Session Recap: Relationship Banking: Key Takeaways from Matt Phipps, Adelbert Spaan at Future Branches Boston 2025

2025, Future Branches Boston. Client Case Study – Drive Growth Through the Power of Relationship Banking

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Next we have a client case study drive growth through the power of relationship banking. Please welcome Matt Phipps and Ed Albert Spa.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: Thank you.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Oh,

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: first,

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: no, you get up there. Okay. You get up.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: Wait. You wanna sit over here?

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yeah. I guess we get our choice of where to sit. Yeah. The large couch. Not gonna do the large.

Sit next to each other and choose which cushion on the we can invite somebody here too? Yes. Thank you everyone for for coming in. We, I think we're, this is the changing of. Of the rooms. So maybe in another minute or so we'll have different people coming in. But welcome everybody.

We appreciate it. My, my name is Matt Phipps. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at Agent iq. We are a relationship banking platform that helps you connect, engage, and service your account holders when they don't come into the branch. And today I'm joined with Bert Spawn from First American Bank.

Bert welcome. Good to see you again. Thank you. We've done this a couple of times, usually in front of a camera. But appreciate you joining me up here today. You are EVP First American Bank. Why don't you tell us a little bit about First American Bank?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: First American Bank, we're based out of a little bit North Chicago Elk Grove Village.

$8 billion in assets. We have branches. We have branches in Illinois 48 somehow just across the border in Wisconsin and Florida. And then we do a retail commercial as well as large man wealth management. And I think our specialty, we're privately held, so we again, do something rather unique. We have money service business, a big health service, health savings account business, and do international inbound business.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Good. And you don't get to be that size of an institution without having some good, clear strategy behind what you're doing and so you had this. Original idea. We've known each other for several years now, and you had this idea that even when we first met this idea of what you called pocket banker, and so tell us maybe a little bit about what pocket Banker the idea was. What led you to, what gap were you trying to close when you thought of that?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: It's interesting 'cause I think this morning's presentation, a lot of conversations about building relationships. And what I found interesting this morning is when you talk about relationship, you talk about transactions.

How many times do I use my debit card? Do I use online banking? Do I use Zelle? And while that's a really, easy thing to measure, does it really define the relationship? Because you think about, as us as organization is like we have certain business units that are geared towards relationship management.

Think about commercial, think about wealth management. They have dedicated account managers and the clients are being serviced. If you then take it down to business banking or even further to the branch world, then there's something that start to leak a little bit. And I think one of the speakers this morning says we gotta be honest with each other, but things are not going and we need to report.

And I think that sort of falls in the same category because if you think about relationship management. And you go to a branch and you talk to the branch manager and it's Hey, do you know your customers? The standard answer is yes, right? That all, they all are the customers, but at the end of the day, when you look behind the curtain, it's how many customers do they really use?

Do they really know? And to us, I think building relationship is just key to this. I think I attended a other conference earlier in the year that a panel of four customers. And it was about merchant services, but one of the questions was like what would you make change your bank? And it really was, I need to have a relationship, somebody I know.

And to me that really is relationship management. And I think we try very hard to do this by either phones, outreach, visiting customers. We do email. But the thing that's really missing was, to me, was building a tool for the branches to manage a portfolio of customers and not only manage the portfolio, but also be able to ate, communicate back and forth with those customers, right?

Because if you reach out, you wanna get an answer. And I know that in many cases, on the phone calls is you make a phone call, you make 10 phone calls, you get three people on the phone because it's either they're not available, whatever it is, you send an email and who knows, right? And what the read rate is.

Building a new tool that really engages and gives the branch a tool to engage with the customer. To me, I think that's what we really, the piece that we're missing. And I think Pocket Banker is a tool. I think Nick Carr, who's this morning mentioned a little bit, but it's really a tool where you engage a customer and build a relationship.

They pick their banker, you engage with somebody, and it's all of a sudden there's this. Relationship that you've created on branch level that normally is done, like I said, on a commercial or a wealth management level. Which I think is really unique.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yeah. And the name of this conference is Future Branches, and, but branches, that idea has gotten bigger and bigger. There's almost there's no walls to branches really anymore. And so this idea of then. Relationships are so key and that's what drives your business and it drives growth and it's what keeps, you from having to recycle clients all the time.

And when you can extend those beyond those branches, then that's, but and so you had this idea you're known for setting kind of that clear vision and strategy, how did how did you that shape the way that you actually rolled out this idea of pocket banker?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: One, one of the things is as an organization, I think as many of you as well, we have lots of projects. I think currently the counter is over a hundred project that we run as an organization, which is way too many by the way, but it's like it is what it is and trying to fit something in. I think sometimes it's difficult to be frank with you and specifically when you try to implement something that is, I think some somewhat transformational because it's not only the tech technology that you need to implement.

It's also the behavior from the buy-in you get from your branches that you need to get into. So we basically split up the project and started very simple simply with chat. And that was something we didn't offer. I was frankly surprised this morning when they put chat on the on the board and it got whatever, 23%, something like 34% thing.

But it really was, I think a tool that we were missing. And I think that, that has an audience that was really helpful. So now we're building it into our online banking, and then we'll roll up pocket banker also in our applications.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: So you set that vision and look for more of a phased approach.

You don't have to feel that, as you said, there's hundreds of projects on the plate, you don't feel like you have to get to the end result right out the gate. Yep. Correct. That's great. So now your goal, as we've spoken about, was really to. Have it a since these are relationships, you wanted it to be personal.

And how do you personalize that sort of engagement, that connection without overcomplicating it, for yourself and for your customers?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: One, one of the things that is important is that, again, it's not rocket science, but I think when a customer reaches out, you wanna make sure that they get to the right person.

As quickly as possible. The other thing that's really important to us as an organization is that at any moment in time, we feel that whatever, in whatever channel you are, you need to be able to get out and talk to a customer. You need to be able to talk to a live customer. So when we rolled out the chat function, I think we did a lot of research internally and said, okay, how do you route the conversation?

Without having the customer click 55 times, right? You don't wanna ask 55 questions to say, give cut to this person. But I think we got to a place where within three or four clicks, we were able to get it to the right group that could answer those questions. And I think we always, on any page, we have the ability.

Call me back or reach out and we'll give we'll about to talk to a live person.

And I think that's has worked really well.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yeah. I think you did something really unique in terms of, instead of it, instead of that kind of chat functionality going to one central hub where then somebody would listen to the need, try to.

Either solve it or then say, oh, I need to connect you, and then that, then the customer has to repeat their story over again. You actually asked a couple of those questions in advance to then route to the right team. So whether that was a retail need a commercial need, it got right to that right team right away.

And then they could service 'em appropriately, right? Yeah, that'd be helped. Now you also had a couple years ago, a conversion. And conversions as everybody in this room probably knows are no easy feat. There, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of concern, and stress internally as well as what you have to do, or your customers are feeling.

During that, conversion timeframe, you had the chat involved. You also had Penny involved. And tell us a little bit about who Penny is.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: Penny's a name we've gave in our chatbot, right? 'cause you wanna humanize something. And I think we talked about Penny by the way. We thought about if Penny disappear, we're gonna rename her.

Yeah, that was the question we had, but I'm not sure if that's gonna happen. But but what was interesting is, again, if you do a large conversion, just this was an online banking conversion and we probably had 25,000 customers that active users that were converted. And it all happens on day one. And we all know what happens.

You can send them 12 emails, you can send 'em, you call 'em, whatever you do. They're always surprised the day that it happens. No,

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: come on. It's

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: surprising. Yes. Yeah. That's so you know that you're gonna get, the cold volume is gonna go up. Yeah. So you can make your branch available. You can extend the opening hours that you have.

But at the end of the day, you also know that there's gonna be a number of questions. That really fall in a self-service category. Yeah. Like how do I do A, B, and C? We found that by using our penny, that we actually were able to get 56% of all questions asked during the conversion done automatically.

Yeah. So that was, and that's great. And

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: how many conversations, that was an

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: enormous relief. There was thousands of conversations that we had. Enormous relief on the staff because of course, you. You answer through the chat, you don't have to answer it in person. And it's, it was really a big relief to us.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: And you figure if they, if your customers, if it's a digital conversion, they are accessing you and they are reaching out to you through digital channels. So now you're giving 'em that support option. And then they're also likely doing that at a time that you may not be normal branch hours.

Correct. And so you've taken, penny now as a chat bot is able to answer. Those questions and on that day, a conversion, spiking over 56%, which is pretty good.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: It's funny though, 'cause you think about when people chat, it's really during business hours. I don't know.

This experience is for a lot of people, but you expect it to be 24 hours a day. Yes. If somebody comes on at 3M in the morning. But I think that's an individual that's, so it's, it is nice to be able to combine the chat with being able to people to still service in person.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: But I think what you and let's go back to something you said a little bit earlier.

You, you give that. Kind of ripcord option though.

Very easily in plain sight. You don't hide the human. So yes, it's wonderful to, for 56% to be taken care of by Penny. But when that, when you need that human, when that customer needs that human, you make it very easy. Yep.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: That's the goal.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: And that's key that, again, that can gives the convenience and efficiency of using AI from a chat bot standpoint, but also then given that human connection and the and fostering those relationships. Yeah. So now. To that conversion, that was to Banano, right? And I think when we partnered on that, we used their standard toolkit, but you guys decided to do a little bit more of a custom SSO for that and that evolution.

What was the thinking behind that?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: It's always the hard part, right? You have your core system, and as an organization we like to use. The same system as much as we can because the moment you start dealing with other systems, you have interface issues, you have pointing fingers, issues, whatever else happens.

But sometimes I think you also need to realize that there is a better solution and specifically 'cause we are already using a J IQ for our chat bot, the feedback that we got specifically to be able to manage a process. Wasn't even able to. The messaging itself, it was the routing, but more importantly, it was all the reporting around it and being able to manage it in a consistent manner.

So we decided. To basically disable the burnout chat function or the conversation function and implement the, a IQ system over all, over the entire organization. And we're in the midst of that. And I think it's, we are very excited about that.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yeah. No, it's that is exciting now, but now you're throwing yet another strategy decision on top of that and actually implementing it.

A different digital platform for your commercial side of the business,

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: correct?

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yep. And so you were crazy. We're implementing. Yeah. You set that strategy, you stuck to it. Yes. But tell us how is that going and what's the idea behind having those two different platforms in use.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: It goes back to, I think, best of breed. I think we have a, we are implementing a commercial solution which is different than our retail banking solution. But I think from a conversation perspective, we'd like to have the consistency over both platforms so that without whether you're in Benno or in Q2, you basically have the same, from a support perspective, the same conversation experience.

I think this morning we talked that was talked about, which I think believe is important as well, is the nice thing about it too is that it retains the history of the conversation. So if you have one person taking a call from somebody or starting a chat session, it's, it retains itself. The mo, if I take the session and you log, I'm out tomorrow and you log in tomorrow, you know what happened.

So getting that overall, the platforms, I think is really valuable and I think that's really will really help in our customer service and that's one of the reasons we're very excited about that.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: That's great. And, I get coming from a marketing guy, a marketing perspective, it's always you look at your customer, your account holder from that perspective.

I think traditionally it has been very difficult for institutions to take that stance because there's legacy infrastructure in place. And I gotta work with what I have, but. You've really set this bar of we're taking this from a customer experience standpoint, right? And how are you gonna make that as simple and as smooth and as convenient?

And as you said, then those conversations can remain persistent. And so we're not starting over again.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: No. No.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: So if I have a problem today and I'm dealing with with Carrie, then the, and the next day I log in and I'm in with. Abert then, but that Abert knows what our past conversation was about, right?

So I'm not starting over and and going forward there. Yep. Yeah. And that's key. So from a, a technology standpoint, you, you've picked and chosen what works for your strategy. But partnership with those technology, vendors and everything is also really important and we value your partnership.

We've had that for like I said, good coming on three or four years I think now, which is fantastic. What does make a good partner what do you guys look for as First Sam American Bank?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: I think the first hurdle have to pass is being a vendor. And I think I think everything in this room.

Doesn't wanna add another vendor to their roster because That's right. It's just a lot of overhead. It's like I mentioned before, it's the iso reviews, it's the annual reviews and due diligence. So that's the first hurdle. But I think to get to a partnership, what I always find interesting when you look at a new vendor and you try to figure out who's best, I think the word I hate most is roadmap.

Because I think people put things on a roadmap that are hanging out there and make you feel good that it's gonna happen one day. And what I found is that specifically, I think with you guys, I think the roadmap is a true roadmap. I think what and that really defines a good partner when they're, I think they come through on what their promises are.

I think in many cases. Be to user conferences use. You ask, are your customer base what you want? And within whatever weeks or months it's done. And I think that's been very impressive and I think that's really describes a good part. The other part that I really enjoy is the fact that it's like you respect the process.

I think it's not like sometimes I think you sign a contract by whatever on December 30th and you get a big discount and now we need to implement by March 12th to be able to get that part. Yes, I understand that's your goal, but I think it doesn't always fit with our goals. And I think as a good partner, I think you listen to the financial institution where as a credit union or bank, and adjust to where they can fit it in.

Because I think the part where what, I'm also responsible for our branch network and I think we always talk about change and it's really easy to come up with the next best idea. It's a new system, a new campaign, a new calling campaign, new promo, but the same people have to execute on that. So I am very, I've tried, at least I try to be, and I'm saying I am, but I try to be thoughtful in what you give the branches to do because they at the end of the day, need to make it work.

And so change is, yes, we need to make change, but I think in order to do. Your next promo or your next campaign. It's really hard. And I think same thing here with the implementation of those systems. Let's give it time to digest. Let's give 'em an opportunity to really understand what's happening.

And because that's, is, I think, is the only way to do it, right?

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Yeah. And that's, I honestly, that's what, my, my sales folks who are in this room, please close your ears, but, be being patient is. The right way to go. Because the timeframe that you have, you set this vision, years back and we have phased out this approach approach over time.

And your customers be benefiting. You're benefiting. And it's, I think it's that having that long-term vision, just like you have for your institution, we certainly like to have as well and look for that long-term relationship together to, to work well. So we're. Coming down to close here.

A as we wrap up, is there a piece of advice that you would give to the folks here in terms of considering a type of strategy for connecting with account holders for extending what you do in the branch?

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: It's been said many times today, but I think focus on the customer experience at the end of the day.

They pay the bills. It's relationship management. It's, it is building relationship. The, that whole thing about primary financial institution is very important. But how do you define the relationship and how do you make your branches buy into that, I think is really important that they understand is important that you give them the tools to be able to do that and you manage it as such.

So I think that the relationship part, I think is the focusing there I think is really what gonna pay the bills at the end of the day. Because we all know that's what we need to do.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: I don't think I could say it any better. But thank you. Good. Matt? Zero. We nailed it on time.

Yeah. Thank you. I don't know if there's any questions. If you are interested in seeing a little bit more, you can scan this QR code. There is a case study that we have done with outer Barton, first American Bank. But thank you very much for your time.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: Thank you.

Matt Phipps, CMO, Agent IQ: Thank you. Thank you.

Adelbert Spaan, EVP, Retail Network, Treasury Management, International Banking, HSA, First American Bank: Thank you so much, Matt and Adelberg.