By: Marla Pieton, Sr. Director, Marketing & Research
For decades, marketing in banking historically meant building a strategy that included mass distribution on multiple channels, hoping you were able to target the right product or service, to the right consumer, at the right time.
The typical workflow started by deciding to increase sales in a specific area of the business > creating an offer the institution looked at as a gap in the market > going through all the internal approvals > asking IT to pull a list of account holders > manually loading that list into various channel-specific campaigns…and then waiting for results. If consumers eventually bought into the offer, tracking the return on investment and determining which lever had been most effective was a challenge. There also was a high likelihood that a consumer or current account holder would get “spammed” by the offer, because they had already adopted that product or service by the time the campaign made it to them.
In today’s hyper-competitive environment, where fintechs, neobanks, and megabanks all fight for consumer attention, those old strategies have been well surpassed by new innovative technology, and the most digitally mature regional and community institutions are charting a path for the rest to follow.
Every industry that’s been transformed by digital innovation has followed the same pattern. First came the demand for a digital twin, then further overhauling that experience, and finally: anticipation at scale. Personalization is where most organizations engage in outreach, but anticipation is what separates leaders in the market—where consumers’ needs are met before they are voiced.
This is Anticipatory Banking, and it’s about to redefine relationship banking and propel growth and retention rates for those who adopt it.
Why Now?
Financial services executives, both in marketing departments and beyond, stand at a defining moment. Account holders are no longer content with reactive service; they expect institutions to anticipate needs and provide timely, relevant solutions—often before those needs are even articulated. Yet according to a 2025 study, nearly half of U.S. digital banking users say their institution falls short of this standard, widening a relevancy gap that tech giants, megabanks, and fintechs are already exploiting. With the impending $84 trillion in generational wealth poised to change hands and younger consumers redefining expectations around speed, convenience, and guidance, adopting Anticipatory Banking is the new imperative for sustaining trust, primacy, and growth.
Recent research has revealed additional insights for financial institutions to take action:
- Consumers are evaluating providers against the digital experiences of tech giants, not just peers. In the same 2025 survey referenced above, just 38% of consumers at RCFIs said their provider’s product recommendations had become more relevant over the past year. That’s not just behind—it’s statistically behind both national banks (45%) and online-only neobanks (53%), with the gap widening year-over-year.
- Forty percent of digital banking consumers said they would be more likely to switch providers if another offered a five-minute online or mobile account opening experience.
- Digital maturity is the new growth lever. The most advanced in retail digital maturity report up to five times average annual revenue growth, and on the business banking side, the most digitally mature reveal nearly 10x more average annual revenue growth than their least digitally mature peers.
- Consumers are demanding deposit products which opens the door for growth acceleration. Consumers expect speed, clarity, security, and consistency across every digital channel. Whether on mobile, tablet, or desktop, the digital account opening experience must feel unified and effortless – and be able to be completed in 5 minutes or less.
Marketers sit at the intersection of communication and account holder trust. The use of behavioral signals found in an institution’s transaction data, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that deliver prediction, create the foundation for Anticipatory Banking, enabling financial institutions to turn every interaction into an opportunity for proactive engagements, deeper relationships and primacy.
Banks and credit unions are sitting on one of the most valuable, yet underutilized, assets in the financial service space: transaction data. Every swipe, every monetary exchange, every channel utilization, and more, reveals a subtle yet telling trail of behavioral signals that, when aggregated and analyzed, form an extraordinarily rich picture of account holders’ financial lives.
AI is the predictive power, and the bridge between raw data and activation. With the right AI models, institutions can move beyond descriptive reporting into predictive and prescriptive intelligence. This shift enables them to recognize patterns such as life stage changes, emerging financial stress, or opportunities for wealth building—often before account holders explicitly voice these needs – and deliver outreach that feels intuitive and relevant.
Moreover, the link between digital maturity and the use of AI, data and automation is quantifiable. Data-First institutions—the most digitally mature—are leveraging advanced data and marketing capabilities as a competitive advantage. Specifically, 67% of Data-First banks and credit unions can automatically push targeted marketing to their account holders (vs. just 16% among the least digitally mature cohort). More impressively, a remarkable 23% of Data-First institutions can automatically intercept a key moment of a consumer’s digital experience with a marketing tactic.
Building a Foundation for the Anticipatory Banking Vision
The Anticipatory Banking vision is one where financial institutions recognize patterns, anticipate needs, and deliver relevant solutions in real time. But this level of engagement requires an intentional framework that integrates data and technology into a unified approach. For banks and credit unions, operationalizing anticipation means knowing where you stand, aligning your teams, and activating the tools that transform data into action.
- Know Where You’re Starting From— Assess Your Digital Maturity – A financial institution’s digital maturity level is directly correlated with growth potential, competitive differentiation, and relevance. Digital channels must be treated as core competencies, embedded in talent strategy, data technology, security, the employee experience and account holder engagement. Banks and credit unions that make the mindset commitment will be the leaders in digital. Assess your institution’s retail banking and business banking digital maturity to benchmark your institution against industry peers, and receive tailored guidance for your path forward.
- Set Your Priorities: Strategic Touchpoints— Adopting Anticipatory Banking requires leadership to move beyond siloed initiatives and drive a unified vision across the institution. Executives must bring cross functional teams together, aligning around shared priorities and measurable outcomes. By championing cross-department collaboration, setting clear benchmarks, and embedding accountability into strategy, leadership ensures that anticipation becomes the institution’s operating model.
- Onboard, Engage and Grow— Anticipatory Banking can be executed through three solutions: Onboarding & Account Opening, Digital Banking, and Data & Marketing. Combined creates transformative technology—The Digital Sales & Service Platform—enabling financial institutions to onboard, engage, and grow relationships through a powerful solution that drives strategic business outcomes.
The Digital Sales & Service Platform[1] is the connective tissue that brings people, processes, and solutions together. By aligning strategy with culture, harnessing transaction data with AI, and executing with a platform built for both growth and trust, institutions can transform anticipation from a vision into a business model. Banks and credit unions that lean into this framework will not only meet account holder expectations but also sustain primacy and growth in the next era of banking.
The most powerful banking is anticipatory. Learn more at alkami.com
