities, the competitive battleground is shifting from delivering information to delivering better decisions. Banks that fail to keep pace risk discovering that their customer’s attention has moved elsewhere.
According to the 2025 Curinos U.S. Shopper survey, 50% of banking switchers maintain four or more banking relationships, compared with just 7% in 2019. At the same time, average acquisition costs for traditional financial institutions have increased from $293 to $520. That makes delivering leading digital experiences across every interaction and every decision more important than ever.
Rethinking What It Means to Onboard
The strongest institutions aren’t simply adding features – they’re redesigning experiences around customer needs. Leading institutions have moved away from traditional product-first onboarding journeys, where customers endure multiple steps before becoming engaged, toward customer-first models that create value and establish relationships much earlier in the process. The goal is to reduce friction and shorten the time it takes to realize value.
To continually refine customer onboarding journeys, most banks understand the need to understand how their digital experiences compare with peers. According to the Digital Banking Analyzer’s Digital Acquisition Benchmark, which ties a provider’s Journey Effort Score to acquisition performance, a lower friction application is twice as likely to lead to an account being funded in week one of a new relationship (Figure 2). Onboarding effort needs to be considered more holistically – as one connected journey from the moment the customer clicks “apply now” to the moment they first log into the app.
Figure 2: Lowering the Journey Effort to Convert and Fund
Sources: Curinos Digital Banking Analyzer, Digital Acquisition Benchmark - Checking
The lesson is straightforward: Deposit growth has always depended on acquiring, deepening, and retaining customer relationships. Banks in the lead are those that are front-footed in their journey to modernize their digital experiences, embracing AI-assisted decisioning. And they’re the ones best positioned to redesign journeys with the market around customer needs. Institutions that benchmark themselves against these leaders can identify where they’re falling behind and where the greatest opportunities for improvement exist.
The mandate to grow hasn’t changed. What has changed is the standard required to achieve it. In today's market, modernization is no longer about keeping up with trends in technology. It’s about ensuring that your institution can compete effectively for deposits in a market where customer expectations, and competitor capabilities, continue to rise.
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