A financial tech firm is betting that a group of Connecticut MBA students with hip marketing ideas and cutting-edge software can help it tap the millennial generation and give regional banks a competitive boost.
Fiserv Inc., a Wisconsin-based company that produces financial services technologies like mobile banking platforms, is working with two of its clients — including the Savings Bank of Danbury — and UConn’s Business School to develop and market banking software applications aimed squarely at attracting young consumers.
The collaboration is part of UConn’s Financial Accelerator Program in downtown Hartford, which was launched in 2002 to give students and faculty a chance to apply classroom training to real-world problems.
“The Financial Accelerator project was a great experience to put the skills we learned in the MBA into practice and to work closely with a reputable client and gain insights into the financial software industry,” said UConn MBA grad Michael Maczka, who participated in the Fiserv project this spring along with fellow pupils David Dougherty, Sourav Sengupta and Patrick Huang.
UConn typically runs three to six business projects in the accelerator each academic year, said UConn spokesman Michael Deotte. A project contains a team of three to four students and a faculty adviser.
In addition to Fiserv, UConn’s accelerator program has also paired students and executives to work on projects with Alpha Equity Capital, Hartford Steam Boiler, ING, Northeast Utilities, Pitney Bowes, United Healthcare and United Technologies Corp.
Companies like Fiserv pay the accelerator program $35,000 or more, a fee that covers student labor costs and complete use of the ideas and products developed.
“This collaboration allows our students to use the knowledge, research skills, innovative thinking, and work ethic they’re acquiring at UConn in a very welcoming business environment provided by Fiserv,” said UConn Professor Michel Rakotomavo, faculty advisor for the project.
The collaboration gave students access to Fiserv’s proprietary DNA-brand account processing software, which the Savings Bank of Danbury and Greylock Federal Credit Union use to process daily customer transactions and data.
As part of the Fiserv initiative, MBA students worked together for 25 hours per week to learn about the financial institution’s challenges, brainstorm solutions, hash out ideas and finalize a proposal for company leaders.
Their main task was figuring out how to help smaller financial institutions like Savings Bank of Danbury ($800 million in assets) and Greylock ($1 billion in assets) attract and retain young customers, particularly millennials, who are tech-savvy and on-the-go, said Chris Van Der Stad, chief technology officer of Fiserv’s Open Solutions Division.
Maczka said his group discovered many smaller banks like Fiserv’s clients lagged behind in their use of social media and strong data analytics tools to help them track customer activity more effectively. His goal was to find ways to reduce customer turnover at the two banks.
“Regional banks have a hard time retaining a customer when they move away from the geographical service area, due in part, because the bank has only limited national presence,” said Maczka. “We also realized that some clients did not have any feasible models in place to analyze the lifetime value of a customer.”
Maczka used his time in the accelerator to develop ideas that could help small and regional banks hold onto customers for life — from the starter checking account to home mortgage products.
“We started asking ourselves what kind of app would help these banks overcome these particular challenges,” said Maczka.
For example, the group could develop an app that would allow bank customers to access their account from anywhere in the world, as well as deposit, transfer or withdraw funds.
Fiserv would not discuss what — if any — solutions had been proposed so far. Van Der Stad said the accelerator program is in transition as school breaks for summer. This fall, he expects to continue the collaboration process with a new group of students.
