If you had to guess, do you think the competitive landscape for financial institutions will intensify in 2026, or ease off?
It’s a certainty: competition is only getting fiercer.
With interest rate volatility, aggressive marketing by neobanks and megabanks, and customers hyper-aware of their many choices, deposit growth shouldn’t just be a goal on a wish-list whiteboard—it's essential. Banks and credit unions can no longer rely on market inertia to retain funds; they must actively combat the leaky bucket of Share-of-Wallet (SOW) attrition by delivering a dramatically improved, hyper-personalized customer experience (both digital and phone) that makes their organization an obvious choice. Your growth strategy for 2026 must focus on plugging that leak. The key to capturing a greater share of your customers’ deposits isn't just offering a better product; it's delivering a customer experience that is as good or better than your competitors’.
Where Strategy Meets Execution: Making Every Interaction Count
To mitigate SOW erosion and achieve the goal of deposit growth, banks and credit unions must view every customer interaction—from a password reset to a complex loan application—as a moment of opportunity. This requires moving past legacy support channels and leveraging an AI Interactions Platform that acts as a powerful, personalized relationship manager. To make every interaction count, you’ve got to ensure customers are matched instantly and effortlessly with the right help (human or AI) on the right channel (voice, chat, or video). This instant, relevant service identifies customers at risk of straying and turns routine support calls into opportunities for achieving deposit growth.
Here’s how this approach not only retains deposits but actively grows them:
🔃 Seamless Service: The Power of ChannelLess®
Customers don’t think in terms of "voice channel" or "chat channel"; they just want whatever they need at the moment they’re interacting with you. ChannelLess® technology breaks down the silos between communication methods. An agent can seamlessly transition a conversation from a chat to a digital voice call or even a video session without losing context or requiring the customer to redial or re-explain their issue. Meeting customers exactly where they are in the context of their need or issue type drastically reduces frustration. This seamless experience is vital for encouraging deposit growth.
🗣️ Proactive Assistance: Saving the Sale Before It’s Lost
An AI interactions platform builds in rules to monitor user behavior and digital body language in real time. Is a customer hesitating on the CD funding page? Are they repeatedly trying and failing to upload documents for a loan? This is your window of opportunity to deploy a targeted, proactive intervention. A timely pop-up chat or a direct offer to connect with an agent can prevent abandonment and turn a frustrated potential depositor into a closed account.
💻 Digital Guidance: Turning Complexity into Conversions
Complex banking tasks, like opening a new business account or applying for a mortgage, demand a high-touch experience. CoBrowsing lets your team guide the customer visually, right on their screen, just like an in-person teller would. This digital collaboration eliminates guesswork and significantly increases conversion rates on high-value products. It’s the difference between a customer giving up on a complex form and successfully funding a large deposit.
Real-Life Examples: The Results Speak For Themselves
- Huge Growth in Account Openings: Umpqua Bank leveraged Glia's digital customer service to provide real-time guidance to online applicants, resulting in a massive 980% increase in digital account openings. This demonstrates the power of eliminating friction in the self-service deposit journey.
- Doubling Loan Conversions to Fuel Deposit Growth: By using proactive digital assistance and its human-centric approach, Community First Credit Union more than doubled its loan production engagements. This not only increases lending revenue but often leads to deposits being opened or moved to fund the new loan, expanding the SOW.
- Extending Geographic Reach with a Virtual Branch: A single-branch community bank (Home Bank of California) used Glia to launch a comprehensive virtual branch, effectively extending its banking services and revenue opportunities 60+ miles beyond its physical footprint. This allows the bank to acquire deposits from a much larger market without the cost of new buildings.
Your Deposit Growth Strategy for 2026
Achieving greater deposit growth means understanding the true value of every customer interaction. This requires you to consider two sets of metrics—efficiency (lowering cost-to-serve) and effectiveness (revenue generation, conversions). When you can create both simultaneously, you are creating far greater value for your organization.
Your deposit growth strategy doesn’t require expensive campaigns that compete with the megabanks and digital-only competitors, it's about delivering the perfect blend of human and AI assistance to ensure the customers you already have never feel the need to look elsewhere.
By using intelligent engagement to meet your customers exactly at the moment they need you, and guiding them toward opening that next account or securing that larger deposit, you will be able to serve them at a deeper level. And in that way, everyone wins.
Ready to turn every interaction into a deposit growth opportunity? Discover how Glia can help you drive conversions and retention with a tailored, personalized demo today.
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