The Battle for Retail Banking Deposits Goes Beyond High Rates

Jim Marous (00:12):

Hello, and welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, Founder and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, and co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:21):

Gone are the days of ultra-low interest rates when generating deposits and making loans was easy. Today, small and mid-sized financial institutions are battling for retail deposits after recent bank failures spurred a massive exodus of funds to larger players.

Jim Marous (00:38):

In fact, a report by S&P Global Market Intelligence noted that several hundred banking institutions, including a handful of larger ones, are paying over 4%, even as much as 5% on certificates and deposits to submit a general increase and reliance on CDs and an increased interest for deposits.

Jim Marous (00:59):

My guest in the Banking Transformed Podcast today is Adam Stockton, Managing Director of Retail Deposits at Curinos. We discuss the importance of building stronger connections between consumer deposit and credit needs, and rethinking the way organizations build relationships in the future.

Jim Marous (01:17):

Banks and credit unions are being forced to rethink their deposit strategies as a combination of factors including inflation, higher interest rates, and recent bank failures, and more than a decade of cheap and easy funding. So, how will financial institution of all sizes need to rethink deposit gathering and relationship building strategies?

Jim Marous (01:36):

So, Adam, before we begin, can you introduce yourself to our audience that may not be familiar with who you are, and share a bit about how Curinos helps financial institutions navigate a battlefield that is far different than a financial institutions have seen in more than a decade?

Adam Stockton (01:51):

Absolutely, Jim, and thank you so much for having me here today, I'm really happy to be here talking with you. So, my name's Adam Stockton, I'm a Managing Director and the Head of the Retail Deposits business at Curinos. At Curinos, we really believe in the combination of data software platforms, and strategic advice.

Adam Stockton (02:11):

The data helps us understand what's been going on, the software helps us react to that, and change our actions in the market today. And the strategic advice helps us see the future, and anticipate where the market is going tomorrow. We work across the balance sheet, I'm in the deposits business. We have a lending side marketing checking, all customer-facing all built off of customer data to be able to deliver insights to financial institutions.

Jim Marous (02:47):

So, this is actually a new name for a company that many have been familiar with for years right?

Adam Stockton (02:52):

It is. It's actually our two-year anniversary tomorrow. We were formed through a combination of Novantas, Informas FBX business and Icon, which depending on where you sit and the bank — you may know some or the others of us. But we hope that the Curinos brand is a little more out in the market today than it was when we just launched.

Jim Marous (03:17):

So, Adam, what do you see in the marketplace today with regards to the competition for deposits?

Adam Stockton (03:24):

It has been a fascinating nine months. If you look a year ago, there was almost no competition for deposits. Through COVID, there was a remarkable buildup across the industry through EIP checks, PPP loans, and just foregone spending when people couldn't take vacations and there were supply chain issues and people couldn't buy things.

Adam Stockton (03:50):

Trillions of dollars of built up deposits meant that loan to deposit ratios were down from the eighties into the sixties. And so, a year ago, we were saying, "Gosh, you got to be worried about rising rates, and you may need deposits at some point in the future." A few forward-thinking institutions agreed, but a lot said, "No, we're just not worried about deposits right now, thanks."

Adam Stockton (04:16):

Through a combination of deposit runoff because of quantitative tightening that the Fed is doing rising rates and inflation, we're in a much different position today. And that's even before you get to the failures of Silicon Valley, Signature and First Republic which led to even more deposit runoff. So, we're now in a place where just about everybody is looking for more core deposits and competition is really ramped up.

Jim Marous (04:46):

So, it is crazy. I was fortunate enough to see you do an excellent presentation in New York City where you broke down the importance of deposit portfolio and how we have to go beyond rate chasing.

Jim Marous (04:58):

Can you describe how banks and credit unions should respond to this need for deposit, which, as I mentioned to you before our podcast, almost every smaller institution right now has an undying need right now for deposit growth?

Adam Stockton (05:13):

Yeah, the challenge is there are really different segments of customer needs. Now, if you ask any customer. What if I give you the best rates, no fees plus everything else that comes with the bank — great service, a full product lineup, innovative products of course, every customer is going to say, "Yes, I want everything."

Adam Stockton (05:41):

But if you then, and we've done a lot of primary research on this — if you ask customers, "Well, what's most important to you?" Some say rate, but some say the service, being able to talk to somebody, innovative products that meet my needs are more important. And so, the challenge is that first group needs really good rates. In a market where the online banks are paying 4 or 5%, that's what those rate-seeking customers need.

Adam Stockton (06:12):

But that second group of customers doesn't need anything near that. They just need to feel like you're treating them fairly from a rate perspective. And so, the first thing you need to think about is segmentation. How do I give the great rate to the customers that need it, make sure that I'm giving everything else to the people who are looking for the other things.

Jim Marous (06:33):

So, how do you build that strategy? I mean, how do you do that where not everybody becomes aware of what you're offering elsewhere?

Adam Stockton (06:39):

That's exactly right, and that becomes the conundrum, is if you give everything to everybody, it becomes uneconomical really quickly, and so there are different strategies to deal with that. Some banks have opened an online banking arm and said, "Alright, if you're looking for rate, we want you to only come in through our digital channel and have that be separate."

Adam Stockton (07:02):

Some banks use old school tactics like promotional pricing, which we don't always love, but promotional pricing exists in almost every industry because it works. You're using rate to get somebody in the door, and then showing them the rest of the value proposition and hoping that that becomes more important to them over time. And the third way banks are doing that is through product, and trying to separate customers that way.

Jim Marous (07:34):

So, it's interesting when you talk about that segmented approach, so many things have changed since the last time we were looking for deposits. Not only can you segment better, but you have so much more data available at your disposal within the financial institution. What are some of the things that financial institutions are not aware of how they should do things compared to what they did 10, 15 years ago?

Adam Stockton (08:00):

You know, it's interesting. I think they're probably aware of what they should be doing but the barriers to doing it are just so difficult and persistent in many cases. Different customers and different segments need different treatments, different communication strategies. You can tailor your messaging to really narrow segments of individuals, but that's really hard to do in a multichannel world.

Adam Stockton (08:32):

Some of the FinTechs have gotten really good at it because they only have one channel fundamentally. If you're only communicating to customers through your app, that gets a lot easier. But when you have app and desktop when you have call center and branch it becomes a lot more complex to do that tailoring.

Jim Marous (08:55):

So, it's interesting; one of the things that was one of my takeaways from your presentation in New York to clients, was there's a much greater need for the use of deposit and analytics within an organization to know who they should target, what they should know about the customers.

Jim Marous (09:11):

For instance, how do they come in and get their deposits? Is this simply a rollover process, or are they actually rate shoppers? People that come in and go out regularly based on what rate of deposit rates you have right now. But just as importantly, the look at the deposit product line alone can be different because of the data and analytics that's available.

Jim Marous (09:34):

One thing that I saw was that organizations, as you said at the beginning of our discussion, got fat and happy around the model deposits they generated, which really wasn't saying that it was generated, is really a strange comment because really, it just fell in the door.

Jim Marous (09:51):

But many organizations who measured it realized, yes, we got X billion dollars, but a good proportion of that got immediately taken out and got transferred to places. And you have the ability now with the data and analytics to find out where did that money go.

Jim Marous (10:08):

I mean, you can look and say, "Oh my gosh, our customers that we think are our customers that built great deposits during the COVID crisis, 60% of their deposits they put in, they took out and took it to Robinhood or Acorns or someplace like that."

Jim Marous (10:23):

What are some of the neat things you're seeing organizations do and you're recommending your clients to do with regards to internal data and analytics that can make the deposit acquisition strategy smarter?

Adam Stockton (10:36):

That's a great question. In terms of making the deposit acquisition strategy smarter, it's figuring out the right incentive the right message at the right time. Some customers are going to respond to rate, others are going to respond to cash, others are going to respond to certain messaging. We'll help you build your savings and work together. Some are going to respond to fear of missing out, the FOMO message. So, really, having a test and learn strategy to quickly iterate on that.

Adam Stockton (11:13):

So many banks are built around this campaign cycle where we run one campaign a quarter and then it takes us six months to measure the results by which time we're already two more campaigns in the future, and there's just so much better tools out there now.

Adam Stockton (11:31):

You should be able to iterate on these things really quickly within a matter of days, not quarters. So, that speed to market and the quick iteration A/B testing is probably the most important move that we see coming and we see starting today.

Jim Marous (11:50):

One of the other things that you and many of your associates really stressed at your meeting was this has got to go beyond account generation. There needs to be a very strong emphasis on building relationships, especially at a time when current customers are very easily dividing their relationships. We see it in our research as well, that customers more than ever are splitting their relationships.

Jim Marous (12:14):

And so, why you're not seeing attrition in the traditional sense and why you may not feel like you're losing customers, you're losing accounts, you're losing relationships, and the trust level goes down when you lose those relationships. And we see this as a really big risk going forward (don't we) with people being able to make their decisions with a click of a button?

Adam Stockton (12:34):

We do, and it's fascinating. I'm actually going to go back to something you said right at the beginning there, which is moving from account generation to deposit generation. As we were talking about with deposits just falling into the laps of banks the marketing departments of banks as an example really didn't have to think about deposits at all for a number of years.

Adam Stockton (12:55):

So, it became the mantra of the marketing department, we care about generating new core household relationships and new checking accounts. And that's the metric that so many marketing departments use to the exclusion of everything else. Well, we're just here to get net new checking households.

Adam Stockton (13:13):

The more forward-thinking marketing departments — maybe it's, we're here to get primary and active checking accounts. But why are you getting checking accounts? And for so many, that connective tissue has just been lost.

Adam Stockton (13:30):

Well, the point of getting a checking account, sure, it brings some fee revenue along with it, but fundamentally, it's because a primary checking account gives you A, permission to cross sell and B, stickier lower cost deposits.

Adam Stockton (13:44):

And so, shifting that focus from, we're not just trying to get the checking account, we need to make sure we pull in as many deposits as we can with it becomes really of utmost importance and is a shift that is pretty slow to happen because it's not a way that marketing departments have really ever thought.

Jim Marous (14:09):

It's interesting because as you mentioned, we never made that process easy. It's easy because when you came into the branch and you open a CD, the person could cross sell a checking account. But if that's all being done online and through digital marketing and digital media and digital account opening, the reality of building that relationship without the one-to-one face-to-face time gets to be more challenging.

Jim Marous (14:34):

You can't have a 15-minute checking account opening process or a 30-minute loan application process, and expect to get that business. And so, everything we talk about, and Novantas has history, and so does Curinos have a history around the marketing components of what you're doing, but marketing does play a very major role.

Jim Marous (14:55):

And as you referenced in the meetings in New York, it really allows you to lower your real cost of funds. How are you seeing organizations doing that better? What organizations or what type of organizations are doing things that are making it so that the effective cost of funds is dropped well below what that rate might be that they put out there in their marketplace?

Adam Stockton (15:20):

Yeah, we are seeing some organizations shift to marketing, but we're seeing a lot also look in tough times with expense pressure. And with NIM coming down now that we were close to the peak, we're seeing a lot of organizations go the opposite way, and reduce their marketing.

Adam Stockton (15:41):

Chase just in their investor day announced a massive increase to their marketing budget. And they've for a while been at the forefront of targeted offers and really big cash offers to try and pull in the deposits along with the new checking accounts.

Adam Stockton (16:04):

There's a lot of competition on that side too, and it's getting more expensive, but as you noted, the payback can really be there because if you're pulling in low-cost deposits in today's environment, and the spread between the low cost and the high cost isn't 50 or 75 basis points anymore, it's 400 basis points.

Jim Marous (16:29):

Exactly.

Adam Stockton (16:29):

That changes the entire economics of how much you should be willing to invest in marketing and offers to bring a new deposit household in the door.

Jim Marous (16:40):

It's interesting you brought up Chase, and we forget all the elements of what Chase is doing. In my marketplace, Chase wasn't a big player, but they have a lot of credit card relationships. And so, what they did is they built branches. While everybody else's closing branches, they built branches to basically solidify their relationships that we're a single product.

Jim Marous (17:01):

Well, just think of the competitive advantage they have now when people are competing against Chase and other finance institutions for a CD, when they have all these customers that are right now, not branch customers, but they're credit card customers that they can reach out to with also having the marketing benefit of a street sign.

Jim Marous (17:23):

This whole deposit strategy really changes when you look at the deposit strategy that financial institutions now are having to undertake. What have you seen as being the biggest roadblocks and challenges to the development of a strong deposit strategy?

Adam Stockton (17:39):

The biggest roadblock to developing a deposit strategy is two things. One is the wrong time horizon and flexibility, and the second is organizational alignment. So, when we talk about the time horizon a lot of organizations are reactive and assume that whatever they're projecting for the future is what's going to happen.

Adam Stockton (18:09):

So, at the beginning of last year, it was, "Hey, the Fed's going to increase two or three times this year, Fed funds will be at 75 basis points at the end of '22." And a lot of organizations built their entire strategy for the year and their forecast based on that, and didn't have a process to be able to iterate through it, and didn't have a process to run different scenarios.

Adam Stockton (18:38):

We're huge believers in scenario analysis because look, we don't pretend to know what the Fed is going to do or what direction the economy is going to go, and so you should be planning for the Fed to decrease by 200 basis points. You should be planning for what happens if they stay flat, or what happens if we get more increases and understand are we going to be in trouble in one of those cases, and what do we do about it now?

Adam Stockton (19:07):

And then the other piece is organizational alignment. So, we talked about marketing already, but it's also true of sales. And then between lines of business, is the other big one. Where often we'll see something like "Hey, we lost a couple big commercial relationships, retail can you go out and get an extra billion in the next month?"

Adam Stockton (19:34):

And, "Hey, if we knew that we needed an extra billion six months ago or 12 months ago, not a problem. We could do that slowly over time, we can do it efficiently, but if we have to get a billion in the next month, we have to crank up that rate dial really hard, and the cost of that is going to be way higher." So, it kind of goes back to that planning side as well.

Jim Marous (20:05):

So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsor to this podcast.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (20:11):

Welcome back to Banking Transformed, I'm joined today by Adam Stockton from Curinos. We've been discussing the significant opportunities and challenges for financial institutions that must look beyond race to build stronger relationships.

Jim Marous (20:24):

So, right before the break, Adam, we were talking about a little bit about scenario planning, and you mentioned the reactionary aspect of everything and how much more costly that is. We've been hit with a few surprises in the marketplace lately. The folding of Silicon Valley Bank based on a little tweet, the quickness of that, what I'll call deposit run, the government's reaction to that, not knowing if that reaction would be the same going forward.

Jim Marous (20:56):

How do financial institutions need to rethink their entire ALCO matching strategy in the need for liquidity in light of recent bank failures? But as you just mentioned before the break, the need to really prepare for the unexpected.

Adam Stockton (21:11):

Yeah, that's one of the big challenges facing banks right now, is how to think about balance sheet management and ALCO. What is the true value of the different pools of deposits I have, what's the stickiness under different scenarios?

Adam Stockton (21:28):

One way that that we think about it is the LCR outflows, liquidity coverage ratio that the big banks are subject to. So, how much do I need to plan for in a really bad scenario, how much of these deposit pools might run off? Those are 30-day runoff scenarios, and what we saw at Silicon Valley and First Republic is those happened over 30 hours or less, so it's coming at just a tremendous pace.

Adam Stockton (22:06):

A couple examples of how banks need to rethink this; one is on wealth deposits, which have been much more volatile than core consumer deposits, because fundamentally, the average wealth customer can't just put their money at different banks to get FDIC insurance, and they have a lot more options available to them.

Adam Stockton (22:28):

Money market mutual funds, brokerage CDs treasuries, they can easily move their money back and forth. And so, we've seen a much higher runoff in wealth deposits, about 10% runoff last year and another 12% runoff year to date in wealth deposits across the industry.

Adam Stockton (22:52):

And the deposits that are staying are in many cases asking for rates that are equal to Fed funds or money market mutual funds. And so, banks have to really think about what's the value of these deposits through the cycle, and which parts of them do we want to keep on balance sheet, and are there some that we'd rather encourage to move off balance sheet.

Adam Stockton (23:17):

And the value of retail deposits on the other side was already seen to be comparatively higher than other lines of business, but maybe it was even understated. Maybe we should be willing to pay more to bring a core stable retail deposit in the door because it's going to stay with us through the cycle no matter what.

Adam Stockton (23:41):

And so, there's a matching component, but even more important might be a granularity component of a lot of banks and their ALCO processes tend to treat any checking deposit the same, any savings deposit the same, any CD deposit the same. And we have the data now to show that's not really true, and how can you sub-segment your book to get a better understanding of the value?

Jim Marous (24:09):

Well, it's interesting because you also get back to the timing of everything. You mentioned earlier in our discussion around the fact that it's no longer trying to hit people at a seasonal thing. You know, "Oh, it's October, I need to have a deposit program out there." We have the ability to look at the micro segments, looking at the individual and say, "What is your flow of deposit and how do I prepare for what may come next?"

Jim Marous (24:31):

How many consumers do we have in the deposit portfolio now, in the CD portfolio that are at risk, that weren't at risk in the past? Because rates everywhere were the same, they were close to zero?

Jim Marous (24:42):

It's interesting also when I think back and see that we haven't seen rates like this in 10, 12 years, which is really when the whole margin compression started happening because there was so much efficiency in the marketplace to be able to say, loans, deposits, how can people shop to get ... And everything in the digital world gets squeezed. It really makes you rethink what you're doing there.

Jim Marous (25:04):

Behind everything, it's really customer psychology and you've keep on referring back to this on not every customer's the same. And let's say with ChatGPT, with the ability to build great content strategies more than we've ever had before to put it, to put different scenarios up on our websites that customers can access — how can a strong content strategy and financial education support deposit generation to lift the tide, so to speak? It's not going to be a quick strategy, but something that can really be put in place to lift the overall tide.

Adam Stockton (25:45):

Yeah, it's fascinating; content generation, tailored communication makes a really big difference. We've seen up to a 10% difference in terms of the ability to bring in incremental deposits solely by changing the messaging on a customer communication.

Adam Stockton (26:05):

How do you talk to a certain customer, what resonates with them? You now have the ability to change even those aspects. And that's before we get into offers and currencies, and conditions, just purely the communication aspect. That really is one of the next frontiers, is we can get so much more tailored and targeted.

Adam Stockton (26:34):

I've heard on some of your previous podcasts talking about ...We've lost something in moving away from branches where we used to have the personal conversation — that we may be able to get some of that back through ...

Jim Marous (26:57):

Well, actually in many ways, it should be able to be more personal because we have so much more data that can be accessible instantaneously both internal and external data, can't we?

Adam Stockton (27:06):

That's exactly right. We know so much about the customer. Now, you always have to be a little careful with that. Some of the famous stories around, we know things about the customer that maybe they don't want us to know but we do.

Adam Stockton (27:26):

We know so much about the customer and not just their needs but their preferences to the extent that we can make them feel like this is a two-way conversation and needs based and we're in it for them. They're big benefits here for financial institutions.

Jim Marous (27:48):

So, Adam, what do you see as the most important trend with regard to deposits in the near future?

Adam Stockton (27:55):

In the near future, the most important trend in deposits has to be the segmentation and personalization. If you try and give a mediocre rate to every single one of your customers, you are going to fail all of them. The customers who really aren't in it for the rate, who are in it for everything else that you offer, you've just given it away and didn't get anything back for it. And the customers who are looking for great rates, it's not going to be enough.

Adam Stockton (28:30):

Those customers need the 4% or more and giving them two and a half or 3% just isn't going to cut it. And so, figuring out what the different pools of customers need, and making sure that you're targeting as well as you can to each of those specific segments, we're most likely not going back down to a zero rate environment. And so, the segmentation and the targeting has to be here to stay and has to be how banks think about deposits going into the future.

Jim Marous (29:13):

Well, what's interesting is you mentioned, and others mentioned in the meeting we had in New York, that financial institutions also need to look beyond what they think is the obvious. The fact that maybe I have not moved my deposits in the last 10 years does not mean I'm loyal if rates go up. Because if you're not going to pay me market rates, I all of a sudden become very disloyal or could become disloyal.

Jim Marous (29:38):

We have to look beyond the initial look of what we think a customer is. Because I think that's what a lot of institutions found when Silicon Valley Bank folded and customers moved their deposits all over the place, is that a great proportion of customers that they thought were loyal because they hadn't moved, weren't really loyal beyond what was going on in the marketplace. And boy, you got to dig deeper, you got to continue to communicate.

Jim Marous (30:03):

You kept on bringing up the fact that you've got to build a deeper relationship where there's trust and where there's really a loyalty that goes beyond what my one account is.

Jim Marous (30:14):

Another thing I recommend and I'd say it even if you weren't on the show today, is that more than ever financial institutions need to partner with third party providers that can help them get to the promised land, that can actually bring experiences and other experiences from other institutions to the forefront and say, "Here's what we've seen work elsewhere, here's what you have to do to be prepared for the future."

Jim Marous (30:41):

Because as you said earlier, few financial institutions have kept on top of what's going on than in the deposit marketplace because they haven't had to, and now you have to. And it's better to be prepared, it's better to partner with companies like yours to really stay on top of what's possible, but also take advantage of the victories that other institutions have benefited from.

Jim Marous (31:03):

So, Adam, this last question, if you were in charge of a financial institution today, let's say a mid-size community organization, and you were asked to do the major things that are on the to-do list this year (which means a lot of things have to be done quickly), what would you focus on, and what should financial institutions do now to really prepare for what they have to do next?

Adam Stockton (31:30):

Great question. So, two things that I keep coming back to. One is make use of all of the data that you can to really understand your customers. The segmentation that we talked about is not the simple demographic segmentation of old, it's really detailed, understanding their behaviors, their needs, their life stage and how they think about banking so that you can meet them with exactly what they're looking for.

Adam Stockton (32:05):

And then the second is scenario plan for the future. The reason I keep coming back to that is so many financial institutions are inertia-driven, we're going to do the same thing ...

Jim Marous (32:20):

Our strategic plans, everything else. Take last year's and tweak it.

Adam Stockton (32:25):

Take last year's and we're going to grow 3%, and so every number goes up by 3%. And in a market influx like this, that just doesn't work. And so, how do we make sure that we're prepared for a future that might not look like and frankly, is almost certainly not going to look like last year plus 3%.

Adam Stockton (32:48):

We have to rethink a lot of the assumptions that we've made over time and really start from the base level and understand the different directions things can go. The organizations can do that, will be able to much more nimbly respond as unexpected things happen. Because they'll be able to say, "Alright, well, we didn't think about exactly this case, but we thought about something close to it. We have something to build off of, we already have a playbook ready to go."

Jim Marous (33:21):

It's interesting you just said that because most importantly, assume that everything will work 30, 40, 50 times faster than they've ever worked before. I mean, deposit inflows or deposit outflows used to mean wait until the branch opened, open the door, sit down, open the account, get the trends, and we used to have inflows of that.

Jim Marous (33:41):

Going back to the All Savers certificate back in seventies, I think it was, that always had this maturity in one year, which is why October has always been the massive maturity month that any of you youngsters out there wouldn't even know what I'm talking about, but face it, it's true.

Jim Marous (33:58):

But the reality is, as we have found out with COVID, as we found out with Silicon Valley Bank, as we found out with the economic crisis, everything works faster. So, in your scenario planning, you can't say, "Oh, if we need $2 billion in deposits, let's get it within the next 18 months." That's not going to be the game plan because it can go out today by noon.

Jim Marous (34:22):

And we have to be aware of the fact that we're going to have to respond likewise. And so, as you said, have the options open, they're out there, and you may have to take one and build to another.

Jim Marous (34:33):

So, Adam, thank you so much for being on this show. Thank you very much for enlightening us on something that many of us had forgotten about.

Jim Marous (34:40):

And it's a very interesting marketplace and a lot of the things that you share work beyond simply the deposit marketplace. You referred to lending and other things in a lot of your writings and all that. How do people get a hold of you if they want to dig deeper than what we were able to do today?

Adam Stockton (35:00):

Jim, thank you so much for having me. If people want to get in touch with us, they can check out our website, curinos.com.

Jim Marous (35:07):

Thanks a lot, Adam.

Adam Stockton (35:08):

Thank you so much.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (35:11):

Also be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (35:16):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Sean Rule-Hoffman, and video producer, Will Pritts. I'm your host, Jim Marous.

Jim Marous (35:28):

Until next time, remember, now more than ever, financial institutions must look beyond rates and create a better overall value proposition for their customers.