fmswhitepaper Strategies to Increase Fee Revenue By Achim Griesel Senior Executive Vice President, Haberfeld Associates

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1 fmswhitepaper Strategies to Increase Fee Revenue By Achim Griesel Senior Executive Vice President, Haberfeld Associates Unique Insights Implementation Guidance Strategic and Tactical Direction Immediately Relevant

2 Strategies to Increase Fee Revenue By Achim Griesel, Senior Executive Vice President, Haberfeld Associates Prior to the regulatory changes of 2010 and 2011, the recession had already impacted fee revenues in banking. Compared to a 2008 baseline, the FDIC reported service charge income on deposit accounts at a decline of 4.49% from 2009 to Data Source: This trend worsened after the implementation of Reg. E in 2010 and the Dodd-Frank Act in While some financial institutions (FIs) saw a lesser impact based on their execution of Reg. E implementation, as a group, FIs under $10 billion saw service charge income on deposit accounts decline by over 12% compared to the 2008 baseline. The figure does not include any impact even smaller institutions may have seen on interchange income. Data Source: 1

3 This trend is largely driven by the decline of overdraft fee revenue per customer. Since 2008, overdrafts per customer declined due to the economy, the regulatory environment and enhanced customer awareness. The table below shows the decline community banks experienced in relation to overdrafts per checking account. Year Overdraft Items per Account Fee Income per Account $ $ $ $161 NSF income continually declined and that decline was only partially offset by an increase in interchange income. In today s market, several banks have tried to reverse the trend of declining overall fee revenue per customer by implementing regular service charges. But, FDIC data shows this has led to an overall decline in fee revenue. TCF Bank was once the industry leader in offering a free checking account, but in 2010 the bank changed its product lineup with a regular service-charge product. The following chart shows the dramatic impact this approach had on the bank s decline in service-charge income on deposit accounts. 2

4 For many years, funding loan growth was one of the key questions bankers would ask. Unless loan quality is the main concern at an institution, there are primarily two questions today. The first one is how to offset the losses in fee revenue shown above. The second one is how to grow loans. This paper focuses on the first question. In 2011, FIs were surrounded by uncertainty over the impact of the Dodd- Frank Act and, in particular, the Durbin Amendment. As the dust has settled a little, we now know the Durbin Amendment actually gives exempt FIs a competitive advantage. A list of exempt institutions can be found at the Federal Reserve website at Over 96% of all financial institutions are exempt, but the non-exempt institutions have the majority of customers. This provides exempt institutions with multiple opportunities, ranging from increasing product usage among current customers to gaining more new customers. While institutions need to be focused on increasing product usage or, in other words, cross-sell in all areas, products that are associated with the checking account represent the low hanging fruit. The debit card is the first one that comes to mind. It provides the largest growth opportunity in this category. To assess its potential, FIs must know the value of the relationship of a debit card household vs. a non-debit card household. The figures above again raise two questions: Source: Haberfeld Associates 1) How do we get more of our customers to use their debit cards and other products? 2) How do we get more of this type of customer? More product usage from your current customers Originally, this section was titled the, Increase of debit card usage from your current customers, but we did not want to ignore that there are plenty of other products we need to increase for improved customer penetration (crosssell). Products associated with the checking account represent the low hanging fruit. At community banks the average cross sell per checking household for these products looks like this: 3

5 Product/Service Ratio Check Card BillPay Online Banking estatements ACH Direct Deposit Total Add-on Product/Services Source: Haberfeld Associates Debit card While 75% of your new customers take the debit card, the number on the portfolio level averages 69%. Usage numbers are even lower and provide a big opportunity for an increase in fee revenue through debit card interchange income. In addition, increased debit card usage results in other fee revenue increases, primarily overdraft income. There are multiple options to increase debit card usage and activation. Rewards programs, offering ongoing incentives to the customer, are the first that come to mind. While they work and provide in most cases a positive return, there are several downsides associated with them. 1. Offer quality Credit cards generally provide much better offers for the customer. FIs generate more income from credit card transactions and therefore offer much higher, more enticing incentives for the use of credit cards. A debit card offer can never compete with a good credit card offer. 2. Commitment Offering ongoing rewards requires a long-term commitment. When customers earn points for their transactions they will likely collect these to get to a certain reward level. Limiting the time frame the incentive is offered will create a customer service issue and reduce the effectiveness of the program. On the other hand, keeping the time frame at an extended level will impact the cost of the program and cause issues in regard to accounting for the outstanding points. 3. Cost Ongoing rewards programs are too expensive. The FI generally rewards overall usage, which means the incentive is not based on the usage the customer was willing to provide without an incentive. The combination of the long-term commitment with the reward for the business as usual makes this approach too expensive. Today, most bankers look for more budget friendly opportunities. One of these is a simple campaign to increase debit card usage. Segmenting your current customers in groups of non-, low- and moderate debit card users allows your organization to set a target usage for each group and offer the customer a reward if the target usage is met. This approach may not 4

6 achieve 100% of the potential usage increase, but it will address several of the issues an ongoing rewards program creates. In most cases, the offer is a one-time reward of $10. As a simple one-time offer, the program has a deadline and is campaign driven, encouraging the customer to use his card a certain number of times. It can be stopped or started at any given time. Campaigns run seasonally during a year provide the best returns. The campaign driven approach allows limiting or extending the segments based on results for future campaigns. Using a debit card changes a customer s payment habits. On average, half the customers meeting their threshold will continue this new payment pattern without being rewarded again. The case study below shows the incremental impact over a 12-months time period. A simple strategy like this will break even in just a few months, and the results will continue to provide additional revenue without breaking the bank. In an effort to minimize budgets for campaigns like these, we also have seen clients send out purely educational messages with no incentive or threshold. To our surprise, they still achieve approximately 50% of the results clients offering a one-time cash incentive achieved. E-Statements, BillPay and Online Banking 5

7 While the debit card provided the opportunity to increase revenues, estatements, BillPay and Online Banking provide opportunities to save money or lengthen the lifetime of a customer relationship. The approach is similar to the debit card approach. Instead of rewarding the customer with costly ongoing rewards like above-market interest rates, or risking losing customers by requiring them to use these products, offer an easy sign-up at account opening and continue to increase penetration through simple, one-time campaign driven offers. For example, a one-time marketing campaign for estatements on average creates an 8% take rate and results in a pay back from cost savings of less than 4 months. There is no magic pill to increase fee revenue per customer. The key is getting the customer in the door and having products, policies, procedures and people in place to cross sell. While revenue growth or cost savings through increased product usage is a big opportunity, it is limited by your current number of customers. The more customers you have, the bigger the opportunity. We all know that in addition to the fee revenue losses outlined at the beginning of this paper, our Net Interest Margin also declined dramatically. The combination of these two may have caused your organizations a 30% or more revenue loss per customer. We cannot make up this decline by charging each customer 30% more. In addition to deepening the relationship, we have to grow our customer base. Getting more customers Since 2010, most of the mega-banks have started to add or test more and more fees on their checking accounts. Obviously, the customer does not like to be charged for a product that was previously free. As an industry we have to disclose product changes like minimum balance requirements, monthly fee, transaction limitations or requirements, etc., even if they likely will not impact a specific customers. Account changes and new hurdles upset customers and make them consider other financial institutions. Mega-banks have the majority of customers and their product changes will provide a big opportunity for community banks. In the first half of 2011, samestore sales at community banks were slightly up over 2010 results. But, once mega-banks started testing and announcing fees on customer debit cards, community banks started hitting home runs. Even if these fees were never rolled out, the damage was done and results for banks that were aggressively pursuing new customers surged to a 10.4 percent gain over fourth quarter 2010 numbers. This trend has continued in Q1 of 2012 and with the fee increases mega-banks are implementing, this trend will continue in the future. We know that this opportunity is there for us to take right now, and will be in the future. The question we have to answer is how we can maximize the opportunity. To take full advantage of this opportunity you must be in the market. 6

8 If you are not in the market, promoting your organization, when customers flee from these banks, you will be too late. Just being in the market and spending marketing dollars is not enough. Before you invest in marketing you have to make sure that several things are in place: 1. Good Product As a community bank you are at a disadvantage to the mega-banks when it comes to convenience, technology, marketing dollars, etc. Product is one area where you need to differentiate your bank. Keep it simple and logical. Your customers need to understand it to know they get a good deal and more importantly your employees need to understand it to enthusiastically sell it. If you want to know whether your product meets these criteria, ask the people who are selling it: your front line. 2. Policies and Procedure Avoid hurdles for the customer where you can. The better your sales process, the easier it will be for your employees to sell. Again, ask your front-line employees for their opinion on your current process, policies and procedures. 3. Training Once your product and processes are fixed, your employees need to be trained. Ongoing training is the key to a true sales culture. Train everybody, but focus even more on the branch leadership. Once your employees know what you want to sell and how to sell it, spend some money on marketing. Marketing dollars are partially wasted unless the three components above are in place. In addition, target your marketing dollars appropriately. If you are targeting certain mega-banks for their changes, identify the most likely customers impacted, target them with a specific message and do not forget to measure. Simple one-time campaigns work for penetrating your customer base with additional products. Gaining new customers has to be strategic. While you can define your strategy in more detail based on market developments the overall strategy has to be in place to maximize growth. By following the approach above, you can double the number of customers you attract. And, if your employees are well trained, you will start increasing customer penetration in add-on products and cross sell from day one. Do that and your customer will look like this: 7

9 Product Ratio Balances Checking $ 3,593 Savings $ 3,437 Money Market $ 47,117 CD $ 25,301 IRA $ 16,179 Consumer Loan $ 10,795 Line of Credit $ 7,750 HELOC $ 39,135 Mortgage $ 109,931 Business Checking $ 11,646 Services Ratio Check Card BillPay Online Banking estatements ACH Direct Deposit Total Additional Relationships Relationships per household Source: Haberfeld Associates Almost 80% of the new customers should take your debit card. Activation and usage rates will vary some but can be as high as 80% if your organization offers instant-issue debit cards. If you out-perform the average, your customers will have 6 products per household. The case study below shows what impact an approach like this can have when executed well. 8

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11 Summary Increasing your current customer penetration in the products you offer, and increasing the number of customers you have, are both instrumental to your organization s profits. Increasing the number of customers you have is the more strategic approach and requires a commitment from your organization s leadership, retail personnel and operation. As a strategic approach, it has a much larger potential when it comes to profitability. The chart to the left shows the ROA (and ROA adjusted for loan losses based on customers per branch). The increase of debit card usage, estatement penetration and other cross sell is limited to your current customer base. While the profitability potential is less from this group, the resources dedicated to it will be less as well. Haberfeld Associates is a marketing and consulting firm specializing in new customer acquisition and checking profitability. Achim Griesel is Senior Executive Vice President at Haberfeld Associates. For more information about these topics or questions about this paper, contact Achim at Achim@haberfeld.com or Published by: Financial Managers Society, Inc. 100 W. Monroe, Suite 1700 Chicago, IL info@fmsinc.org 10